Customer Reviews

How to Pick a Perfect Private School

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Despite a virulent anti-public school bias, Unger's guide to picking a private school has some helpful information and tips on choosing a private school. Frankly, however, anyone who needs this type of hand-holding to get through the private school application process, is probably not private school material. Unger's best tip is to buy the Peterson's guide to secondary schools.

If you are the kind of parent who believes your children can be wonderful hood ornaments on the vehicle of your personal success, this is the book for you.

The author abhors public schools because, as he says, they have to accept EVERYBODY (ugh!). He favors and supports boarding school education for children as young as first grade (only about five years old) so that they can live in a warm, morally consistent (but unloving) environment all year long, and because he feels that the child and his parents will then share only happy memories of carefree summers and holidays, with none of that messy and mutually irritating go-clean-up-your-room-and-do-your-homework fuss and muss.

In other words, he seems to believe that children are better raised by goal-oriented institutions, who see their students as a product being readied for the marketplace, than by their parents rearing their own offspring as a gesture of love and tenderness.

As a teacher, and as aparent of private-school kids, I found the author's attitude completely offensive, and I have to say that this is the kind of material that gives private-school families a bad name. I would have given it a "1" rating -- especially because the author supports his point of view with speciously derived and manipulated statistics -- but undoubtedly there are parents who do subscribe to his point of view, and will benefit from this book.

The perfect mannual for any parent considering sending their child to a private school. The book will be especially useful to families with older children who are considering going to baording school. The book covers issues concerning the application process, questions parents should ask, visting the school, and different types of schools including military school, schools for the gifted, and schools for the learning disabled. There's also a short listing of schools in the back listed by state grade, whether or not their coeducational, boarding schools, schools for the disabled, military schools, etc. However, you'll need a private school directory such as Peterson's in order to find out any info. about the schools.

While I would agree with others that there is a definite (especially in the introduction) bias towards private schools, that is to be expected - the book's title says how to pick the BEST private school; not whether private or public schools are better.

Some great topics covered by this book:

1) What time is the best to enroll in private school (if the child is already in school and will be transferring)?

2) Is it better to pay for private K-12 or a college education if funds are limited?

3) What accreditation is important in selecting a private school? (And not to confuse accreditation with certification!)

4) Which is better academically, parochial or independent schools?