What Do Former Students Hate Most About Private School? Insight For Parents Considering Enrollment
The charcoal was just turning gray at my in-laws’ graduation cookout last June when I overheard 18-year-old Lila, my husband’s cousin, answer a question I’ve heard a hundred times from parents weighing private school. “Was it worth it? You know, all that money for high school?”
Lila just got her acceptance to her top-choice public university, her mortarboard was leaning against the picnic table next to a half-empty can of lemonade, and our neighbor’s golden retriever was chewing on the tassel. She wiped ketchup off her hand and thought for a second before she answered. “Everyone always asks if I hated the stuck-up rich kids or the 3 hours of homework a night. Those aren’t the worst part. What I hated most is that every single tiny thing mattered. One bad day could mess up a whole year of work.”
She went on to explain the sophomore year chemistry quiz. She’d gotten mono, missed a week of school, and her mom told her to skip cramming the night before she went back to take the quiz, just get through it. She failed it. Because private school weights every single assessment into your final average, that 58 dropped her honors chem average from an A- to a B+. It knocked her down three spots in class rank, and when she met with her guidance counselor for early action planning, the counselor brought it up as a “red flag” for her pre-med track.
“I never got a do-over,” she said. “There was no room for just being sick, or having a bad day, or forgetting to study because your best friend was going through a breakup. If you messed up once, it stuck with you forever.”
After the cookout, I texted a handful of friends who’d gone through K-12 private school to ask what they hated most. The answers weren’t what I expected. No one ranted about tuition (though that came up secondhand from their parents). One friend, Jake, who went to an all-boys private school and has ADHD, said the worst part was being locked out of accommodations because the school required an updated neuropsychological eval every three years—that cost upwards of $2,000 a pop, which his working-class parents couldn’t afford on top of tuition. Another friend, Mia, who went to a private religious high school, said she hated that the school policed her life off campus: she got a 3-day detention for posting a photo of herself holding a beer at her 18th birthday dinner at her grandmother’s house.
As a parent educator who talks to dozens of families a year about school choices, these answers hit different than the usual “private school is snobby” takes you see online. Most parents I work with are drawn to private school for the small class sizes and the perceived higher academic standards. What they don’t hear from admissions brochures is that that same tight structure and focus on achievement often leaves no room for the messy, ordinary parts of being a teenager.
The practical takeaway here isn’t that private school is bad for every kid. It’s that parents need to ask the right questions before they sign that enrollment contract, questions that get at the experiences former students actually care about, not just college acceptance rates and AP class offerings.
If you’re touring private schools right now, add these three concrete questions to your list: First, ask how many low grades a teacher can drop per semester, and whether students can retake major assessments for full credit. Many private schools advertise high standards but don’t have built-in grace for mistakes, and that’s exactly what former students complain about most. Second, ask who pays for any required testing for learning accommodations, and how often re-testing is required. If the answer is that parents have to cover all testing costs every two to three years, that’s a hidden expense that can add up to thousands of dollars, and it leaves low-income and neurodivergent kids at a disadvantage. Third, ask if the school’s code of conduct applies to student behavior outside of school hours and off school property. If the answer is yes, that’s a red flag for excessive surveillance that can bleed into your kid’s ability to have a private life outside the classroom.
If your kid is already enrolled in private school and you’re noticing they’re terrified of making any mistake, you can build that grace at home, no school approval needed. One small thing that works for the families I work with is a 10-minute “no-stakes failure check-in” every Sunday. The rule is you only talk about one thing that went wrong that week, and no one gets to problem-solve or give advice. You just listen. For example, if your kid says they failed a pop quiz because they forgot to study after a soccer game, you just say “that sounds really frustrating” instead of “well you should have studied earlier” or “let’s email your teacher.” This creates a buffer between your kid and the constant pressure of every mistake counting, and it lets them process stress without adding more pressure to perform perfectly at home too. If your kid is struggling with a one-time bad grade dragging down their average, email their teacher and ask if they can drop that one grade. Most private school teachers have the flexibility to do this, they just don’t advertise it, and many parents are too intimidated to ask.
Last month, I worked with a couple who took this advice when they were touring a private elementary school for their 8-year-old. They asked about retake policies and found out the school doesn’t allow any retakes for spelling tests or math quizzes, because they “teach responsibility through consequences.” That couple ended up enrolling their kid in the local public school instead, which allows retakes and has smaller class sizes than the private school they were looking at anyway.
There’s still no one-size-fits-all answer to whether private school is right for your family. Some kids thrive with the structure, and some families can afford the extra support to offset the pressure. But the next time you’re weighing your options, it’s worth remembering that the things that matter most to kids aren’t the things that are in the admissions brochure. They’re the small, human things: the right to mess up once, the right to have an off day, the right to be a kid before you’re a student.
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