government mandated standard report cards and inservice days

Well my perspective comes as an insider, being a teacher for many years as well as a parent of 3 children who attended the public school system and as a parent of a child with a mild learning disability who was denied access to a private school because she didn't meet the school's ideal and would have cost the school more money to educate than another student who didn't need to be taught a different method. Even though she didn't require an education assistant, she did require the teacher to be able to teach in a different manner (she is a tactile learner), we were told that it would be too costly to have her attend.

Now I understand your perspective.

The fact is that the private system cannot afford the same level of service for special need students because of the shortfall in funding.

Don't forget, the public system has extremely deep pockets and can, in many cases, provide for one-on-one ratios.

As I indicated she didn't need one on one teaching, she just needed a teacher that understood that not all students learn in one manner, that each student learns in a different way and a good teacher should not only know this but be capable of programming to manage their programming for the different styles of learning, be it visual, audio or tactile. As it turned out she stayed in the public system and because I had a hand in choosing the school she went to as well as the teachers she had, she graduated on time and with good grades.

As for the shortfall in funding that you claim the private schools get, I beg to disagree as they not only have the ability to charge tuition for each student, they also receive 80% of what the public schools receive. So if your child's education in a public school amounts to 3500.00 per year (may be fictious, I don't know how much it now costs for one child per year) the private school receives 2800.00 of that from the government and then on top of that they can and some do charge the full amount for educating one student per year. Here is a break down of the current tuition schedule from Linden Christian School on Waverley:
Grade
Tuition per Student
K
$1,770.00
1 – 6
$3,370.00
7 – 8
$4,120.00
9 - 12
$4,420.00

So if a child in elementary costs 3370.00 per year to educate, this school is also receiving an additional 2696.00 per year from the government (us the tax payers) so please don't kid yourself when you say they can't afford to have one on one with any given child. They could if they wanted to but most don't because that would lower their bell grade standards on marks that are presented not only to the board that presides over the school but also to the national associations that each school belongs to.

holly golightly wrote:I guess we can agree to disagree on this one. We have 2 different perspectives on how things are handled so I won't argue that your perspective is different than mine is nor will I question where you get your info from.

ditto