Individual personal stories are not a good substitute for decisions on big issues i.e. are private schools better than public. I do think private schools have a huge advantage in that they don't have to educate problem children, they can kick them out. And they don't have mandates to deal with. But there are plenty of terrible private schools, plenty. And the resources aren't there for big things as they are in public schools,,,labs, gyms, equipment etc. But on the whole, what they gain in order, discipline, parental involvement and a decent set of kids seems to give them a huge advantage to me. I would willingly send my kid to a less desirable school to have them get a normal life without a bunch of thugs and gangs and drugs, and to go to school with kids from good families.
Perhaps I was amazingly lucky, but I went to a public high school in Texas that didn't really have trouble with equipment; sure, we didn't have an indoor pool or clay tennis court like a nearby wealthy private school, but what the hell did we need with things like that, anyway?
Kids from my high school consistently outperformed their private school peers on standardized tests. Perfect scores on the math or verbal sections of the SAT occurred every single year I was a student there, though there's only been one student in the last 20 years to score perfect 800s on BOTH sections. Most private schools can't point to that many successes.
I was able to enter college as a sophomore because of all the college-level courses available at my high school: biology, art history, European history, psychology, advanced French and Spanish, advanced chemistry, physiology and anatomy, trigonometry, calculus, and calculus-based statistics.
That's a public school. Free. It was a bargain, and when I have children I hope to be lucky enough to live near such a quality institution.