POLL: Public Schooling Vs. Private

While Wilton schools are some of the , some parents still opt to enroll their children in private education.

You’d be hard-pressed to find another Wilton resident like Megan Cramer who believes in private schooling so much, that she and her husband have enrolled all five (that’s right—five!) of their elementary-aged children in private school rather than ship them off to the public system.

“It would be very easy to send them to public schools, yes, and this is a big expense for us…but we don’t see it as an option right now,” said Cramer, who has enrolled her twin sons and triplet daughters into the

Cramer is no stranger to the public education system, either; she went to public schools as a kid, and taught at Westport public schools. She’s had her twin boys go through a year of public first-grade schooling after a year of private, kindergarten-level schooling. Cramer said this was both because Montessori did not have a first-grade system (they now do), and because they thought that maybe she and her husband weren’t “giving the town a chance.”

But she found that her kids were bored and unchallenged in the public school system.

“We saw that [while in] public schools, they weren’t being challenged. Even the teachers said ‘They aren’t being challenged,’ she said, noting that her kids approached homework with a certain degree of apprehension.

In public schools, “there’s so much emphasis on testing and school policy where everyone ‘evens out’ in third grade: students who are ahead are sometimes kept behind and students behind have to work their tail off to move forward,” said Cramer.

Most Wilton Patch readers say that test scores to learning.  

“I think the premise behind them has merit—there needs to have accountability, but the process has become so intense it takes away from the actual learning,” said Cramer.

Her thoughts , who had previously told Patch that she was worried that teachers may place too much emphasis on testing rather than teaching.

“Every student is different,” said Cramer.“I think Westport has done a better job with an individualized curriculum…[Wilton] is about 10 years behind.” .

 “It doesn’t have to do with class size,” either, she said, noting that the Montessori school has class sizes of up to 25 students.

Cramer’s kids were so bored with public school, she said, that if she and her husband were not able to afford public school, she would consider moving to Westport rather than re-enrolling them in Wilton’s school system.

“I saw them come out of the Montessori school with a true love of learning. They were able to move within the curriculum at their own pace…[my kids] liked doing their homework, because the homework is individualized,” she said. “Private school is more real-world based.”