re: private schools vs catholic schools in new orleans.

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Archbishop Rummel- Academically, the school is decent. The average ACT score there is a 24. There honors program is strong, but they struggle to get good students. Rummel has gone down the drain. The enrollment is below 800, and around 125 of these kids are either Brother Martin or Jesuit rejects or have been expelled from Brother Martin or Jesuit. Rummel accepts students who have been expelled from other schools for drugs. In my grade alone at Brother Martin, I can name about 7-8 kids who have either left because they could not keep up with the work or have been expelled for drugs, discipline, etc... only to be accepted by Rummel. Don't send your kid here.

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While Rummel was a good school in the 70s and 80s, it's been going down the toilet for a while and Katrina has sped up the process. The enrollment is definitely bad compared to Brother Martin and Jesuit. A lot of the families that Rummel pulled from either 1) can't afford the ever-increasing Catholic school prices anymore and are sending their kids to public schools, or 2) have enough money to send their kids to Jesuit or Bro Mo. I guarantee you if you went to the Catholic grammar schools in the area and asked the boys where they plan on attending high school, 90% of them would say Jesuit or Brother Martin.

Same with Chapelle--decent school in the 70s and 80s, but has been crappy for a long time. I went to Mount Carmel; most of my friends had moms who graduated from Chapelle during the late 70s and early 80s and their moms even admitted that Chapelle was not a good school and that they were glad their daughters chose MCA over Chapelle.

As for the OP, I'd either go with sending your kids to Lusher, Ben Franklin, or a Catholic school. If you can afford the steep tuition that Newman, Country Day, St. Martin's, McGee, and Sacred Heart charge, then go for it. But the schools I mentioned are good. And who knows how high all of these schools' tuitions will be in 15 years.