Having sent my children to both public and private in Fairfield county I can tell you that the private school experience is vastly different. The quality of the teachers has been excellent, but more importantly because they can pick and choose who attends the school - you do not have the endless distractions of students with behavioral problems that seem to eat up so much of the teacher’s time and energy - even at the TOP publics. Class size also matters. I have experienced many excellent teachers in my public school - they aren’t the issue. Culture is another big point but I won’t go into that now.