Originally Posted by iaink

Isnt that what parents are for

Originally Posted by readytomove

Yes and my parents read with me every day but if you have a 6 year old who is barely literate in an elementary reading class that is basically follow along with the class while teacher reads then that child is going to get frustrated, board and disruptive. It's even worse when it's a stand up and read a passage aloud style class and you end up crying because you can't even manage a line. What good is that to anyone?

Originally Posted by iaink

None at all (other than to highlite the problem that needs addressing), clearly the child needs additional help. But is it reasonable to expect a teacher in those circumstances to be focusing the time necessary on that one kids at the expense of the others?

Is this hypothetical 6 year old kid barely literate because of some physical or mental developmental issues, or is it because the parents have never spent any time helping the kid outside of school and just dump them in front of the idiot box to keep them quiet and out from under their feet? Different solutions in those two extremes I suspect.

Originally Posted by readytomove

Well in my case as the barely literate 6 year old it was because I was dyslexic and my teachers at the state school who had 35 others to handle decided and repeatedly told my parents I was slow and probably not very intelligent and that I might pick it up eventually. I was then dumped at the back of the class with the other 'slow' and 'naughty' children.

Is it reasonable to expect a teacher with a class that size to set aside time for one child? no, certainly not. My point was that in a private school setting where class sizes are so much smaller, every child gets to have one on one time, the teacher gets to know them and can gear that time to help them develop any areas that might be lacking whether it's reading or maths or spelling etc...

Originally Posted by iaink

Sorry, dont have any stats, just direct experience based on the kids of two friends who went to UofT (dentistry) and waterloo (chem eng) both of whom reported that their straight A valedictorian kids were finding it really hard, to the point one dropped out and one just squeaked past 1st year exams.

These arent partying kids either, so its not a sudden lot of distraction that was making it hard for them compared to the prep school prepared kids, the university expected them to have already covered some of the calculus and physics and chemistry, but despite graduating high school with high GPAs, they had not covered those topics.

Originally Posted by Big GG

Well, people must be thinking that private schools are offering something to justify the price tag. If it is not French then it should be something else.

During my research I also found out that price of housing in the neighbourhood and ranking of schools are also closely interrelated. There is also definetely a correlation between household income and the quality of elementary school. The quality of schools is evaluated by GTA elementary school board by ranking their academic performance. There seems to be some other parameters that affect the ranking of schools such as 2nd language spoken at home and ethnicity in the neighborhood.

Generally if the household income is high and English is the first language spoken at home then the school is ranked fairly high. Probably the only anomaly I found in this statistical data is the existance of a few Chinese neighbourhoods with low household income and high percentage of 2nd language spoken at home other than English. This probably can be explained by high emphasis on education in Chinese culture.

Still the trend is very obvious. Rich neighbourhoods, good schools. There is also the fact that people can only send the kids to the state school in their neighbourhood and nowhere else.

So, can it be the case that some people are making an economic desicion whether to overpay for a house where there is a good school or pay considerably less for a similar house in a different neighbourhood and instead send their children to a private school.