I actually say yes, but for a rather unexpected reason. The actual reason is because parents have ultimate control. If you and/or your child is having an issue with a public school, you have very few options other than writing angry letters. With a private school, you can threaten to pull your funding, and even round up 9 other sets of parents and threaten to pull your funding together! Because if this, private schools feel obligated to perform in a way public schools never will.

I went to private school one year and for the next three years went to public and public schools are definately tougher on students when they discopline

You can't generalize, as there are many different public schools, and many different privte schools. SOme public schools have every high standards-- and discipline well; some private schools are not rigorous and are lax on discipline. The individual school is more important than whether it is public or private.

The unfortunate ugly truth is money talks. I went to public schools, but they were in an affluent and wealthy area. The community was heavily involved at my schools, and it made a BIG difference in the expectation of how the school performed academically, and how the students conducted themselves on and off campus. If the public school is in an area where the community is not involved, and does not care how students conduct themselves, then private school would be the route to go. Because it is private, they do not qualify for most of the benefits that public schools can get through the state. Private schools depend on the money generated from enrollments and community involvment.

So, I would say it depends on the people in the community. "It takes a village to raise a child".

Fundamentally, no. There is no difference in the education between a private and public school. North American schools must follow a carefully defined curriculum so that regardless of location and delivery, students are presented with the same information to learn.

Practically, yes. There are both subtle and significant differences between private and public education. If compared strictly on educational value, many private schools have different expectations. Not only are passing grades usually higher, but they often use the standardized curriculum as a starting point. Lessons start with the curriculum but are often significantly enriched and extended.

In my experience, beyond the lessons that are taught and the grades that are given, private education has the opportunity to excel in 3 areas:

1)
Teaching Staff

Many public school teachers are not respected. They also aren't paid very well. In contrast, many private school teachers are acclaimed and are paid in line with tuition and current industry standards. Being able to attract and keep the best teachers results in a significantly better educational system. Lessons can be delivered in a variety of ways but when they're delivered by someone with a true interest and knowledge in the area, they often come to life and reach students on a deeper level.

2)
Parental and Community Attitudes and Involvement

Parents and community play a large role in education. Sadly, a handful of parents simply don't care about their children. This is a problem in public education because even 1 bad parent and resulting bad child can offset a classroom. The public school system often caters to the lowest common denominator and has no way to deal with not only the behavioral problems of a child but of the parents.

In a private school, a student can be expelled. Not only does this have a significant impact on a student, but on parents as well.

3)
Environment

Private schools choose to open locations in nice areas. They need to attract people to enroll and the first thing that someone evaluates when choosing a school is the amenities.

Public schools are built and placed based on population. Public schools must be easily within reach of significant percentage of the population. Regardless of the area (rich, poor, nice, rundown, etc), a public school will be placed where it makes the most financial and geographic sense.

I spend after-hours time with people who work as paid instructors for two of the universities in town, and shat they have to say about it is this"

Kids from the private schools seem to be better at interdisciplinary concepts, i.e. if being taught a concept where one must understand a bit of history and a bit of chemistry in order to get it, then the kids from the private schools catch on faster, whereas kids from the public schools seem to have trouble bridging the gap between the subject of chemistry and the subject of history and seeing how they can relate.

For example, in the case of chemistry, the branch called thermodynamics with its concepts of entropy and enthalpy are just arbitrary concepts to be memorized as-is as far as the public school students are concerned, such that, as anyone who's studied thermodynamics would know, the concepts of entropy, enthalpy, Gibb's free energy, and the relation of heat to work don't really make a lot of intuitive sense in and of themselves, *but* if one understands the historical context in which the science was developed, specifically, it was initially developed to describe how powerful a steam locomotive could be, with no concern for the underlying principals of what is matter, and what is energy, then it's a lot easier to understand the science of thermodynamics, and how to use it.

In other words, they say that at the university level, it's easier to teach thermodynamics to kids from private schools than to kids from public schools.

I can sort of see how that could happen. In the public school system, teachers work from what are called "lesson plans", which they follow like a script, such that technically it's not necessary for the teacher to understand what they're teaching. In fact, that's stated as an objective by many Faculties of Education for their graduates.

They tell their students that the goal is to make those students "employable" by the public school system, and that as far as the Faculty of Education is concerned, the students will be most employable as a "teacher" if that student can pick up a lesson plan for anything from chemistry to seamstressing, and, reading from that lesson plan, drill the students through that lesson, which means if the students raise a hand and ask "why", the teacher will not be able to answer unless the lesson plan has a list of probable questions that the student will ask, with the answer that the teacher is supposed to give.

I know that's a fact for certain jurisdictions in north America, because my mother was a public school teacher, and she was quite frustrated about that aspect of it. When she expressed her frustrations in the teacher's lounge, the careerist teachers who were there for the paycheck told her to stop worrying about it, because the kids would start actually learning things if they went on to college or university, but the people I know teaching in universities tell me they are frustrated by how the first two semester of any student's academic career is not teaching university level stuff, but reviewing everything that kids should have learned in high-school, in order to level them out, such that the real university education starts in the second year...

... And they say that kids from the private schools can jump strait into the second year.

In the private schools, teachers are expected to actually understand the subject they are teaching, so if a students asks "why", there is a better chance that the teacher can tell them why.

I know lots of people who wanted to become teachers of their favorite subject, and were so frustrated by the way the public school system de-emphasized the knowledge they had in their chosen field of expertise, that most of them quit, and went to do something where they could actually use their knowledge and skills... and yes, some of them went on to teach in private schools, *but*, whereas the Teacher Colleges did not require their grads to have actual degrees in any subject, in the private school, if you were going to teach chemistry, you had to have at least a Bachelor's Degree in chemistry.

This might be a phenomena that's unique to North America, but, believe it or not, I've heard it's even worse in some South American countries, where the relation between a teacher knowing the subject they are teaching and what they actually know is so thin that student training basically resolves to a process of pure memorization with no teaching of how to think.

Therefore, all together, I'd have to say that in north America, insolong as they continue to operate the public schools like holding pens to socialize the kids while they grow up and get through their teens, acclimatizing those kids to the notion of showing up to do work at a fixed time and sitting in a desk all day no matter how much they hate it and regardless of whether or not the person in charge actually understands what he is talking about insolong as he can follow a script...

... then if you want your kids to be able to plug in as effective sprockets in the machinery of the military-industrial complex, send them to a public school, otherwise you'll have to spend the extra money to send them to a private school, which is where the profiteers of the military-industrial complex send *their* kids.