Private schools are for profit. They are generally regarded as the best education you can get for K-12 schooling (at least where I live in the US). Same goes for many of the colleges in the US (actually, wait, isn't that the difference between a college and a university?). For profit schools pretty much kick ass.
I think the exception comes when the government contracts a business to run a school. This is a very different arrangement and is prone to all of the horrors that come along with the government signing contracts for various services. Once the contract is in place, given how slow the government is to act, all one needs to do is comply with the contract enough to not lose it outright.
This is far more false than true. Most private schools are, in fact, not-for-profit. All of the house-hold private university names, except for University of Phoenix, are all not-for-profit. Harvard, Yale, etc. are all not-for-profit.
> They are generally regarded as the best education you can get for K-12 schooling
The only for profit K-12 schools I know of are basically web-based GED prep courses. Not exactly the "best education you can get", but it'll get you that McDonalds gig.
This isn't even true of not-for-profit private schools. There are plenty of public schools, e.g. in wealthy suburbs, that are far higher quality than your average Catholic private school, for example.
> actually, wait, isn't that the difference between a college and a university?
No, not at all. The only difference is that a university a) has multiple colleges and b) offers graduate degrees.
Colleges and universities can be private for-profit, private not-for-profit, or public.
> For profit schools pretty much kick ass
Sorry to burst your bubble, but in higher education, for-profit universities are usually bottom of the barrel in terms of both prestige and quality.
No worries bursting my bubble, I learned a bunch, so that was cool. I'll have to take a look at the private K-12 schools in my area. I assumed they were going to the benefit of whoever owned the schools.
As a former K-12 private schooler, the one I went to was non-profit. It eventually went out of business due to being run a little bit too non-profit even though it existed for 20 years. I really enjoyed my time there and was sad to see it go out of business.
Many private schools are not profitable institutions by a long shot. They could use a little bit more profit motive sometimes.
Many private schools are either:
* some religious institution, like a catholic school
* some really old private school that has kept on going because it's where all the rich kids go to with a relatively large endowment.
* opening with a specific charter in mind, like a sudbury school
A lot of charters are private, for-profit schools, but you are correct that private schools are mostly non profit (IIRC most private K-12 schools are religious nonprofits.)
that is any interesting connection. the for profit prisons seem to be worse than the govt run counterparts, but for profit schools seem to vary on the effectiveness with their govt counterparts. i would guess there would be some inverse corelation btwn the avg age of the student and overall effectivness of the school - my experience is that the private schools for highschool and younger seem to do better, while college for profit seem to do worse.
K-12 public schools in the us are a variant of prison / house arrest. They even make up this crime of truancy if kids miss more than 3 days of school in a quarter.
