Each year, thousands of eighth graders are faced with the difficult choice of attending a private or public high school. Should students have the financial means to attend private school, other factors such as average test scores are critical elements in comparing different high schools. For others, extracurricular activities from sports to robotics play a crucial role.
Students must first be admitted to their private school of choice before they can appropriately compare their public and private school options. Admissions to private high schools, like college, is fairly competitive. Private high schools may require students to submit test scores from high school entrance exams, middle school transcripts, and even recommendation letters from counselors and teachers.
The vast majority of American students attend public school. However, 10 percent choose instead to go to private school. While religion seems to be one of the biggest pull factors of private high schools—80 percent of private school attendees go to religious schools—there are countless other reasons, from sports programs to student-teacher ratios.
In the Bay Area, there is a variety of laudable high schools, both private and public. While most private schools try to keep small student populations in order to maintain a low student-teacher ratio, public schools often move in the opposite direction, citing diversity and class variety as some of their strengths.
According to Principal Pat Kurtz, one of Aragon’s main points of attraction is the variety of classes and amount of clubs the school offers. She claims that Aragon’s large student body makes this possible.
Aragon offers approximately 103 different classes for all of its students, and, as of the fall of 2012, had 57 clubs. Two other public schools of comparable size, San Mateo and Burlingame, offer similar amounts of courses (107 courses and 116 courses, respectively).
At smaller private schools, there are often fewer courses offered. Oliver Newland, a senior at Crystal Springs Uplands School (CSUS), a 350-student private school for grades six through 12 in Hillsborough, has not always been able to take the classes he wanted. “I wanted to take a microfinance class this year, but they only had slots for 20 students,” says Newland. “They also don’t have honors comp-sci [computer science] this year because the teacher is on sabbatical. I guess the problem is there’s a small faculty, so options are limited.”
However, larger private schools such as Junipero Serra High School do not have the same limited course selection. Serra, an all-male Catholic school, has a student body of only 981 students, yet offers over 130 different courses. Bellarmine, an especially large private school with a population of about 1,600 students, offers an impressive 160 different class options. Even more strikingly, Mercy High School, an all-girls school with 430 students, offers 95 different classes—just eight fewer than Aragon, for a population with 1,000 less students. Clearly, the amount of students is not what decides the number of classes. As Newland says, it is the amount of teachers who can teach these specialized subjects that determines the amount of classes a school can offer.
But a lack in variety of class choices is not seen as detrimental by every public high school student.
“[At Aragon], there are difficult classes that are provided and challenges that can be taken. As far as variety goes, Aragon is awesome,” says Aragon senior Eric Carlson. Moreover, public schools tend to have more clubs than their smaller counterparts, with 57 clubs at Aragon and 50 clubs at San Mateo, compared to Serra’s 37 clubs.
For many students who have a choice between private and public high schools, eligibility for college admissions can be a major factor in deciding where to attend school.
Test scores are often viewed as an indicator of how well a school prepares its students for college.
Among public schools, Aragon has a high AP test pass rate at 85 percent, compared to the 81.1 percent of San Mateo, 77.3 percent of Burlingame, and 66 percent of Hillsdale. As for the private schools, Bellarmine holds an 85 percent pass rate and Serra an 82.7 percent. While these scores are all fairly close, what truly separates the scores of public schools and private schools is the SAT. Aragon has an average score of 1707 and San Mateo has 1715, while Bellarmine, a larger school, averages 1900, and Crystal Springs Uplands School averages 2153. CSUS’ outlier notwithstanding, students of private schools in the Bay Area, even large ones, seem to be better prepared for the SAT.
While perceptions of why this is true can vary wildly, some may attribute it to different teaching approaches. Junior Jeffrey Ng says, “[At Aragon], classes don’t focus specifically on the SAT, [but] more on the subject.”
Carlson concurs, stating, “I feel like there are classes that could be provided by Aragon that aren’t super expensive. There could be more programs for students who are nervous about taking the test to give them strategies to use on it.”
In contrast, senior Summer Weaver of Mercy High School credits her school with helping her be prepared for the SAT.
Weaver says, “Mercy gave me good foundations in English and math. I did take an outside prep class, but it was held on campus at Mercy.” Weaver chose to go to Mercy because she wanted smaller class sizes so that she would receive more one-on-one time with teachers.
Like Weaver, Newland chose Crystal Springs in large part because of the small student-teacher ratios—which at CSUS is a ratio of 6-to-1. Explains Newland, “It’s a really academically rigorous school, small enough to ensure I get enough attention from and access to teachers.”
In general, private schools do have much smaller class sizes and student-teacher ratios than public schools do. Even a school as large as Bellarmine has an average class size of 25. At Aragon, getting Algebra classes and Freshmen English classes to stay at between 25 and 28 students per teacher is an accomplishment. Aragon’s overall student ratio of about 17-to-1 is not too bad for a public school of its size, but is nothing compared to small private schools like Crystal Springs.
There is conflict amongst Aragon students over these larger class sizes. According to junior David Diba, “Calculus BC is too big. It’s a hard class, and if it was smaller, we would have more one-on-one time with the teacher.”
However, Ng disagrees. He says, “You have more people to communicate with or talk to. It allows you to be more sociable, so it’s not just private tutoring.”
While small classes and student bodies mean more teacher attention, there are still some who do not have an ideal experience. Newland says, “The counselors aren’t great and there isn’t much college oriented guidance before the second half of junior year. They just offer generic advice most of the time. They seem more about getting you to apply to colleges you have a great chance of getting into rather than coaching you to reach high.”
In contrast, Aragon students often speak fondly of their counselors. Carlson states, “The whole administrative staff is very helpful and supportive. I really like how Ms. Trish cares about all her students.”
But to make a truly informed decision about what high school a student should attend, all of these factors and more must be considered.
