Our son also attended a Waldorf school. He attended the one in S. California and went through high school and attended college on an athletic scholarship and is a very happy, incredibly successful and well rounded adult.

It was a great experience for him and us and I only wish I had learned of it earlier so our daughter could have had the benefit of such an education.

Private religious schools, even the more eccentric ones like Waldorf, can do a good job with helping students to learn even if they use 'oblique' ways to get them there. It depends a lot on who is teaching, not on the Steiner content.

My old cult, CUT, also had a "school" wherein they taught chanting decrees and their bizarre Ascended Master stuff along with the required stuff--many of those kids went on to higher education with good grades and seemed to do okay socially once they made adjustments. Most of the children that enter these schools come from fairly well educated parents despite their "beliefs", so they have a cultural advantage no matter what kind of school they are in.

The Waldorf legal problem is over public funds supporting ostensibly religious teaching, not over how well the students do or how creative they are.

Again, the rule as I have seen is that most young adults will shed the eccentric and cultic teachings they got from these schools as children but keep what works for them in life.

I did the same thing with my Catholic schooling, dropping the internal church stuff for 20 years after high school---I speak from experience.

joe