Someone recently told me the tuition amount to go here (a wild amount). I didn’t even look into it as an American since American education is often made fun of by most the world, so I was pretty shocked to hear the price. I’d rather have kiddo get a private Taiwan education as long as his English remains pretty awesome since we mostly speak it at home. The valley girl accents kids get while going there is pretty cringey.
Is it more about status? I don’t get it - American education is infamously bad. Or… At least the public systems. Perhaps since it’s private and pricey it’s well done like a kiddy MIT?
If I can put the kid into an amazing Taiwan private school for the fraction of the price, it just feels a bit scammy for simply status vs education. Am I assuming wrong or is there something truly special about it that matches the price it asks?
The bad American education you’re thinking of is public schools. But even then, public schools in rich districts are probably some of the best in the world as public schooling goes.
The US has good private education and some of the best universities in the world.
While I understand the tuition is shocking to you. You have to understand private schools like this are catered towards wealthy families. TAS tuition is actually not that bad compared to what private and international schools can go for.
The school filters in well to US universities or parents thinking of moving to the US transferring into US schools k-12. Their staff knows how to get kids into US universities and have connections with recruiters and admissions.
And as someone who has worked in that school, the facilities are pretty good for extracurricular activities which is super important for US universities. My sister went there after moving back from the US to Taiwan and they had a good film and theatre programs for their kids. She went to film school and now works as the assistant casting director for major Hollywood films. I see her name in big movies all the time now in the theater
I think it simplifies too much to say American education = bad. Because American education is mostly funded and managed locally, there is much wider variation in quality than in many countries with centralized education systems. Parents who don’t go for private schools tend to look closely at the quality of local schools and which schools they will be zoned into when choosing where to live. Also, while teacher education is not as selective and the social status of teachers lower than in some other countries, which may put downward pressure on quality in the system as a whole, rich school districts and rich private schools can have their pick of the best teachers in a large market. Judged by outcomes, the best American public and private schools seem to get good results, though I wouldn’t know how to compare them to the best schools in other countries.
I think the choice here depends on your priorities.
Cost is definitely a super valid priority!
Where do you want the kid to go to university? If you want your kid to go to a Taiwanese university, a Taiwanese school will probably prepare them better for that. If you’d rather them go to an American university, an American-style school will probably give you better odds of a good result, as @Andrew0409 discusses.
How important to you is the kid being able to work in English in the future? Just speaking English at home really provides a much narrower range of contexts than using English in class, with peers, for reading textbooks and literature, etc.
How important is it to you that the kid is culturally Taiwanese? My impression is that TAS kids, like other kids who go to international school and socialize in an international environment, can wind up being somewhat “third culture,” with a social and educational background that somewhat distances them from peers who were educated in a local environment. I don’t have a ton of data points for this, though.
What Taiwanese private schools were you thinking about as alternatives to TAS? My impression was that the best (or at least most prestigious, which may not be the same) Taiwanese primary/secondary schools are public, not private, but happy to be corrected.
Also this. If you want your kids to thrive in international environments in the future, it makes it easier when they start young.
I didn’t go to TAS but immigrated to the US for school and also the UK for graduate school. Being able to be fluid in the international setting with other people like that is a major asset to your life. Although there’s some sacrifice as it can feel a little sad not to fit in like a local like most people are while being able to thrive anywhere.
TAS is more of a “prep school” where only wealthy people go there, and the tuition is such that the kids are only in school with other wealthy people. On the surface it may say it’s only for expats but wealthy Taiwanese buys citizenship in some third world country and they get in too.
American public school can be bad, but it can be very good too, depending on the school district you go to. The high school I went to is one of the best in Texas. It’s one consequence of having a decentralized school system and it being funded by local property taxes. It means places with low real estate price has less money to go around.
TAS operates and functions like any other “independent” school in the US. By which I mean private school that isn’t affiliated with a specific method of education or religion.
Those kinds of schools typically cost at least US$30k/yr, if not much, much more. They’re prep schools and they’re intended for the children of parents who expect not just college admission, but admission to top universities. These kinds of schools are highly selective and look carefully into a prospective student’s entire family background, not just academics, cuz they need to make sure the kind of people they admit reflect well on the school (cuz the schools themselves have to maintain an illusion that they produce amazing graduates, not that they simple made a lot of money off their families by babysitting them all day for 12 years). I realize TAS is still technically an international school, but much of what I just said still applies.
As for US education in general, the kind of education you receive in the US is pretty much fully dependent on your zip code. Others have already pointed out that the US has some of the best public schools in the world. You just gotta be born in a place that has good schools. Or have parents that can afford to move you to a better zip code when school time comes around. But if your parents can comfortably afford a home in one of those zip codes, they can usually afford to (or make something work to) send you to a posh private school too. Flip side of course being that if you’re not born into a family that can afford such luxuries, you’re facing some really shitty schooling (poorly paid teachers, limited classroom resources, huge safety issues, etc.). The later is what gets all the attention, as it is an obvious symptom of a bigger problem. But I will point out, TW’s public school quality is just as based on where you live as the US. Lots of high rises go up near “better” schools and advertise as being near said schools as a main selling point.
I know a number of TAS teachers and students and parents. In general the level of education there is considered excellent. Many of the leavers there go on to top-end Uni’s in USA/Oz/UK etc etc.
The after-school and extracurricular activities/oppertunities are far far beyond those offered at most other schools on the island.
Teachers are incredibly well paid, but also can be under huge pressure/fired if the ‘wrong parent’ decides their child isn’t getting the results they have paid for.
In summary, its expensive but the oppertunities for those children who take them can be enormous compared to the local schools.
I think the key factor in the success of a school is the parents. Generally socio-economic factors, but not always (new immigrants, for example). Pretty much everything else is secondary. This includes facilities, teaching experience etc, although they tend to follow.
You don’t need to “think” this. It’s well-researched and well-documented. “Good” schools themselves do not produce high-performing students – the students who go there do. Kids from well-to-do families that go to less than stellar schools have the same outcomes post high school as those that go to great schools. Socially, however…
I often think of my high school and how much actual teaching happened. There was a lot of lecturing and note taking. With all due respect, lectures are lectures. If you teach that way, the expectation is for the student to go home and master the material on their own time. The teacher cannot take credit for “teaching” the students when they “teach” this way, as students could just as easily (if not more easily) learn from YouTube (these days). I even had one teacher who told everyone it wasn’t their job to teach us? Yet we were one of the top schools (public, but top among both public and private) in the region. Most people did just fine not only on college admissions to top state schools and some ivys, we got majority 4’s and 5’s on the AP exams, and there was an average ACT score of 26.9 (everyone in the school was required to take this, btw, as it was still a public school, so factored into that average was people with extreme learning disabilities). Compare those averages to the nearby private schools (min 10k/year tuition, a few in the 25k+ range. Those are early 2000’s numbers) and I would say that anyone paying to send their child to a private school was simply an asshole who needed to show off their stupid money somehow.
The same is the case in Taiwan though. Lots of parents will figure out a way to get their child’s huji in a place where there are “better” schools, but the kids don’t necessarily succeed in these environments. That’s because the majority of teachers here only want to teach the kids who came in already able to do the things they’re supposed to teach them. And the kids who can’t do the things that they are supposed to come to school to learn get mocked, labeled “stupid”, and left behind. Compulsory education doesn’t start until age 7, yet no school in Taiwan is going to hold a child’s hand and teach them zhuyin if they enter first grade having never seen it before. Parents are expected to do the majority of the heavy lifting, and if they don’t, they better pray their child is an actual genius cuz the school ain’t gunna teach 'em.
This is actually probably the biggest reason an American parent would want their child at TAS. Taiwan’s schools do not put a lot of resources into extra-curriculars but American universities expect applicants to have them. And TAS’s space is really impressive even compared to many schools in the US (but you pay for it!!).
This is always the risk of being a teacher in a school where parents with money control the school. One big donor parent thinks you don’t like their kid for any reason and your life is either going to be miserable or you’re otta there.
Hence why cram schools are so big here, because the normal school won’t do actual teaching. So it means they go to school 16 hours a day because the parents don’t have time to home school them.
stuff TAS families do that are convenient and target those families: ADL and Ascent for debate, GDS for basketball – these supplement or complement what the school offers and opens the students to interact with students from other elite schools, like 臺北市私立復興實驗高級中學 (Fuxing Experimental HS), TES, DIS, and schools mentioned at the top, etc
Prior to college, I went to public schools in Taiwan, international school in Germany, and public school in Texas in the 90s. In terms of quality of education, I feel like the international school in Germany and Public high school in Texas were on par. Of course, there were a lot fewer kids at the international school, so the teachers were able to pay more individual attention to the kids, but even in my Texan high school, the teachers were really attentive, and I never felt they were phoning in. I have nothing but respect for the teachers I had.
I realize I grow up pretty privileged, so the public school I went to in Texas was in a brand new area, and was a brand new school itself, and as a result most of the kids there also were pretty privileged. However, it’s the only US public school I went to so I have nothing else to compare with. I honestly received more bullying (handful) in the International school in Germany than I did in that public high school, which was none. I hung out with the freaks and geeks, but even the cool kids couldn’t be nicer. I guess I lucked out in that regard. When I went to college, I witnessed some of the bullying/pranks that went on in the dorm, never happened to me, but it made me realize the TV shows and the movies aren’t exaggerating.
I liked how you get to choose classes you want to take in the US and Germany, where as in Taiwan everyone in a class stays in that one class room and get all the same classes. The whole double week schedule thing was eye-opening to me.
Anyway, I am not sure if you are able to provide a native English speaking environment at home, and your kid also have English speaking kids to hangout with, that TAS would be absolutely necessary. However, if you want your kid to go from Taiwanese high school straight to a university in the US, then it would be up to you to coach your kid through the process, which honestly isn’t easy.
High school I went to in Houston opened in the 70s, named after a past Texas governor. Very good teachers, some of whom were university professors. One worked at oak ridge.
Can’t say I received bullying but more like it’s very cliquish. But I never received as much bullying at the better schools, mostly at less good schools that had a majority Hispanic and black student body.
The high school I went in to El Paso had a decent amount of Hispanic student body, being on the boarder with Mexico and all that. There were also a number of Indian students, at least as many as East Asian looking students. However, there were very few black students. The other high school on the west had a lot more black students, and I hear stories about how black students and Hispanic students don’t get along there.
My college had way more Asian and Indian students, but still also not as many black students.
My college has basically no black students, unless they’re playing freedom football. I saw one black student at my department, but he’s not American but an international student. The school is dominated by whites and Asians, some Hispanic, mostly ones with lighter skin.
I had more problems with blacks as far as bullying however, than Hispanics. Prison was literally 99 percent Hispanic, as they’re all foreign nationals. Saw a few indian scammers in there too.
I think you’re likely misremembering… seems unlikely there is any way a public school could require this - did they pay the fee? Besides which, what’s the point of requiring a college entrance exam for those not planning on college?
because there’s no reason to send a child to private school other than test scores.
Wait, you recognize there’s more reason than test scores to send a child somewhere, but the parents in your area are show off assholes?! Ha.
uhhh… no. I recognize that in Taiwan, there is a reason if you plan to send your child to an American university to send your child to TAS because your kid isn’t going to get the expected extra-curricular experience if you send them pretty much anywhere else. In the US, good public schools are usually better resourced than private ones, as there are publicly funded spaces that the public schools have easy access to while private schools have to rely entirely on donations to have something similar or use those same public spaces that the public schools are also using to do the same thing.
because there’s no reason to send a child to private school other than test scores.