Return to Virginia Business -February 2002

by Anna Barron Billingsley

After her first semester at University of Virginia, Susan Holt returned home to Petersburg in tears: She was floundering academically. Yet, several years later, when her brother Mark arrived back home as a freshman from Wake Forest University, he was on the Dean's List. Their mother, Jean Holt, pondered the difference. After all, the siblings possessed similar intellectual aptitudes and attended equally challenging colleges.
The difference, she surmised, was their high school experience. Susan attended a local private school where she received good preparation for life, but not college. Mark, on the other hand, sacrificed convenience for curriculum. He commuted 45 minutes each way for his last three years of high school so that he could attend The Collegiate School in suburban Richmond. Collegiate was a good fit for her son, Holt says. "He became more sure of himself. He was ready to meet the world."

Families across Virginia are seeking schools that offer good fits for their children. If they live in the right zip code, they may be fortunate enough to send their children to one of the state's many fine public schools. But as a number of parents have discovered, academic excellence in public schools can be a crap shoot. Some fall short of the standards needed for students to get into top colleges. Even more troubling, public schools have a duty to handle all students regardless of their scholastic abilities or whether they can behave in class. So, while private schools require a significant financial commitment, more and more families believe it's worth the sacrifice.

Selecting the right private school can be challenging. There is a wide array of choices: parochial vs. secular, coed vs. single-sex, boarding vs. day school, uniforms vs. no uniforms. If special circumstances exist, such as behavior or learning problems, a further sub-set of schools emerges. Tuitions vary widely, and locations are not always convenient. The Virginia Council for Private Education (VCPE) tracks about 350 private schools from every pocket of the state, ranging in size from less than 100 to 1,500 students and costing anywhere from $3,000 to $30,000 a year. On the list are church-related preschools, single-sex boarding schools, Catholic schools, Montessori schools, military schools, schools for emotionally disturbed students, Hebrew schools, an Islamic school, college-preparatory schools, arts-oriented schools and schools for students with learning disabilities.

Moreover, VCPE's list is not comprehensive. Included are only those schools that meet the standards of accrediting associations approved by the council. While public schools in the state are monitored by the Virginia Board of Education, private school accreditation is a voluntary process. Many private schools in Virginia believe it is to their benefit to seek accreditation, a process that involves extensive outside review of the school and its policies. Others do not.

What's a parent to do? "Look at your child and determine what's best for that child," says George McVey, former headmaster of St. Christopher's, a boys' preparatory school in Richmond, and now head of the VCPE. Accreditation can be a starting point. "If a school is accredited," McVey says, "you know someone is looking over its shoulder." Or, as Sally K. Boese puts it: "If you're considering an accredited versus a non-accredited school and everything else is equal, you can assume [with the accredited school] the things that are not seen have been taken care of."

As executive director of the Virginia Association of Independent Schools (VAIS), Boese has closely examined private schools, warts and all, throughout the state. If a school is accredited, she says, parents can be assured the environment is "safe, secure, healthy, financially sound and well governed." Her association is one of 13 member organizations of the VCPE, which functions as an umbrella statewide for the private school sector in Virginia and serves as a model nationally for the relationship between public and private education. Other VCPE members include the American Montessori Society, the Association of Christian Schools International, the Mennonite Secondary Education Council, the Association of Military Colleges and Schools of the United States, and the Virginia Catholic Education Association.

These and other VCPE-member organizations set a high bar for their member schools. "We are really privileged to be in the state of Virginia," Boese says. Because the VCPE serves as the link between private schools and the Virginia Board of Education, "we have the blessing of the state and the ability and the freedom to function very independently." Before the 1980s, McVey explains, the state was involved in accreditation of private schools. That still is the case in many other states. In Virginia, he says, the relationship between public and private education is "harmonious, not competitive."
"Virginia leads when it comes to the state's relationship to non-public schools," says Gary Temple, regional superintendent of Seventh-day Adventist Schools. VCPE monitors the state's private schools, he says, and the state accepts what VCPE says.

One of the aims of accreditation, according to Boese, is to "make sure the school is doing what it says it's doing." That's why her organization and others pay so much attention to the mission statements of schools. If, for instance, a school states that its purpose is to provide a nurturing environment, the accrediting organization wants to see tangible evidence of that nurturing. Says Boese: "We look at things analytically."

Families, on the other hand, tend to view schools emotionally and to focus on the intangibles. Betsy Frantz of Falls Church, mother of three students in private schools, said, "It's like buying a house. You look for a good feel."

When it comes to private schools, parents need to do their homework and figure out "which environment their child will be most successful in," Frantz says. The assignment is "incredibly challenging" and "ridiculously competitive," she adds, particularly now that so many private schools are bulging at the seams.

In fact, as applications soar, private schools are becoming much more selective. "We screen and really work toward a good fit," says J. David Yoder, headmaster of Eastern Mennonite High School in Harrisonburg.

Having just undergone the months-long selection process with her oldest son, who is a freshman this year at a boys' school in Maryland, Frantz has some tips for other parents undertaking this venture. Go to open houses sponsored by the schools, she says. Then, let your child visit for a day. Make sure the personality of your child matches that of the school.

When evaluating a school, parents should insist that "the environment is safe, clean and wholesome - and child-centered," says Jean Parisine, headmistress of the Montessori School of McLean. Order and neatness should prevail, she adds. Parents also should investigate the credentials of the teachers and make sure every adult on the premises is prepared and positive.

Whether a Northern Virginia Montessori classroom in which students of multiple ages are interacting or a southwest Virginia Christian school chapel in which students of different denominations are praying, a common theme characterizes private schools in the Commonwealth: a sense of community. That certainly is a draw for his school, says Benjamin Vaughan, headmaster of Isle of Wight Academy in Isle of Wight County. In addition to a good academic program and extracurricular activities, "we offer a family-oriented atmosphere," he says of his 500-student day school that takes boys and girls from preschool through high school. And they do so for, at most, $3,900 a year.

Other private schools also try to promote a family atmosphere, but the tuition can be much steeper. At The Madeira School in McLean, an all-girls boarding and day school, a significant number of faculty members live on campus. The price tag there, though, is at the other end of the spectrum: $30,000 a year for tuition, room and board. About an hour and half southwest and about $5,000 cheaper is another boarding school in which most of the faculty members live on campus. Woodberry Forest is an all-male school that features classrooms averaging 12 students, an honor system that is taken so seriously no doors ever are locked and a 1,200-acre campus that includes a golf course, a river and areas for hunting and fishing.

With all that, what is it that most distinguishes Woodberry Forest? According to Admissions Director Joe Coleman, "Academic excellence and a sense of community." What Fork Union Military Academy offers is structure, says school spokesman Lt. Col. Craig Jones. Where else would you find 500 to 600 boys quietly studying each evening, he asks. The all-male military boarding school offers an environment free from distraction and peer pressure. He views the school as "an academic training camp." David Charlton, who oversees five Episcopal schools in various parts of the state, says that every school should offer "intimate, personal attention customized to accommodate individual students' needs."

Historically, he says, academic rigor has been at the top of parents' checklists for schools. With the preponderance of drugs and violence on school grounds, though, safety has become a bigger issue, he says. And even more prevalent among parents in recent years, he adds, is a search for values or character development for their children. Gary Temple of the Seventh-day Adventist Schools calls it a search for "an integration of faith and learning."

Development of "the whole person" is the way the Virginia Catholic Education Association views it. A Catholic education means "forming a spiritual side, an artistic side and a physical side," says Linda Shovlain, communications director for the Catholic Diocese of Arlington. In addition, she says, the many Catholic schools around the state encourage students to look beyond themselves.

Private school certainly has broadened her two daughters' horizons, says Susan Hansen of Fredericksburg. "It has made them all-around better persons." A product of public school education, Hansen admires the benefits her husband Dan received from attending a boarding school. Besides forming lifelong networking opportunities with his classmates, she says his educational background allowed him to "go places and do things." She adds, "I decided before my children were born that they would go to a boarding school."

Although they initially resisted the idea of going away to school, Hansen says, both girls ended up "choosing schools that matched their personalities and interests" - Virginia Episcopal in Lynchburg for the older daughter and Episcopal High School in Alexandria for the younger. "It's a lot of money," Hansen says. "We had to make sacrifices. But if I had to do it over, it's one thing I'd do again for my kids."

Frantz, too, talks about the financial toll. "We may have to eat oatmeal every morning," she says. But it's a matter of values, she adds. Some people send their children to public schools, Frantz says, but use the savings to take them to Europe every year.

Or, as in Debbie Fisher's case, they send one child to public school and the other to private. The family simply couldn't afford the private school route for both, says Fisher, who lives in Williamsburg and teaches in a public school there. In exchange for a private school education, her daughter knew all along that she had to attend a non-private college.

Fisher says her son did OK in public school, but she sought a different environment for her daughter as soon as she hit middle school. Fisher wanted the full focus to be on academics. "In public school, you discipline half the time." Private schools, on the other hand, can say to students with behavior problems: "If you don't go by the rules, there's the door," she says. At Walsingham Academy, with its smaller class sizes, Fisher's daughter "learned how to study, how to organize."

It paid off. Hallmates at Virginia Tech recognized her daughter's abilities and asked her to help them with their papers. Reflecting on her daughter's private school experience, Fisher says, "I am very, very pleased. We definitely got a return on our investment."

Return to Virginia Business - February 2002