About 14 percent of Portland’s kindergarten through 12th-grade students attend private schools. But that’s just the kids who are able to go. According to a recent study commissioned by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, 44 percent of Oregonians would like to send their children to private schools. But which school is right? And is it affordable? We can help you find the answers. You know your kid and your finances, and, thanks to interviews with more than 100 of them, we know the schools. We compiled data on everything from student-teacher ratios to test scores for our “By the Numbers” chart. Plus, we met with students, teachers, and administrators to give you profiles of 12 area schools doing extraordinary things in a variety of subjects. Whether your child is a budding musician, diplomat, or environmentalist, there’s a school for you.
Published: February 2011
Yes, I’m sure that a parent’s first thought when sending their daughter to St. Mary’s Academy is that it would be great because they are “intimidated by boys.” Certainly not because it offers arguably the best education in the city. Yes, I think the likes of Rite Aid’s CEO & federal district court judges (some of the alums of SMA) are probably glad to have attended St. Mary’s to cure their “awkwardness”.
Retracting my subscription,
David
I share in the almost unspeakable oversight of St. Mary’s Academy from your list. It is on par with both OES & Catlin Gabel in the quality of education as witnessed by test scores, extra curricular opportunities, the universities its students are accepted into, and many more such items of comparison. It has an equally rich history and prestigious reputation as the aforementioned. It is not properly analogous with Central Catholic in reputation or material quality. Rather, Central Catholic is better put in the category of La Salle. La Salle has yet to live up to the reputation of OES, Catlin Gabel, and SMA. If one were asked what distinguishes it outside of the La Salle community, it would be hard to pick something. This is not the case for OES, Catlin, and SMA which have many fine points of discussion. Central Catholic, once a far greater institution, is waning in educational quality. Amongst Catholic community members it is respected absolutely but there are many now who would rather send their children to a well regarded public high school instead. Central Catholic is known as the “private public school” whereas Riverdale is known as the “public private school.” It does cause one to wonder if the said journalists took into account anything the rest of the Portland community would in regard to judging these institutions correctly.
I might add to Jesuit’s already noted strong community service, that it is also an environment for strong academic and athletic accomplishment.
This list reeks of a compromise in journalistic integrity. I don’t think its a coincidence that every school featured in depth happened to buy an ad in this issue’s “Special Advertising Section.” It appears a private dealing with Portland Monthly is the only way to make it onto the list. Two large and well-regarded private schools, Central Catholic and St. Mary’s, were almost completely disregarded by this guide. Central Catholic, with an enrollment of 788 students, is a potential option for many Portland students looking at private high schools and demonstrates a high commitment to service with their Christian Service program. St. Mary’s is certainly more then an option for girls “easily intimidated or distracted by boys,” it boasts higher test scores than Jesuit, Central Catholic, or Valley Catholic. St. Mary’s also offers financial aid to 42% of students and 16% of students are black or Hispanic, while a school such as OES offers financial aid to 18% of students and 5% of students are black or Hispanic.
As the two editors who oversaw the private schools feature—and as two journalists with more than 40 years experience between us—we would like to assure you and our wider readership that no such relationship between advertising and the editorial decisions of the magazine exists. It’s worth pointing out that of the 23 schools who bought ads in the issue, 10 were profiled. And of the 19 we profiled, 11 bought ads. At no point did either the advertisers or the editorial team have any knowledge of what decisions the other was making.
With every issue of Portland Monthly, we have to make difficult choices between many worthy stories. In the private schools feature, we worked hard to sample a wide spectrum of schools based on factors such as location, grade level, diversity of education philosophy, religious affiliation, and past coverage. Of course, many area schools offer high quality programming in a variety of categories. Certainly Central Catholic and St. Mary’s are among them; in fact, we profiled Central Catholic in our December 2006 education issue. But the simple fact is we had to leave some excellent schools out of our more in-depth coverage. For that reason we hope our comprehensive list of private schools with accompanying statistics and scores will help parents begin their journey toward making what is ultimately a highly personal choice about the best fit for their child.
Kasey Cordell, senior editor
Randy Gragg, editor in chief