My daughter attends public elementary school in Oakland. She has friends in several private schools: St. Paul's, Bentley, Head Royce, Redwood Day, Archway and Beacon. With the exception of Bentley, I feel that she's getting at least as good an education if not a better education than the private schools.

Bentley is different because they have a very rigorously academic schedule. Honestly, if I could afford it, my daughter would attend. She loves to work very hard and achieve. She like to compete with herself to see how much she can learn and how deeply she can learn material.

What I will say is that the student to teacher ratio is much different between private schools and public schools 20:1 vs 32:1. With good teachers and reasonably well behaved students it doesn't much matter, but a mediocre teacher or troublesome students and you've got a recipe for disaster.

Our local middle school is better than great. With 40% being identified as gifted there are entire classes in Math, English, and Science devoted to gifted or highly motivated students. In the classes where there is not a separate class for gifted kids they are working in high school textbooks to learn material more deeply. It's absolutely amazing. I've seen nothing like it in private schools.