Private school or public?

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Hello,

Any of you parents seen the differences between private and public school for your children with Asperger's, if you've had them in one then the other?

Would you also recommend a larger or a smaller school for your child, or does it matter? (Obviously, the unavoidable "x factor" is the quality of the school.)

I am not a parent, but I'll just add my .02 anyways I have been to three schools(moved around because of social problems) all very small(smallest was 30 kids in one grade, largest was 300 kids in one grade), very good by the govt's standards, etc. They were miserable. I learned nothing in school. I ended up being homeschooled, which I LOVE!!(I'm 18, just graduated) and I *highly* reccomend it if you possibly can make it work. It is so worth it for an aspie, especially.

I'd recommend homeschooling. We recently finished our 11th year.

this homeschooling thing is an issue for me at the moment. My daughter's mother intends on homeschooling her from this autumn and I'm opposed to it. As far as I know my daughter is not AS although she has some tendencies in my opinion but has done very well at school so far and has had no major problems as far as I can see.

Her mother says she hasn't been happy though and seems to think the education system is harmful. She's into Steiner stuff and wants my daughter educated that way.

Apart from the education I don't want her to miss out on the social side of things and lose contact with her friends as she will inevitably do as they live in a rural area. By the way, my daughter lives with her mother, not with me.

I've made my views clear but I'm going to have to start involving the education department and may possibly end up in court. Fun huh?

How old is your daughter? What does she think of the whole issue?

I was happiest at a large public high school (several thousand students total, four grades). The larger the school, the greater the chance of finding other people who live at the fringes of popular society and share your weird interests.

Other schools:

Private Catholic high school (2 yrs): horribly rigid and closed-minded, a major mistake

Large junior high (one semester): loved it, mainly because of the freedom to take electives and advanced classes

Small elementary/junior high (9 yrs): good and bad. With only 50 students in a grade, was always the weird one, had little in common with the other students and no friends. But was able to do independent studies and work with teachers one-on-one more.

my daughter is 7 years old, 8 this year.

I don't think she really understands why her mother doesn't want to send her to school, she says she likes school although she wants to do more art and history and doesn't like math(s) but nobody likes everything they do at school and she agrees that she will miss her friends

I've been in private schools, public schools, and homeschooled. Private schools have high educational standards, but emphisize a uniform educational approach and it's usualy the worst one possible for a kid with special needs. Public schools have programs to provide assistance to special needs kids and have extracuricular activities that might help keep a kid motivated in school, but the programs and even the school itself isn't always what it should be. Homeschooling can work for a kid that is above average intelligence and can work with very little structure, but this could cause gaps in learning if the parent lacks knowledge on a subject the kid is struggling with and any problems at home automatically become problems at school.

I agree with your assessment, Sean. I went to 12 years of public school. My sister attended 10 years of public school, 2 yrs of Catholic high school. My oldest daughter attended 3 years of Catholic elementary school (preK - 2) and 4 years of public school. My oldest son went to public school from K-4. We began homeschooling in the middle of that year (Nov. 1994).

I agree, if the child is above average intelligence and not able to move forward at his/her own pace, homeschooling is the best alternative. Which is why we began homeschooling our oldest daughter. She ended up graduating from a full-curriculum homeschool high school program and accepted by 3 colleges at age 16, graduated from university, has her own apartment, and is eagerly looking forward to earning her MBA/JD at Temple University Law School.

Conversely, if the child is struggling, but "not enough" to qualify for individual help, and is gradually and steadily falling behind, then homeschooling is also an excellent option. Which is why we began homeschooling our oldest son (ADD, auditory learner - not a good fit with the public school system). His grades and his attitude went from D's to A's & B's the very first year at home. He is now graduated, working full time, and paying all his own bills, including rent.

Our three youngest kids have always been homeschooled. I don't think it would have made much difference where our second daughter attended school. Her particular learning disabilities would have earned her easily provided accomodations, but her winning social skills would have helped to her to fit in quite easily.

I can clearly see that homeschooling has been the absolute best choice for our aspie son, socially as well as academically. He is now heading into 8th grade at age 11 - impossible in the public school, which blunty informed me when we withdrew our oldest daughter that "We do not allow our students to skip a grade, and certainly not two grades!"

We also have a 7yo son who is dyslexic. Horrible reading skills, absolutely stunning auditory processing skills. He aces every subject area except reading & spelling - simply from listening to me read his text books aloud once, reading the chapter or quarterly tests aloud, and having him speak his answers aloud before making him write them down. He is working his way through two home reading programs for dyslexia and has progressed very nicely this past year. He is now reading at the beginning first grade level (he is at 3rd grade in everything else).

All of our children are very well socialized. They are in Scouts, sports, choir, church youth groups, and volunteer with various community activities. And we are the "gathering place" of the neighborhood because I am the only SAHM for several blocks, offering unlimited Kool-Aid, ice pops, PB&J sandwiches (and a clean bathroom) to any kid who is willing to follow the same standards of conduct I expect from my own kids. (I truly think two of these kids - both 13yos - wouldn't eat in the summer if they weren't eating PB&J here every day - parents leave in the morning, come home at night).

Anyway, there's my book on the subject. Take it for what it's worth!

Rumio,

If you don;t mind me asking, why does your daughter live with her mother?

hi jman

I don't mind you asking.

When we split the arrangement was I have my daughter every other weekend and the rest of the time she's with her mother, who is now married with two more kids.

I would say my daughter is above average intelligence and is very advanced in some ways, although one of her mother's criticisms of the school system seems to be that kids are forced to go too fast and are over-stretched.

I found it to be just the opposite in our public school system. My daughter's natural inquisitiveness and academic abilities were being held back. (Granted, that was 11 years ago.)

I'm not a parent, but I'd like to make a few comments. For the most part, I agree with what Sean and Cindy have been saying. My mom tried over and over to homeschool me throughout elementary school. (My sisters went to the same elementary school. There were roughly ten kids in my grade level, combination two grades-twenty kids per class.) I was having a lot of difficulties with school because there wasn't enough individualized attention and the kids weren't very nice to me. What she and my dad ended up doing, however, was talking to the teacher and having me do my own independent study in the classroom and join the other kids for recess and lunch and music, computers, art and Spanish. By the time I was in first grade, I was already reading The Chronicles of Narnia (C.S. Lewis) and doing fairly advanced multiplication. Over the summer, my mom did some homeschooling with me.

Starting in sixth grade, I've been attending a small private junior high and high school. Most of the teachers have been fairly accomodating and understanding, and there are a few special programs for people who have learning problems. There about a hundred kids in the grade that I am in and class size varies from ten students (physics, some of the advanced classes) to twenty-five students (lecture style classes). Most of the classes are between fifteen and eighteen. The best thing about private school is that the teachers are willing to work more one-on-one with individual students and I don't feel awkward asking any of my teachers for help outside of classtime.

In elementary school, I was planning to skip a grade (and my parents were planning to have me skip a grade), but the school administration would not let me because of my "extreme lack of social skills". It did not matter that I did sixth grade math in third and fourth grade or that I was reading at an eighth grade level in fifth grade. Both of my sisters did extremely well at the elementary school (they were both closer to average and had different teachers) and my brother is now homeschooled.

I think it really depends on the child. The main reason why I was not homeschooled throughout elementary school was that my mom and I didn't get along very well (and you guys can probably imagine how that'd turn out!). But if I had not become quite as comfortable at the school that I attend right now, they probably would have homeschooled me for the past few years.

Sorry it's such a long post...I guess I just had to add my 2 cents, too!

Last edited by Namiko on 08 Sep 2005, 12:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I'm not a parent, but would like to give my 2 cents. I went to a total of 7 schools between grades 1-12 and all had their pluses and minuses.

Grade 1 and part of 2, I went to a Montessori school and we had less than 10 kids in the class. Grade 1 worked out pretty well as I had a good teacher. I had problems learning to write and she gave me extra help I needed in that area and some others. Second grade I had a different teacher who wasn't very good and basically ignored me if I needed help and often tried to separate me from the other kids, without giving me or my parents a reason.

After repeated attempts at resolution, my parents had me tested for and admitted to another private school. They knew I was behind, but I tested well and the teacher agreed to give me help getting caught up. This was an all boys school and had high standards for behavior and academics. Thanks to this structured enviornment and my teacher's help, I went from being behind to being one of the top students in the class. I stayed there, being an honor roll student until the middle of 4th grade when for reasons known only to themselves, they took me out of where I was doing well and put me in the same school my sister was going to.

This school was coed and put a heavy emphasis on sports and since I was interested in sports, I faced alot of bullying and harassment. In my previous school, my peers respected me for earning good grades but in my new school I'd get a 100% on a test and everyone would say "so" or worse, make fun of me for it. My parents' attitude towards my difficulties there was "Your sister doesn't have problems so why do you?" After she had some bad teachers and other parents told them some things about the school they didn't know, they moved both of us out after the end of 5th grade to 2 different Catholic schools.

In 6th grade at Catholic school, I didn't have alot of problems socially, but still felt like I didn't really belong there. I did well in most of my classes except for English due to an incompetant teacher who again, didn't seem care I was even there. At the end of the year, my parents put me into a Christian private school that again, my sister had transferred to a semester before. It turned out this school's only admissions standard was to take anyone who would pay and as a result, everyone in my 7th grade class had either been expelled from or flunked out of another school before, so it was pretty much anarchy and next to impossible to learn anything. Again, there were incompetent teachers as well.

In grade 8, I went to a public junior high school that was pretty large. I didn't fit in there either and faced alot of harassment. Kids often made fun of the way I talked(I had a deep voice) by making grunting sounds at me everywhere I went. I also got bullied when my English teacher read a paper I wrote on shortwave radio to the class. Everybody thought it was so funny I liked listening to Radio Netherlands and BBC World Service in my spare time. I never quite understood that. My parents never understood why I had problems, often blaming me for them yet I could never figure out what I did to deserve it. They blamed my personality and acting goofy, which they never explained, for all my difficulties in life.

High school, grade 9-12, was the longest I ever stayed in one school. It was a private Christian school that sad to say, wasn't a good place for me either. In 9th grade, I pretty much set the tone for my time there by refusing to participate in "Freshman Hell Week," a week in which all freshman are humiliated by senior students by being made to perform, dress in costumes, and so on. I thought it was within my rights to not be humiliated, so I refused to do it. This and other things, including having no interest in the opposite sex, dating, sports, or any other kind of social activities also made it very hard for me. I managed to have a couple of friends, but was always an outcast.

In my opinion, private or public alone doesn't make the difference. In fact, a child can attend a school one year and do well because he has a good teacher and poorly the next year because they have a bad teacher. Social structure an also have an effect. Some schools try to force socialization on kids, instead of letting them decide this issue for themselves(which is how it should be). A supportive home also has an impact on how a child functions. I think if my home had been somewhat more supportive, coping would have been easier in some respects.

Good luck.

When we first moved to our current location we asked around to find out about the schools. We moved near the public one that many people recommended. It was horrible. The teacher insisted my son had ADD and needed medication because he liked to memorize his spelling list and write it out at the beginning of the test instead of waiting for each word to be called. Well, to them this was not acceptable he needed to wait like all the other children. So that just made him be disruptive waiting for the next word instead of writing his list and reading a book. That is just one example of why the school was not a good fit for him. I was going to homeschool him but then someone told me about a charter school in town. We checked it out and loved it. #1 It was K-8 so he wouldn't have to go to a Jr. High. #2 When we talked to his new teacher she wanted to know if we could give her books about AS so she could understand him better. #3 They are flexible with his needs. If he is upset and needs to leave the room he has a hand signal that he gives the teacher and she lets him go to the library until he feels better. #4 They encourage him to work at his own level and not have to wait for the other kids to catch up with him.

I just love it. No one in the public school system ever wants to talk about choice schools because they lose funding for every child that goes elsewhere. But we have found this to be the absolute best choice for us.

I'm a person with Asperger's teaching students with Asperger's at a private school in the Los Angeles Area. This school specializes in working with students who are on the spectrum, which means that 90% of my students have Aspergers or autism. It really is a great place for students who are on the spectrum.

If you live in or around Los Angeles, you might want to check out the Help Group.