Where Do Public School Teachers Send Own Kids?

Guy walks into a restaurant. Says to the waitress, "I'd like some scrambled eggs and some kind words." She brings the eggs. The guy smiles, "Now how about the kind words?" Waitress whispers, "Don't eat the eggs."

This brings us to the fact that urban public school teachers are about two times more likely than non-teachers to send their own children to private schools. In other words, many public school teachers whisper to parents, "Don't eat the eggs."

About 11 percent of all parents -- nationwide, rural and urban -- send their children to private schools. The numbers are much higher in urban areas. One study found that in Philadelphia a staggering 44 percent of public school teachers send their own kids to private schools. In Cincinnati and Chicago, 41 and 39 percent of public school teachers, respectively, pay for a private school education for their children. In Rochester, New York, it's 38 percent. In Baltimore it's 35 percent, San Francisco is 34 percent and New York-Northeastern New Jersey is 33 percent. In Los Angeles nearly 25 percent of public school teachers send their kids to private school versus 16 percent of Angelenos who do so.

The study, conducted in 2004 by the Fordham Institute, said: "These findings ... are apt to be embarrassing for teacher unions, considering those organizations' political animus toward assisting families to select among schools. But these results do not surprise most practicing teachers to whom we speak. ... The data have shown the same basic pattern since we first happened upon them two decades ago: Urban public school teachers are more apt to send their own children to private schools than is the general public. One might say this shows how conservative teachers are. They continue doing what they've always done. Or it might indicate that they have long been discerning connoisseurs of education. ...

"The middle class will tolerate a lot -- disorder, decay, and dismay, an unwholesome environment, petty crime, potholes, chicanery and rudeness. One thing, however, that middle class parents will not tolerate is bad schools for their children. To escape them, they will pay out-of-pocket or vote with their feet. That is what discerning teachers do."

A 2007 Heritage Foundation study found that 37 percent of representatives and 45 percent of senators with school-age children sent their own kids to private school. Of the members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus with school-age children, 38 percent sent them to private school. Of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus with school-age children, 52 percent sent them to private school.

The ex-mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, was asked why he did not have his own kids in public school despite his strong advocacy of public education. Villaraigosa, whose wife was a public school teacher, said, "I'm doing like every parent does. I'm going to put my kids in the best school I can. My kids were in a neighborhood public school until just this year. We've decided to put them in a Catholic school. We've done that because we want our kids to have the best education they can. If I can get that education in a public school, I'll do it, but I won't sacrifice (emphasis added) my children any more than I could ask you to do the same."

When he got elected president, Barack Obama and his wife made a big display of looking into D.C. public schools for his two daughters to attend. But the Obamas chose Sidwell Friends, the elite private school whose alums include Chelsea Clinton. Obama's own mother sent the then-10-year-old to live with her parents -- so he could attend Punahou Academy, the most exclusive prep school on the island. In fact, from Punahou to Occidental (a private college in Los Angeles) to Columbia (where he completed college) to Harvard Law, Obama is a product of private education.

So how does this square with Obama's opposition to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program that offered a voucher for the children of participating parents? It doesn't.

Here's what Obama's Office of Management and Budget said about the program: "Rigorous evaluation over several years demonstrates that the D.C. program has not yielded improved student achievement by its scholarship recipients compared to other students in D.C."

Tell that to the educator/consultant the Department of Education hired to evaluate the program. Testifying before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, Patrick Wolf, a University of Arkansas education policy professor who spent more than 10 years evaluating school choice programs in D.C., Milwaukee, New York and Dayton, Ohio, said, "In my opinion, by ... boosting high school graduation rates and generating a wealth of evidence suggesting that students also benefited in reading achievement, the D.C. OSP has accomplished what few educational interventions can claim: It markedly improved important education outcomes for low-income inner-city students."

President Barack Obama calls education "the civil rights issue of our time." Yet, his opposition to K-12 education vouchers guarantees that many of America's kids will sit in back of the bus.

It all depends on where you live. In my neck of the woods, northern Bergen County NJ, public school teachers usually send their kids to public schools. The simple reason being that the public schools around here are better academically than the private schools. The private and especially parochial schools try to gain students through sports programs, not academics in competition with public schools. Many parents in my district send their kids to parochial schools when they feel the local high school is to rigorous academically for their kid. They feel their kid will have a higher class rank at the parochial than public.

I’m a former public school teacher who sent my kids to Catholic schools. I wasn’t going to throw them to the wolves. And I’m not even talking about the curriculum. They went to single sex high schools, which is one reason they attended Catholic grade school.

I am a former public school teacher, and I am homeschooling. I had my oldest in what everyone says is a “really good” public school, but I know what to look for and it was completely unacceptable, and I am glad I found out early on instead of having my kids in public school until it was too late.

My homeschool groups include several former teachers and wives of current teachers, and none of them want to sacrifice their kids to public school.

I have to work, and I have kept my hours down to a minimum so that I can homeschool. My husband and extended family are very supportive, especially after they saw for themselves how really bad the situation is. At this point I would do anything to never have to put any of my children back in public school. The actual schooling part of homeschooling is easy for me, but juggling it with the rest of my life is difficult; difficult, but necessary.

I had thought we could send our children to public school and just supplement on the side, but the situation has become dramatically worse since I left teaching, and at least in our area this is no longer an acceptable solution for us.

Depends on where you live, most definitely. And I do not support vouchers, although I used to. You just get more government sticky-fingers in exchange. What if they get into a Catholic school? Then the government gets to demand LGBT or whatever it is, stuff like that? NO THANKS!

I agree. I’m in a small community in NC, and I wouldn’t send my kid to school if I didn’t trust the school. The HS I teach at has a lot of AP/college prep programs and is a pretty darn good school with a lot of professionals.

I also taught in the public schools before I had a child. We homeschooled, too. I knew that I could not attend properly to 30 children; I had kids who could not read, in 5th grade, and kids who were ready for high school. Even in the best case scenario, this is almost impossible; so, as a teacher, I aimed for the middle.

My husband and I remembered, too, being bored silly in school.

Are the publics better or worse than when we were kids? I rest my case.

By the way, I didn’t really learn how to teach until I homeschooled.

Liberalism has infested public schools.

Schools don’t teach proper values. Schools coddle certain alleged victim groups. Schools push issues such as homosexuality which should not be in school at all. Schools have inane zero tolerance policies so that kids get in trouble for pointing a finger and thumb and pretending its a gun. Schools don’t teach our kids how to think or inspire reasonong ability. They teach to a standardized test.

And nowadays, I think many discipline problems are magnified because, under most circumstances, an adult is not allowed to physically touch a child, otherwise can be charged with assault. So school personnel have hands tied dealing with troublemakers. And these kids know it. Troublesome kids have no fear of getting in trouble in school anymore.

...I had thought we could send our children to public school and just supplement on the side, but the situation has become dramatically worse since I left teaching, and at least in our area this is no longer an acceptable solution for us.

I live in an 'award winning' public school district. I don't know what they are 'awarded' on but most the kids at the high schools make the characters from Escape from New York look tame. I'm not kidding here. Many of the kids are so reprobate that most adults would be shocked by their actions, words and behavior. This isn't a generational thing either. I'm talking flat out evil behavior, girls whose language would make most truckers blush and boys physically bullying girls etc... Not a good environment to be in if you're a good kid and a serious student.

I agree. I used to support vouchers, then I started seeing the other side of that coin. Anything the government touches, it will find a way to control and ruin. I suspect the left knows this, and that’s why they don’t support vouchers, necause they don’t want their precious progeny’s education and chances at becoming the elite ruling class ruined. They’re just too hypocritical to say the truth, so they blather on about public education.

Also, note that this is one of the few issues on which the left’s elite is at odds with the left’s underclass.

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