How wildly expensive for-profit private schools are different from wildly expensive nonprofit private schools
They aren’t for everyone — in fact, they are for very few — but they are growing in number, because there is some demand. They are high-end for-profit private schools, and it can cost close to $60,000 to send a child to one of them for grades from nursery school through the end of high school.
What are they? Who goes to them? What do they offer? How are for-profit schools different from elite nonprofit private schools, aside from the fact that for-profit schools are intended to make money for their founders and nonprofit schools aren’t?
These questions were asked and answered by Mike Levy — former curriculum director at Avenues World School in New York City, which runs a global network of schools that cater to the 0.01 percent — in the podcast “Have You Heard.” He is currently the head of the middle school at Presidio Knolls, a private school in San Francisco
The Avenues World School in New York was founded and initially run by media executive Chris Whittle, who quit the board there to open another elite for-profit high school, this time in the District. The Whittle School and Studios is set to open this fall at a cost of more than $40,000 a year for families. This is how a January article in Washingtonian magazine describes it:
On a recent tour for prospective parents, founder Chris Whittle showed off the soaring interior. “A lot of people have seen it from the outside,” he told the group, “but have never seen inside.” Actually, there wasn’t much to see: Still under construction, the cavernous space was mostly empty. Perhaps that’s why Whittle has also been wooing students with glossy marketing materials and a luxe storefront promotional space in Mazza Gallerie. It’s sometimes hard to tell whether he’s selling an education or a Tesla.
Levy’s interview came on a podcast that concentrates on education-related issues and is hosted by Jennifer Berkshire, a freelance journalist and new teacher in Massachusetts who is writing a book about the dismantling of public education, and Jack Schneider, a scholar of education history and policy at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and the author of several books, including “Beyond Test Scores.”
In the interview, Levy explains the difference between for-profit and nonprofit high-end private schools: CONTINUE READING: How wildly expensive for-profit private schools are different from wildly expensive nonprofit private schools - The Washington Post
