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I grew up catholic, and personally don't know many who could be described as a moderate. 90% of the catholics I know dislike the current pope intensely for his liberal views, so be wary

I don't pretend to know where you are time vs money. And it could be that private school is your best option. I'm also assuming that you're in the US but that may not be the case. And what you can throw away everything I'm saying here because I know public and private schools in Europe and many other places are entirely different.

I did private for a few years. The only substantial difference for me was that the private teachers would make sure you do your homework and punish you if you don't.

YMMV, but I will have to say that probably 40% of those kids in my private school were Grade-A assholes. Zero compassion, every little thing was a do or die competition. The teacher would do the best she could to control social situations but, there's only so much she can do. She's not going to fight the other parents for you by kicking little Jimmy out for being a jerk. They bring the two sets of parents together and that's about the point where you find out why Little Jimmy is the way he is.

The state schools are being pressured pretty hard for testing scores, so it's not so much that they don't want to teach your kids or can't teach your kids, but they're underfunded and overworked and are going to pick the ones that are easiest to teach to raise that number.

But you can probably get the same outcome from using public school and pulling in a tutor after say middle school. Your school might even provide tutelage, but you're probably going to have to realize that it needs to happen and ask them for it.

If you have some time, even just getting marginally involved in your kids education you can pull off approximately what the private schools do. Order the common core teacher manuals that your schools use, once a week go over the same things they did in school. Tell your public teachers you want to get on the same page as them they'd probably be delighted no matter how useless the seem.

Again if you've got excess cash, The private schools will absolutely get the job done. Just do some due diligence, find some families locally that take their kids there start asking them particular questions that would suit your kids well.

Anything before around 10th grade, just make sure that they're keeping up grades and knowledge in algebra, calculus, trig, science and english.

All those high school grades and scores are honestly trash as long as they get into the college they want.

Hey internet stranger. Here is another internet strangers 2 cents on Catholic High Schools based on my personal experience.

TL:DR Education is good, but the school might make it so they can't take the classes they want or need for Religion Class (unless they mess up). And at my school there were cliques that socially isolated me and many others, with unchecked bullying which felt encouraged by the staff. I am happy I completed it, but I'd wouldn't want my kids to go through the same thing.

This happened over a decade ago, but the school I went to was both good, and very, very bad. The pro was why you are considering it. The education quality is much higher than the local public school. I was prepared for University much better than those I meet at the University I went to, who went to public High School.

The con was two fold. First some education options were denied to other students due to "optional" religion studies class. Technically a school can't force a high schooler to take religion where I went. But the check box for that course was always checked before I got the class sheet. Which meant that I couldn't choose what optional courses I wanted if it overlap with that religion course.

On a side note they messed up 3 ways in my last year. They couldn't get me in a gym class for gr 12, so I had to goto a gr 10 class, then I took a CAD course which I wanted and a coding, but by the time they realized I wasnt taking religion, it was too late. I was given a speal on how I couldn't get a religion high school diploma, but just the normal one. It was fun especially since.

The second big con. The school was extremely cliquey. Like debilitating so. I was from another community, my bus ride was an hour away. So in Gr 9 I tried to make friends... But the cliques were already made. And I as well as many others were socially isolated. I didn't find the misfits hiding away at lunch in the media classroom until like gr. 10/11. There was another crowd in the art room. This attitude sadly felt encouraged by some the staff, and bullying was out of control, it often resorted to physical violence more than once. I stayed off of the radar but I hated those 4 years. If it wasn't for my activities outside of school I would've been in a really bad state.

With that said, there was another (3 in total) Catholic high school in my local area, which my extended family went to. Apparently the one they went to was so much better.

Retrospectively, I understood how much of a benefit it was to go there. I am happy I was able to stick it out. But I would do a lot of research before putting my kids into a Catholic high school since I don't want them to have a repeat of my time.