A dad put both his daughter and stepdaughter into an expensive private high school to give them better opportunities.

His biological daughter is thriving, but his stepdaughter is barely scraping by despite tutoring and real effort. Now he thinks the school simply isn’t the right fit for her.

His wife, however, thinks this is favoritism, and that he’s basically calling her daughter stupid. Read on for the story.

AITA for wanting my stepdaughter to go to public school

I (45M) have a daughter Amy (16F) with my ex and my wife (41F) has a daughter from a previous marriage Cara (14F). Fake names.

My daughter has always done well in school and was among the top performers in elementary and middle school so for high school, we found a good private school which teaches more advanced concepts than regular high school and opens more opportunities for learning and better for college applications.

She is doing well in this school but the school comes with a hefty fees. I don’t mind paying as it will help her future.

Education is very important.

On the other hand, my stepdaughter isn’t as academically inclined, she was mostly average performing throughout. But we decided it would be good to put her in the same school as well. Since my daughter already went to this school, it was easier to get admission for her as well.

This is where the problem is- Cara has been performing terribly on every test so far. This school has 6-8 smaller tests per subject each semester.

After she got F’s on her first 2 tests, though she wasn’t the best, these F’s are the first time she did so poorly.

Oof.

We hired a tutor for her, she is an older student from her school and she has improved but she’s barely passing most subjects- mostly D’s and C’s in some. It’s not from lack of effort either, she does work hard, I see her study. But every bad grade makes her feel worse.

I brought up putting her back in public school the next year and my wife was angry. She said that this is a good school and that Cara just needs to work harder and it will give her more opportunities.

I said she is not going to get any advantage with getting such grades. I said that doing well in public school is better than failing from this school.

100%.

She said that Cara just has to work harder and I said that she does work hard but not getting the results. So I don’t see any point continuing her for the next year.

My wife said that I don’t care about Cara and favour Amy and that I’m calling Cara stupid. I said that’s not what I’m saying and that this school is just not a good fit for her and that she will be better off in public school.

I said I would have been fine paying the fees if she performed well but clearly she isn’t. This isn’t about favouring Amy but I can’t waste money and watch her get demotivated.

Now the house is divided between “being practical” and “playing favorites.” So what’s Reddit think?

This person can’t stand this terminology.

This person thinks Cara should be consulted.

And this person has many, many solid questions.

Lesson learned…

Keeping a struggling kid in a school that’s breaking her just to prove “fairness” helps no one.

If you liked this post, you might want to read this story about a teacher who taught the school’s administration a lesson after they made a sick kid take a final exam.