We started our kid at an IB nonprofit when she was four because it was like $20 a month more expensive than daycare. They go through eighth grade; it works out to like $12k a year which we can afford. We also tested her into the Edmonds school district challenge program but opted out of that because their approach seemed to be pure short bus nerf helmet cloister the nerds for their safety. You're right, though - the King County private schools are dumbly expensive.

Jeff Selingo has written three books about how dumb college is and how to navigate the stupidity. I've read two. He used to help put together the US News & World Report list, and will explain to you chapter and verse what a terrible metric it is and how badly it has fucked things up. He was also the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Higher Ed before he went rogue. "Selingo" is a statistically-relevant search term on this website.

My "a ha" moment was when I ran through a calculator that told me how much I needed to set aside for my kid's college when she was like seven months old. I shot the moon and said "maybe it takes her an extra semester to finish her private out-of-state bachelor's degree" and the the calculator said "maybe set aside $1800 a month starting right now 'cuz your kid's degree is gonna cost over a million dollars by the time she earns it." That's about when I started pricing Subway franchises and determined that a half-dozen fast food restaurants would probably serve her better than an English degree from Reed or whatever. And I can't be the only person doing that calculation.

So I figured whatever is going on now won't be going on then and a whole bunch of people older than my kid get to go through the meat grinder to figure out what happens next. And all the data above indicates that the bowl is filling with hamburger.