Writes Kip Smith: "In the late 1990s our daughter went to a private school, Adda Clevenger, in San Francisco for about $8500 per year which was almost exactly what it cost to have 1 student in the San Francisco government-run schools. The difference was the private school was in session from about 8-5pm (late afternoons devoted to performing arts), had smaller class sizes, leased space from the Catholic Archdiocese which (at the time) had unused classrooms at their parochial schools, and was in session for about 210-220 days per year which was 20-30 days more than the government schools. The private school also grouped children based on their intellectual age not chronological age, with the result that there was always a range of ages in any given classroom. When we moved to Arizona our daughter entered a government middle school and was so far ahead of the other students that she went to the neighboring high school for math even though she’s not a math whiz."
