Sidwell is a name brand school with tuition in the $30,000 range. (Out of our price range, for sure.) We know several current and past Sidwell families, some at church, some through soccer, and some at work. The ones we know are comfortably upper middle class but not wealthy; some of them are even Republicans. I suspect many of them are getting scholarship assistance at Sidwell, although I don't ask.
On this as on several other threads on this topic, there seems to be a lot of generalized hostility towards Sidwell as an elitist school. Some of it is so over the top that I think DU trolls are sneaking in. Sidwell is a great school with a well-earned reputation for excellence. Yes, it is expensive, and academically selective. So what. In any city in this country, the business and professional elites have access to these kinds of schools. That is their prerogative. The goal ought not to be to tear down Sidwell, and places like it; the goal should be to open access to such schools to more families (vouchers, anyone?) and to raise many more schools to this level of excellence.
We have two daughters in the Catholic system and have been paying the DC private school tax for ten years. Our oldest is heading to a very good Catholic high school that is substantially less costly than Sidwell, but expensive by most other standards of comparison. But as I point out to Democrat friends, if DC would voucher school tuition, we could pay full freight for our daughters' "elitist, expensive, upper class" educations, and have cash back. The DC public system is MORE expensive than virtually all the Catholic schools, including all but a couple of the very top academic magnets.
The issue isn't that parents who can afford it choose great schools for their kids. The issue is that DC public schools spend over $18,000 a year per student to run a disaster (and I've seen estimates as high as $25,000 if you really dug through the budget for hidden costs).
A handful of DC public elementary and middle schools, and now two high schools, have broken through and are winning broad middle class acceptance. We also have a large number of public charter schools, some of which are doing very well. Thank goodness for the democratizing influcence of sports: my daughter has soccer friends (not all on her current team) either attending or entering next fall at Washington Latin, Wilson, Whitman, and Walls (public) as well as Sidwell, Georgetown Visitation, Georgetown Day, Bullis, Maret, Holy Child, Washington International, St. John's, and I'm sure I'm leaving a few out. These are all outstanding schools. Plus there are several soccer friends who live in the near suburbs and go to some excellent public schools in Fairfax and Mongomery Counties.
For most of the families we know, paying private school tuition is a substantial sacrifice, which we weigh against the alternative, which is a brutal commute. You get used to the idea that if you live in the city, schools are one of the things you'll pay dearly for. The fairly recent breakthroughs achieved by a couple of the DC public and charter schools are great news; the options are broadening. Walls (public) attracts a lot of applications from private school kids, but it has become very difficult to get into; there is a widespread suspicion that Walls is reserving most of its slots for kids who have come up through the public system, thus discriminating against private school kids who are trying to jump back into a (free) public option at the high school level. I wouldn't be surprised if this surfaces as a public issue in the near future. Signs of progress.
So ... an elite prep school sponsors a trip abroad during spring break. Big deal. As I pointed out on another thread, my old southern Indiana high school (public, and not selective; it's the only high school in town) nowadays sends the Latin and French clubs to Europe. Why in the world do some people get flustered if students get on an airplane from time to time? It would be surprising if top academic magnet schools, public as well as private, did NOT do this.
An afterthought: the amount of money academic magnets spend on this sort of thing pales in comparison to the expenditures of many public school systems on athletics. A question of priorities, I suppose.
>>So ... an elite prep school sponsors a trip abroad during spring break. Big deal.
The “big deal” part is going to a country with multiple travel advisories in which serious drug wars are ongoing, necessitating accompaniment by a whole platoon of Federal Secret Service agents for security at public expense.
you stay cool in that funky universe of yours, pumpkin.
VERY thoughtful and reasoned post.