EDUCATION
By Nicole Wise
jeff kaufman
Extra Help
Sometimes you know when your child is ready
for private school; sometimes your child knows, too.
In what was, for her, a rare act of teenage rebellion, Sarah Reis-
Renzulli of Storrs made a major life decision without consulting
her parents. While a sophomore at a public high school, she took
it upon herself to contact the director of admissions to Miss Por-
ter’s School in Farmington, submitted an application—and was
accepted. “I was pretty demoralized by the experiences I’d been
having in high school,” explains Reis-Renzulli, now a master’s de-
gree candidate at UConn. “I visited Miss Porter’s and just knew it
was where I should be—everyone I saw just emanated happiness
and confidence, and I could really see myself there.”
It’s a story with a happy ending that illustrates why many
families choose to spend many thousands of dollars to send their
children to private school. In a situation that is not uncommon,
Meals with teachers and individualized attention, both pictured above at New Haven’s Hopkins
School, are part of what has kept private schools busy even in a difficult economy.
though it is somewhat more unusual in girls, Reis-Renzulli was
faced with the difficult combination of having dyslexia and a high
IQ, so her entire school career had been filled with challenges.
With her parents’ blessing, she spent two happy years at Miss
Porter’s before being accepted at Union College in Schenectady,
N.Y. Now 24, she says the Miss Porter’s experience “completely
turned my life around. It was, in so many ways, the perfect place
for me—I developed a lot of confidence and began to succeed. I
don’t think I’d have been able to attend a competitive college if I
hadn’t gone there.”
What makes this story particularly interesting is that Reis-Ren-
zulli is the daughter of two well-known educational experts, Sally
M. Reis, Ph.D., a board of trustees distinguished professor and
April  2010  CONNECTICUT  51
 Education
teaching fellow in educational psychology at
the University of Connecticut, and Joseph
Renzulli, Ed.D., professor and director of
the National Research Center on the Gifted
and Talented, also at UConn. “My husband
and I have been supporters of public schools
our entire lives and we’ve devoted our ca-
reers to improving and making changes in
public education,” says Reis. “But we’d made
many attempts to seek the help our daughter
needed to succeed in the public schools, and
though she had many excellent teachers and
counselors, she was unable to get what she
needed. We agonized about it and it was a
financial sacrifice, but Sarah’s whole pattern
turned around in a matter of about a month
at the new school. My guilt is that not every
child can have these resources.”
Flourishing Even in a
Bad Economy
In a state with many highly regarded public
school systems and in a difficult economy, pri-
vate schools are flourishing. Pam McKenna,
director of admissions at New Haven’s venera-
ble Hopkins School (now celebrating its 350th
anniversary), says she has seen “virtually no
change in our applicant pool.” Private edu-
cational consultant Holly McGlennon Treat,
who works with Bertram Educational Con-
sultants of Westport and Durham, concurs,
saying, “I’m a little shocked that even in this
economy, private schools have continued to
thrive.” But the families she works with con-
tinue to put a high premium on education.
“For most, once they’ve experienced what an
independent school education has to offer,”
she says, ”there’s just no going back.”
In some cases, this means a considerable
sacrifice on the part of the parents. Though
the tuition varies, most private school costs
fall within the same range—the “high 20s”
for a secondary-level day school and nearly
double that ($40,000 or more per year) for
boarding schools. It’s just a bit less than the
cost of a highly competitive college, and, as
with colleges, the costs seem to rise a bit with
every new school year.
Financial assistance and scholarships
are available to those who can demonstrate
need—more so now, in fact, than even in
the recent past—and many schools offer re-
duced rates for families with more than one
child enrolled in a school. At Hopkins, for
instance, “Our forward-thinking Commit-
tee of Trustees has made provisions to both
increase our financial-aid budget and to cre-
ate a contingency fund for currently enrolled
families who have a drastic change in their fi-
nancial circumstances,” McKenna says. “This
52  CONNECTICUT  April  2010
has allowed Hopkins to be responsive to the
needs of our community while remaining
fully staffed and with no cutbacks to our cur-
riculum or extracurricular programs.” Those
measures are helpful, of course, but even
families with healthy incomes not subject to
“drastic changes” can find it quite challeng-
ing to fund private-school tuition.
Though he acknowledges the high cost
of private education as a barrier he wishes
weren’t there, Douglas Lyons, Ed.D., execu-
tive director of the Connecticut Association
of Independent Schools (CAIS) in Mystic,
says parents believe the value justifies the
fee. Having 40-plus years of experience in
education—both public and private—he
says he’d advise parents who could afford ei-
ther a private school education early on or a
private college later to invest in the founda-
tion years. When a student heads to college
who is “already an independent learner, mo-
tivated and with a lot of interests, he or she
can go to UConn or another less expensive
university and be able to eke out every inch
of benefit,” he says. “That’s a child who is al-
ready prepared to succeed.” And, he adds, the
independent-school environment makes that
preparation for success likelier to take hold.
What Matters Most
According to Lyons, research shows that
parents cite four factors that are integral to
the decision to seek a private-school educa-
tion for their child:
• Academic rigor and the skill of the
teachers—the factor he says most assume
comes first—was actually ranked as the least
important of the four reasons.
• Parents believe that private schools
serve as an “effective interrupter of popu-
lar culture.” “It’s tough for a child to remain
young and innocent nowadays,” says Lyons.
“Independent schools help by providing an-
other set of adults, outside the family, who
can model values and experiences that chil-
dren will want to emulate.”
• The next factor, the relationships stu-
dents develop with their teachers, builds on
that theme: “I used to say to tell new teachers
that kids don’t care about what you know un-
til they know you care,” says Lyons. “Parents
value that teachers know the children and
believe in them.”
• The first and most important factor
cited came as a surprise to Lyons, he admits,
though it made sense when he thought about
it. “It is safety. It’s not about physical safety,
though of course that’s important. What the
parents mean is that they want their child to
feel safe in every way a child can and should
feel safe—physically, emotionally and social-
ly. In private school you don’t have to worry
about going to the bathroom, or who you
will sit with at lunch.”
April  2010  CONNECTICUT  53
 Education
The Lunch Bunch
Lyons cited research from Junior Scholas-
tic Magazine in which eighth-graders were
asked to identify the most stressful period of
the day, and the choice, overwhelmingly, was
lunch. The cafeteria, says Lyons, is where you
see “the most graphic display of who’s in—and
who’s not.” It is part of the private-school cul-
ture that teachers are involved with students
all day long, and that always includes lunch.
Dining with their students gives teachers ad-
ditional context for their relationship—they
know who a child is and how he or she is in-
teracting socially, and it’s often very different
from what happens in the classroom. No one
has to eat lunch alone, be ostracized, bullied
or made fun of either. “Lunch isn’t stressful
in an independent school—it’s moderated
by a caring adult,” he says. “The typical inde-
pendent-school teacher understands that the
goal is not just to prepare children academi-
cally, but also to challenge them intellectually
and support them emotionally.”
It’s not really about lunch, though. Bully-
ing is the greatest challenge public schools
face today, says Lyons. “Social anxiety im-
pedes learning, and kids who don’t feel so-
cially safe in school won’t learn. It should
be a big adventure for a child to learn, and
the environment needs to be safe for that to
happen.” Independent-school teachers not
only instruct their students, but interact with
them daily in multiple ways. “We need to not
only know our kids as students and individu-
als, but also to understand them in terms of
their social standing and peer relations—and
help them also to manage those aspects of
their lives.”
Schools for Special Needs
For some families, the decision to enroll a
child in private school is for that very reason—
to get help managing the difficult aspects of
his or her life. Private schools may have more
or better resources for kids with minor learn-
ing or behavioral issues, and others are fo-
cused specifically on meeting special needs.
Educational consultant Tom O’Dell, based in
Goshen, specializes in placing boys and girls
with learning disabilities and other social and
emotional issues in private schools, many here
in Connecticut. “Most of the families I work
with have a specific motivation and not a lot
of options,” he explains. “These tend to be kids
who have struggled in public schools. They
may be crashing already or perhaps not yet,
but it has become clear to their families that
they aren’t getting the support they need.”
Fortunately, says O’Dell, there are many
excellent options for these families—schools
54  CONNECTICUT  April  2010
such as Eagle Hill in Greenwich and South-
port and Villa Maria in Stamford that spe-
school that is the right fit means the school
will challenge the child to reach his or her
recession. The research involved 9,000 fami-
lies from around the country, all with chil-
cialize in students having problems with academic and personal potential while de- dren enrolled in independent schools. Asked
language, reading and writing, as well as at- veloping confidence, and setting a founda- whether they planned to have their children
tentional issues. Others include The Forman
School in Litchfield and The Franklin School
tion for a lifelong love of learning.”
All that, it turns out, is well worth the cost
return to their private school the next year, a
resounding 88 percent (in the New England
in Haddam, which focus on students with for many. Even in the face of financial chal- region) said “yes.” And then, when asked to
nonverbal learning disabilities, and The Glen- lenges, parents remain deeply committed to rank a variety of categories of discretionary
holme School in Washington Depot, which private education; taking a child out of an spending from 1 to 25, choosing among such
provides a therapeutic learning environment independent school and sending him or her options as making improvements to their
and addresses emotional problems as well. back to public school is apparently a cost- homes and taking family vacations, elimi-
cutting measure few are willing to even con- nating private-school tuition for their child
The College Question sider. Lyons cites a survey from Independent (or children) was ranked 24—that is to say,
Schools Management (IMS), a consortium of they’d cut every other expense first. Except
Then, of course, there is the issue of col- education professionals, undertaken at the for cable TV, which virtually no one was will-
lege. It’s widely assumed that attending a pri- end of 2008 to determine the impact of the ing to live without.
vate school offers a child a leg up—not only in
terms of the quality of the education, but also
in terms of navigating through the process of
college admissions. Holly Treat acknowledg-
es that the stakes are high for school-based
counselors in this area: “The marketing posi-
tion of the school is dependent upon that col-
lege-placement list, but it’s not just about the
name,” she says, stressing that the counselors
work to find the schools that are the right fit.
Though connections counselors have made
are helpful and some schools do feed more
students to particular colleges than others,
Treat says that’s not where the real advantag-
es lie. “What the counselors do best is help
the kids’ applications really pop—they make
sure they write a good essay, take a good test
and present well in an interview. They do ev-
erything to give the kids every opportunity
to shine throughout the application process
in order to show their true colors. It’s about
making sure the coaches get heard, or the
theater director writes a recommendation, or
the CD of the violin solo gets attention. But
what it’s not about is fitting a square peg into
a round hole.”
Committed to the Choice
Pam McKenna of Hopkins offers a good
summary of the many considerations that
weigh into the decision-making process. “A
family decision to send a child to an inde-
pendent school can be made for a variety of
reasons,” she says, “including parents hav-
ing had an independent-school experience,
or the child wanting to be in a specific type
of learning environment better suited to his
or her needs. The key is that parents have a
choice of independent schools—there are
schools that start in preschool or kinder-
garten, middle school or high school. There
are religiously affiliated schools, single-sex
schools, day schools and boarding schools.
With this much variety, careful thought and
research should go into choosing the best
school for the child. Every independent
school has a unique mission, culture and
community, and finding the one best suited
to a particular child is important. Finding a
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