Re: Do public schools look down on private schools?

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It depends on what type of private school. Bill, you sound like
you taught in the Gossip Girls school!

I've taught both public and private in the inner city (and one
Catholic school in the burbs.) The kids in the city schools are
about the same, save for the very worst problems like truancy,
gambling in the back of the room, and trying to beat the
teachers up. The level of academic achievement is a little
higher, and the overall behavior is a little better--but not by
that much. In my one Catholic grammar school, there were several
AIDS orphans, crack babies, etc. So the social problems were not
that much different.

What I noticed is that Catholic schools use more traditional
methods of teaching, and the public district I worked at was
beholden to a bunch of educational consultants pushing the
latest trend, and beholden to a standardized test. I got a bad
observation because I first had the kids doing lab (which he
didn't like), then presented a lesson on the 9 planets. I wasn't
supposed to teach a lesson or do a lab. No, I was supposed to
lead a discussion of higher order thinking questions and present
scenarios. Every class. A hands-on activity was wrong, and so
was a traditional lecture to present brand new material. i was
supposed to ask stuff like "Imagine a planet. What would it be
like?" "Compare and contrast what your life would be like on
Jupiter and Mars." In the suburban Catholic school I subbed at
after my public job, they would have shot me if I did something
like that. You were supposed to sit the kids in rows, and teach
them science in a lecture. Period
 

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