New England's prep schools

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 7, 1998 | by Eli Lehrer

Rigor and tradition, not social elitism, are the mainstays of private schooling in the nineties, claim proponents of prep-school education -- all at the cost of just $20,000 a year.

Larry Palmer, a Cornell University law professor and a trustee of Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., says that attending an Eastern preparatory school is a special calling. "You don't send your children to Exeter," says Palmer. "You reluctantly give them up. It's for the experience -- and what an experience it is."

In the last 30 years the East Coast's major residential prep schools drastically have redefined themselves. Aside from providing the rigorous, traditional college-preparatory education that top universities demand, the schools have changed everything.

While they remain conservative in some respects, the schools certainly won't please ardent traditionalists. Today's prep schools admit both male and female students, emphasize multicultural curriculums, strive to create racially diverse student bodies and emphasize academic achievement over family background.

Twelve major New England schools have rigorous admissions processes, large endowments, significant numbers of boarders and at least 500 students. In addition to Phillips Exeter, these are Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Conn.; Deerfield in Deerfield, Mass.; Milton in Milton, Mass.; Peddie in Heightstown, N.J.; Kent in Kent, Conn.; Lawrenceville in Lawrenceville, N.J.; Hotchkiss in Lakeville, Conn.; Loomis Chaffee in Windsor, Conn.; Phillips (Andover) in Andover, Mass.; St. Paul's in Concord, N.H.; and Taft in Watertown, Conn. In the Yale Daily News' long-defunct guide to independent education institutions, these high schools competed under the label "big preps." A number of smaller schools, such as Middlesex in Concord, Mass., Millbrook in Millbrook, N.Y., and Groton in Groton, Mass., provide similar programs to smaller student bodies. Although each school has a unique personality and reputation, the "big preps" have much in common.

From the time of the schools' founding -- during the Revolutionary War, in the case of Andover; the early 20th century in the cases of Taft and Loomis Chaffee -- until the 1960s, they often seemed much the same. Each had an all-male student body (although many had a sister school of some sort), a highly traditional curriculum and, with some exceptions, paid attention to class background when making admission decisions.

The schools long had thrived on this formula. Until the mid-sixties, as much as SO percent of Ivy League classes would be drawn from 20 or so East Coast prep schools. That has changed. "It's difficult to sell the value of a prep-school education based on college placement alone," says John Ratte, a consultant to prep schools who served as headmaster of Loomis Chaffee until 1998. "We have to offer more than that."

While New England's top prep schools still have excellent college-placement records, attendance doesn't guarantee admission to a top school. At Phillips Exeter, the wealthiest and arguably the best of the "Big 12," about 20 percent of the class falls short of the Ivy League and similar schools and ends up on campuses such as the University of Vermont and Rollins College. All of the Big 12 offer ample financial aid; the total bill for a year in boarding school tops $20,000.

Despite the high tuition, prep schools have tracked an upward trajectory during the last 20 years. In the seventies, however, the schools entered what many remember as a dark period. "It was not a good time," says Drew Casertano, who became headmaster of the Millbrook School in 1994 after a career running admission offices. "A lot of schools got really desperate for students."

Ratte attributes the situation to a "loss of nerve" on the part of teachers and administrators. Although most schools began admitting women, dropped quotas on Jews and actively began to recruit minorities during the 1970s, they could not stop a slow, steady decline. The decline resulted from social trends in which top suburban-school districts and high-quality urban magnet schools spent more money to provide superior education even as top colleges began to prefer bright, poor students to well-heeled preppies.

The schools didn't always help themselves. In the 1970s, self-esteem became a major buzzword and prep schools began offering courses with titles such as "What Does It All Really Mean?" and "1960s Beat Literature." Admission standards also went down as enrollment expanded and drug use sky-rocketed. "We had no idea how to deal with all the problems when they first started happening," says Ratte.

A great turnaround began in the early 1980s as the schools cracked down on drug use and restored traditional core curriculums. Administrators also turned over and, by 1982, none of the major prep schools had the same head as they had in 1972. "Parents and administrators realized that young people actually want and need firm rules and regulations," says Ratte. Drug use remained and sexual experimentation, if anything, probably accelerated. College placement and admission, however, began to improve as aggressive business-oriented headmasters raised money to build increasingly elaborate facilities. In the minds of administrators, coeducation simply ceased to be an issue as school after school began to admit girls.