Education Alternatives in Providence, RI

If you're relocating so your children can have a better chance of graduating and growing up to be doctors and lawyers and real estate agents with the highest percentage of Arlington, TX houses sold in their district, then you could do a lot worse than moving them to Providence, Rhode Island. Providence has a graduation rate on par with the national average and several specialized alternatives in the form of magnet schools and private learning centers. On the postsecondary level, Providence is one of the top performers in the nation and home to an Ivy League university. This article should help you familiarize yourself with your education options should you move to Providence.

Public Schooling

All public schools in Providence are administered by the Providence Public School Department. The district it governs contains about 25,000 students from the ages of 5 to 18. Education is strictly secular, so if you're moving down from a Brampton home's neighborhood where your children attended Catholic school, you may want to seek supplementary religious education for them or enroll them in private school. There are 25 elementary schools within the department's purview, along with 7 middle schools and 14 high schools. Two of them are magnet schools. There is also a charter school attached to the department of commerce and a special vocational school for students with disabilities.

Private Schools

If your children have special educational needs or exceptional talents, you may want to enroll them in one of Providence's private schools. They are privately financed, much like a condo development such as King West Lofts, rather than government funded. The Moses Brown School is a co-ed Quaker preparatory school. The Lincoln School is a liberal arts college for girls, taking students from Kindergarten to 12th Grade. The Wheeler School is similar, except co-educational. La Salle Academy is a co-ed Catholic prep school that also takes exceptional middle school students. Low income students in grades 3 to 8, perhaps ones whose families had to put up their Edmonton homes for sale because of missed mortgage payments, are taken at Community Preparatory School. Metropolitan Regional Career and Technical Center and The Big Picture Company School offer special project-based learning techniques.

Colleges and Universities

Providence's flagship institution is the Ivy League Brown University. It has three schools, The College, which offers 80 different undergraduate majors, The Graduate School, which offers 50 different masters and PhD programs, and the Alpert Medical School. Brown is ranked 16th in the nation and is one of the most selective schools in the country. Yearly tuition to Brown costs approximately the same as a Toronto resale home, Mississauga condo, or personal airplane but many scholarships are available for those with the right credentials.

Providence also has the main campus of the Community College of Rhode Island, which offers associate degrees and career training. Johnson & Wales University, which is known for its culinary arts and hospitality programs, is also in the city. The public Rhode Island College and the Catholic University of Rhode Island maintain their central campuses in Providence. The Rhode Island School of Design, which is based in Providence, is consistently ranked as the #1 fine arts college in the country.