Pre-school at local churches for non-religious

[Darwin333]

Catholics are pretty good with science, and education in general. The old days are gone. Their social positions are questionable, but they're of little issue if don't feel you need to follow the pope.

One could make the argument that supporting the schools supports their questionable global social positions, and of course religion class is wasted time that could be used for something useful, but it beats public school in many cases if you can afford the cost.

Oh I agree with everything you said but as I said, the friggen valedictorian in my district couldn't pass the exit exam a while back. The public schools around here perform horrendously bad and I couldn't with good conscience send them to one. I'd take on another job if I had to in order to pay for private school and my only option for private school is Catholic. My children getting an above average education versus a very below average education trumps my ideology any day of the week.

 

[preCRT]

Why are public schools so awful down in states like Louisiana & Mississippi?

 

[Darwin333]

Why are public schools so awful down in states like Louisiana & Mississippi?

They aren't all bad in the state, just the ones in my area and I honestly haven't looked into it enough to answer that question.

 

[Chaotic42]

Why are public schools so awful down in states like Louisiana & Mississippi?

Poor teacher pay and typically undesirable locations for living in most of the states: http://images.pcmac.org/Uploads/Sun...artments/Forms/SCCSDSalarySchedule2015-16.pdf

I wouldn't want to live anywhere in MS besides the coast or anywhere in LA besides the New Orleans Metro area.

 

[pauldun170]

Don't worry about it. At that age, it doesn't matter if they are slipping references to arabian folk tales into the school activities. From a 4 year olds perspective, the message is in one ear and out the other. Doesn't matter if they are coloring some weird zombie guy in a white robe riding a dinosaur with a constant "come at me bro" pose or Lightning McQueen racing Doc. All they remember is that they colored something and they colored it for you.
The whole point is introducing some structure and social activity.
Once they hit 5-6 all the songs and activities from preschool get forgotten unless you reinforce it at home.
I repeat...all that crap will get forgotten fairly quickly if you do not reinforce it at home.

As for the individual schools, you can usually tell if the staff are hard core religious or some stay at home moms that won't rejoin the workforce but want something to do or the "I want to be a teacher but I can't afford to get my masters right now". Depending on your area, you might want rule out the crazy christian churches because nothing sucks more than having to do a playdate and listening to some asshole ram their religion down your throat. Otherwise, I would think the average private preschool has one thing in mind. Preparing your little pants shitter for kindergarten and make sure they have the basic skills. Alphabet, counting, don't shit your pants and don't show your junk to the other kids.
If your kid comes home saying Jesus loves you or lets pray before we eat dinner, I wouldn't sweat it. Treat it as an alternative to "Mommy\Daddy...I wanna be robot princess with lasers"

 

[Darwin333]

Poor teacher pay and typically undesirable locations for living in most of the states: http://images.pcmac.org/Uploads/Sun...artments/Forms/SCCSDSalarySchedule2015-16.pdf

I wouldn't want to live anywhere in MS besides the coast or anywhere in LA besides the New Orleans Metro area.

I live in the NOLA Metro area and except for a few outliers and charter schools all of the public schools suck balls. I think one part of it is how the area is made up, you can go from absurdly expensive housing to absurdly poor in a dozen blocks or so. I don't really want to bag on the poor or anything but there is generally a lot less parental involvement in their education and teachers have to teach to the lowest denominator in the class. That and it only takes a few kids that are really hard to expel to fuck up the entire learning environment. Combined with low teacher pay and much better schools a relatively small move away (100 miles or so) that they can teach at and probably get paid more too. Then add to that the attrition, most of the people that can afford to send their kids to private school do so you lose a ton of the kids who have parents invested in their kids educations.