Greg,
Cedu is pretty big and seems to keep growing. They've got quite a few campuses and have recently merged with The Brown Schools. The school I attended, Amity, was not a Cedu school but rather a school started by Cedu grads so it was pretty similar. Cascade, in no. california, falls under the same category and there are quite a few others.
As far as my experience at Amity. It was pretty much similar to what I've heard about Cedu. Straight was not a boarding school right? Amity was. So we basically never left the campus. The campus was an old Italian villa with a working vinyard, separate dining hall, basketball court, swimming pool, pond, lots of space and pretty secluded from town. We had immediate neighbors that you would only ever run into if you were on the very boarders of the campus. From what I know about The Seed and Straight, my school varies quite a bit. Am I correct? Amity was definately there to cater to parents with plenty of money who didn't want to feel that there child was being deprived of anything. I must admit that the school seemed to spare no expence. The grounds were beatiful (thanks to endless hours of student labor) and the main house was gorgeous. The students lived in small dorms, each dorm had it's own bathroom. The student body was small, maybe about 60 kids at a time, broken down into "families". Each kid was placed into a peer group with other students that had arrived within weeks of each other. This peer group progressed together through the different families (most programs call them phases).
Our day to day life never really varied. We woke six days a week by 7 (Sun we slept in), did the breakfast thing, went back to clean the already clean dorms and bathrooms, then meds and "first light". First light was a gathering of the entire school for some sort of activity or game. School was from 9 - 11:30. Lunch. After lunch was "dishes". Dishes were for students who had broken one of the many rules (also know as "agreements"). No talking, no whistling, no humming, no nothing except about two hours of cleaning. Those who didn't have dishes were back at the main house with a mandatory silent study hall. Mon, Weds, Fri. we had raps. Mon raps were Family raps whereas Weds and Fri raps were a mix of all the students with about 8-10 students per rap. I believe raps are pretty much similar to Games. Circle of chairs, lots of yelling and crying. Tues and Thurs rather than raps the time was spent with your family doing chores and cleaning. Dorm time from 5:30-6:00 to shower and change for dinner. After dinner and those dishes was what was referred to as "floor time". Students gathered in the four front living rooms and just kinda hung out. Lot's of smushy mushy crap, especially after raps. Last lite was at 10. Calm house meeting, story telling, lectures and the like. Then to dorms and lites out by 11.
Of course that was the basic daily life. Depending on the latest trauma drama in a student's life things varied. But I've already rambled enough. Thanks for listening. If you want more of the juicy details let me know.
-A
ps. Amity has been closed since '94, but that's a whole different story.