EDIT: As for the "Ivy League Preschool," a lot of that has to do with where you live. Some public school's really do suck and therefore you want to pay for your kid to have a better option. In about 4 months my 3 year old daughter will be starting a spanish emersion Montessori school. Why? Because it kicks ass. I spent two days auditing the classrooms and it really is something special. It's not $30k, but it's not free either. Not sure if that qualifies as "Ivy League Preschool Syndrome," but if it does, that's fine by me. We've done our due diligence on this and I'm completely cool with it. That said, I've never complained once that kids are "expensive."

I've disagreed with basically all of hubski on this issue before, that most knowledge can be self-taught to the extent that "bad" public schools versus "good" ones, especially at certain ages, is an unimportant distinction. (Bad sometimes means dangerous, of course. That's a huge factor.) I think the author of this post would agree with me -- if you spend your child's time outside of school correctly, it won't matter if she's the only bright spot in a bad school, or one of a crowd in a good one. Maybe. Any choice has a massive influence on your child's life; the sheer importance is hard to grapple with.

However, if you can pay for it, picking good over bad, or over not examining the choice either way and going to the nearest option, probably can't hurt at all. It's the people who bankrupt themselves for silly reasons and cause money to be a constant worry in their son's childhood who get to me. That's the sort of psychological issue that sticks with someone.