But the point of these conversations is an attempt to compare outcomes. The "rules of operation" is the sausage making that is really irrelevant to the conversation. If you are making the decision to send your kid to Pingry, is it really a point of caring that they don't deal with special ed or behavior problems? You're looking at the decision with that in mind already and presumably with the idea that your kid is neither special ed nor a behavior problem. It's an academic exercise for outsiders to factor that kind of thing in. If I'm knee deep in making the decision, all I care about is outcomes and experience. I don't care WHY it's an unfair comparison, do i?
We're not willing to give highly ranked quarterback's family members jobs. Maryland and Tennessee are. What good does it do to sit and lament how unfair that is? This is a results oriented endeavor.
Yes, it's a comparison of outcomes - but the inputs can't be ignored, either. If you are trying to decide between private schools, then outcomes are going to be a big factor. If you are comparing between private and public, that's not an easy thing to quantify.
As a very crude comparison, f the challenge is to have $1M at the end of a 12 month period, and one set of groups starts with $900K each and another set starts with $100K each, the first set is going to have a lot more success at achieving the desired outcome than the second. Saying the a group from the firs test succeeds 40% of the time while a group from the second succeeds 5% of the time isn't that meaningful in a vacuum - you need to take into account that there were different starting conditions.
**
One of the key selling points of private schools is their selectivity. The more expensive the school, the more narrow the range of socioeconomic backgrounds the students will come from. The more selective the admission process, the more homogeneous the learners will be in terms of ability and ethic - which makes teaching easier, as there's less variance in levels within a given classroom. The more stringent the behavioral rules are, the fewer behavioral problems will exist to distract the class - which homogenizes the student body further. The lack of special ed programs also means more homogeneity and less resources spent on a minority of students. There's also usually (not always) some focus on religion, which tends to homogenize the group further. That all results in an educational environment that is well controlled and standardized, with most students being very similar in many respects with regard to background - consistent inputs lead to consistent outputs.
There's less interaction with students from widely varied socioeconomic, ethnic, cultural, religious, behavioral, developmental, etc... backgrounds. But that's not a bug, that's a feature.
**
hudson, sorry - totally missed that you were talking about SPP there instead of DB. I also understand they would likely have a higher attrition rate given their focus.
My group in high school (there were about 30-40 of us out of a graduating class of 300) were fairly consistent in our track.
Freshman year: Alg 2, Bio, World Hist, English, Language 2, Elective (usually band or orchestra in our crowd, but some took journalism or something else)
Sophomore year: Geom, Chem, AP US I, English, Language 3, Elective
Junior year: Precalc, Phys, AP US II, Survey of Amer Lit, Lang 4, Elective
Senior year: AP Calc, AP Science (Bio, Chem, or Phys), AP Comp or Lit, AP Language, AP "other" (in place of history), Elective
Most of us finished with 5-6 AP courses.
