Putting stock in expensive education Middle class looks
for value in high-end private schools
by
Heather B. Hayes
Virginia Business February
2005
The
tuition for a daughter at St. Catherine’s School
and a son at St. Christopher’s School totals nearly
$27,000 a year, but Mimi Siff says that the benefits
her children get from these Richmond private schools
are well worth the cost.
For
starters, the schools offer low student/teacher ratios,
individualized attention and rigorous curricula. This
year, for example, Siff’s daughter, Eleanor, a
fourth grader at St. Catherine’s, is learning
French and studying the works of French Impressionists.
Her son, Dillon, a sixth grader at St. Christopher’s,
takes a foreign language as well, along with computer
science, health science, poetry, woodworking and music.
The schools also promote character development, requiring
students to take part in community service, athletics
and activities that promote leadership, self-discipline,
study skills, spirituality and a sense of honor. Siff
says her children are thriving at the schools.
“They’re really helping bring the children
along not just as students but as individuals,”
says Siff, the owner of the Ironhorse Restaurant in
Ashland who admits the she has had to put off some major
purchases to afford the cost of tuition each year. “It
just makes me feel good to know that there’s always
going to be somebody there to give them what they need,
whether it’s extra help or something more challenging.”
Expensive boarding and day schools once were the exclusive
domain of wealthy families but not anymore. Middle-class
parents want the best for their children as well, and
many are no longer waiting for college to invest in
their children’s education. Instead, they choose
to pay tuitions that often top $10,000 a year, with
hopes of giving their children an edge in their formative
years. “There is a perceived value there, to be
sure,” says George McVey, president of the Virginia
Council for Private Education. “If the school
is too cheap, people will wonder why.”
Virginia’s top private schools certainly have
the goods to back up their pricey tuitions, including
strong college placement records and outstanding faculties.
But many schools also are increasingly interested in
creating racial and socioeconomic diversity among their
student bodies. They eagerly encourage average income
families to apply, having significantly upped their
commitment to financial aid in recent years. “We
don’t want to be perceived — and we’re
not — a bastion of privilege here,” says
Dennis Manning, headmaster at Norfolk Academy, one of
the state’s oldest private schools, which provides
$1.4 million in annual grants. “Any child that
shows the requisite academic achievement or academic
potential is welcome here — regardless of their
parents’ income level.”
The same thinking is true at other schools across the
state. St. Anne’s-Belfield School in Charlottesville,
with an annual tuition that now tops $16,000, provides
financial help to one in every three students. The Miller
School in Crozet gives needs-based grants to nearly
40 percent of its students.
David Charlton, head of the Church Schools Corp., which
includes St. Christopher’s, St. Catherine’s
and four other Episcopal-affiliated schools in Virginia,
says that a weak economy and a more demanding financial
reality for families compelled all of his schools to
offer more financial aid during the last decade. “Even
families that didn’t used to qualify [for financial
aid] now need help,” he says. “So a higher
percentage of our budgets go towards helping these families
afford the cost.”
But even those parents that don’t meet the requirements
for financial aid say the value of private school education
merits the heavy financial burden, although they often
define value in different ways.
For some, the private school experience is all about
escaping the anonymity and impersonal nature of large
public schools. Margaret Thacker sent her son, Ben,
to the Miller School because it offers an average class
size of 10 students and a daily study hall that provides
her son, who suffers from attention-deficit/hyperactivity
disorder, easy access to help. “It’s not
just that the teachers take an interest in all the students
and give them individual attention during class. It’s
that they’re there for them after class as well,”
she says. “It’s like a little family on
the hill.”
Other parents look for a creative and challenging learning
environment that will help their children grow into
well-rounded adults. High-end private schools provide
plenty to their liking, with lots of leadership and
athletic opportunities and a strong emphasis on art,
language, music and the development of critical thinking
skills. Collegiate School in Richmond, for example,
offers a series of thought-provoking courses, such as
“America in the ’60s,” “Rebels
and Yankees” and “The Hebrew Bible as Literature.”
It also provides after-school clubs that supplement
the classroom, including the Earth Society, the International
Affairs Council, Model Judiciary and the Latin Club.
Norfolk Academy, among other things, emphasizes the
value of extemporaneous speaking by requiring students
to give a speech before the entire student body.
In some cases, single parents and those with busy, high-stress
careers are looking for a school that can offer their
children structure and safety. That’s part of
the reason why boarding schools are slowly beginning
to pick up in popularity. Massanutten Military Academy
in Woodstock, for example, has seen its enrollment increase
by 20 percent during the past three years. “Parents
see the boarding school as a place where their kids
can be safe and secure and have an opportunity to grow
in academics, physical development, character and leadership,”
says Col. Rick Zinser, the school’s president.
The vast majority of parents, though, are looking for
a specific return on investment: They want their children
to receive the kind of rigorous preparation that will
get them into — and through — their college
of choice.
Albert Cambata and his wife, Celia, decided to enroll
their three daughters at Stuart Hall in Staunton to
take advantage of its high academic standards and its
record placing 100 percent of its students in college.
“The homework takes them about three hours each
night,” Cambata says. But the sacrifice has had
a positive effect. Two of his daughters have been inducted
into the National Honor Society and his eldest, Victoria,
a 10th grader, is already getting recruitment letters
from colleges. “I feel like we’re giving
them a head start, helping them reach their potential
so they can do whatever they want to do.”
Like Stuart Hall, most expensive private schools are
focused on getting students ready for the rigors of
college life, and they have a strong record showing
that they know what they’re doing. Graduates of
Norfolk Academy in 2004, for instance, had a median
SAT score of 1277 and were accepted into such prestigious
universities as Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, Duke and
Carnegie Mellon. All of Massanutten Military Academy’s
2003 and 2004 graduates got into college — including
four of the country’s five service academies —
and, together, received academic scholarships worth
$1.2 million.
Some parents clearly expect tangible results in exchange
for their hard-earned dollars, but this consumer mentality
won’t change the core mission of private schools.
“One of the distinctive features of an independent
school is that we define ourselves,” Manning says.
“We don’t jump on the latest trendy educational
bandwagon. We are institutionally self-confident, and
we stick to what we know works and to what we do well.”
What’s more, the influx of less well-heeled families
will not cause school officials to adjust their costs.
In fact, in all probability, tuition will continue to
rise each year, in large part because of the need to
offer competitive faculty salaries and ongoing opportunities
for professional development. Most schools would like
to meet or exceed the $43,000 average salary that public
school teachers in Virginia earn each year, but few
have met that goal. One school that has is St. Anne’s-Belfield,
which now pays its teachers an average salary of $45,400.
According to Conway, crossing this threshold has made
a difference in his ability to compete nationally for
top private school teachers.
“High pay doesn’t always translate into
high quality, but very often it does,” he says,
noting that his average teacher has a master’s
degree and eight years of experience. “When you
get right down to it, most parents are sending their
kids to private schools to get an edge in life, and
that edge comes through faculty.”
For her part, Thacker says that she’ll do whatever
it takes to come up with the money to continue her son’s
private school education. Already, she and her husband
have taken side jobs to earn extra money, and grandparents
have made generous donations. “It’s not
easy,” she says, “but if I have to sit on
the side of the road and sell pencils, Ben will graduate
from the Miller School.”
