Your husband makes some valid points -- and definitely items to consider, such as the cost of buying a home in a great school district vs. paying private school tuition, opportunity for specialized training, etc. Public charter schools and magnet schools can tilt the balance back toward public schools in some systems. There is a new magnet high school in my area offering specialized studies in biotechnology and computer engineering, for example.

You may have seen this report on the Nations (USA) Schools: basically, kids at private schools do perform better than those at public schools; but if you adjust for socio-economic factors, they perform about the same (depending on the grade and type of private school, public schools outperform private schools). The message being that you shouldn't make assumptions about what type of school is better but check out the schools, public and private in your area before making a decision.

In my area, parents are often surprised that, when they switch from private to public schools, their children lag in academic performance. So I should mention that I, too, attended public schools from elementary school through college.