[GoPack2017]

Due to a situation in my wife's company, we wound up moving to Connecticut early last winter from Illinois (just outside of Chicago).

We are renting a condo in Darien, CT (as my wife will likely be here no more than a year or two at most). My son and daughter are both attending the town's high school, which apparently is very highly ranked. They were attending the New Trier district in IL, which is comprised of several north-shore towns just north of the city.

A couple of questions/issues:
-DHS has not been all that we expected. My son was enrolled in AP Calculus/AP Statistics/AP Microeconomics when at New Trier, and continued in these courses immediately upon transferring to DHS. At the mid-year point, he was doing great--all AP courses at New Trier administer mock AP exams at the midpoint of the year, and he achieved 2 5's and a 4. After transferring to DHS, he consistently complained that the teaching quality was not nearly as high as at New Trier, and wound up getting 3's on all exams. He will now not receive college credit for the math courses (all the uni's he is applying to require 4's for AP credit) and does not feel nearly as well prepared as he did 6 months ago.

Moreover, my daughter was heavily bullied right from the start because of both her height (she's 4'8") and slight speech impediment. The administration did very little, aside from a couple of days suspensions for one of the kids. These guys are making 150k+ per year and couldnt even bother returning a phone call after my daughter came home in tears 3x in a single week. Which brings me to my next point...

-Why on earth are there 200 school districts in this tiny state? Each district has dozens of school administrators, superintendents, assistant superintendents, HR departments, curriculum heads, department heads, etc...all of which are drawing 100k-250k salaries! What a waste! Why are these small towns not banded together to share buildings/administrators to save costs? New Trier does just that, and is one of the very best high school in the country, on par with anything CT has to offer. Why is there so much waste and inefficiency in CT?

[SeaDoo342]

Sounds to me like you're making excuses for your kid not doing well by blaming the teachers... typical of parenting in 2017....

[JayCT]

The OP needs to understand something, Connecticut is one of the oldest parts of the country. It has a long and storied history so you have 169 fiercely independent towns in which local rule is more important than saving a few bucks. No one has ever shown that large regional school systems perform better than smaller systems. In smaller systems there is a lot more accountability so performance is much more important. Given Connecticut schools are always ranked among the top in the country (Illinois is not), I would say our system is far superior to states with large regional systems.

I do agree with Seadoo and have to wonder if the OP's son is blaming the school rather than accepting responsibility for his poorer performance. Not all AP programs are the same. Could it be that Dariens program is more demanding than what he faced in Illinois?

As to the bullying issue, there is no excuse for it. It sounds like the school did address it but that the OP does not feel it was enough. I am not sure what more he could expect since the bully was suspended. Does he expect the student to be publicly flogged? Sorry but there are two sides to every story and this one sounds a bit weak to me. Jay

[Raider111]

Originally Posted by GoPack2017

Due to a situation in my wife's company, we wound up moving to Connecticut early last winter from Illinois (just outside of Chicago).

We are renting a condo in Darien, CT (as my wife will likely be here no more than a year or two at most). My son and daughter are both attending the town's high school, which apparently is very highly ranked. They were attending the New Trier district in IL, which is comprised of several north-shore towns just north of the city.

A couple of questions/issues:
-DHS has not been all that we expected. My son was enrolled in AP Calculus/AP Statistics/AP Microeconomics when at New Trier, and continued in these courses immediately upon transferring to DHS. At the mid-year point, he was doing great--all AP courses at New Trier administer mock AP exams at the midpoint of the year, and he achieved 2 5's and a 4. After transferring to DHS, he consistently complained that the teaching quality was not nearly as high as at New Trier, and wound up getting 3's on all exams. He will now not receive college credit for the math courses (all the uni's he is applying to require 4's for AP credit) and does not feel nearly as well prepared as he did 6 months ago.

Moreover, my daughter was heavily bullied right from the start because of both her height (she's 4'8") and slight speech impediment. The administration did very little, aside from a couple of days suspensions for one of the kids. These guys are making 150k+ per year and couldnt even bother returning a phone call after my daughter came home in tears 3x in a single week. Which brings me to my next point...

-Why on earth are there 200 school districts in this tiny state? Each district has dozens of school administrators, superintendents, assistant superintendents, HR departments, curriculum heads, department heads, etc...all of which are drawing 100k-250k salaries! What a waste! Why are these small towns not banded together to share buildings/administrators to save costs? New Trier does just that, and is one of the very best high school in the country, on par with anything CT has to offer. Why is there so much waste and inefficiency in CT?

Coming on here and venting will only be met with rage and fury, especially since some on here love to bow down and genuflect to the affluent school systems.
Sounds like an unfortunate situation. The good news is that you are only here for another year or two. Good luck.

[GoPack2017]

Originally Posted by SeaDoo342

Sounds to me like you're making excuses for your kid not doing well by blaming the teachers... typical of parenting in 2017....

What an incredibly rude reply.

I suppose it's my daughter's fault as well that she was so severely bullied?

FYI...not a single student in my son's AP Stats course at DHS scored a 5 on the exam. Meanwhile, at least ten students at his former school did so. They took the exact exam. So yeah, I'm quite certain in the difference in terms of teacher quality. My son put in 20+ hours per week for this course alone...to blame this on a lack of effort and/or intelligence on my son's end is rather ignorant.

[GoPack2017]

Originally Posted by JayCT

The OP needs to understand something, Connecticut is one of the oldest parts of the country. It has a long and storied history so you have 169 fiercely independent towns in which local rule is more important than saving a few bucks. No one has ever shown that large regional school systems perform better than smaller systems. In smaller systems there is a lot more accountability so performance is much more important. Given Connecticut schools are always ranked among the top in the country (Illinois is not), I would say our system is far superior to states with large regional systems.

I do agree with Seadoo and have to wonder if the OP's son is blaming the school rather than accepting responsibility for his poorer performance. Not all AP programs are the same. Could it be that Dariens program is more demanding than what he faced in Illinois?

As to the bullying issue, there is no excuse for it. It sounds like the school did address it but that the OP does not feel it was enough. I am not sure what more he could expect since the bully was suspended. Does he expect the student to be publicly flogged? Sorry but there are two sides to every story and this one sounds a bit weak to me. Jay

You do realize that every student takes the exact AP exam, right? The curriculum is exactly the same regardless of the state or district. So despite the superiority you clearly project upon CT schools, a kid taking an AP course there is doing the exact same work that someone in South Dakota is doing.

I'm going to guess that you are employed in the public sector, given the lack of importance that you attribute to efficiency.

FYI, New Trier (as well as numerous other suburban Chi districts) are just as highly ranked as your vaunted CT schools. So much for that giant bureaucracy resulting in something that can't be found in the humble Midwest. Oh, and before you bash Chicago's schools, do we even need to talk about Bridgeport, Waterbury etc? CT schools arent anything that can't be found in any suburban area across the country.

[kidyankee764]

Originally Posted by GoPack2017

What an incredibly rude reply.

I suppose it's my daughter's fault as well that she was so severely bullied?

FYI...not a single student in my son's AP Stats course at DHS scored a 5 on the exam. Meanwhile, at least ten students at his former school did so. They took the exact exam. So yeah, I'm quite certain in the difference in terms of teacher quality. My son put in 20+ hours per week for this course alone...to blame this on a lack of effort and/or intelligence on my son's end is rather ignorant.

I'm with the others that say you're out of line by blaming the teacher for your son's inability to score highly on the exam. If the teacher quality was so poor, graduation rates and SAT scores wouldn't be what they are. Additionally, some of the wealthiest people in the world wouldn't be sending their children to school there.

Regarding your daughter being bullied, it's unacceptable but I'm also with JayCT when he says, what more do you expect them to do? The bullier was suspended for several days, and now you can bet that person is watched extra closely by staff.

If you look at my posting history, you can see I'm a huge critic of CT (cost of living, wasteful spending, etc) but blaming the faculty of an entire school is laughable and confirms what my educator friends tell me about parents these days.

[Wilton2ParkAve]

Did I just hear someone from Illinois refer to another state as inefficient and wasteful. I've now seen it all folks! New trier is a magnet school serving multiple towns right? You'll have better networking (kids and parents) in DPS for what it's worth.

[Samantha830]

This seems more like a rant by the OP then an attempt at a discussion.

[allanny13]

Originally Posted by GoPack2017

-Why on earth are there 200 school districts in this tiny state? Each district has dozens of school administrators, superintendents, assistant superintendents, HR departments, curriculum heads, department heads, etc...all of which are drawing 100k-250k salaries! What a waste! Why are these small towns not banded together to share buildings/administrators to save costs? New Trier does just that, and is one of the very best high school in the country, on par with anything CT has to offer. Why is there so much waste and inefficiency in CT?

Hah, I was amazed at how large the school districts are in CT compared to Westchester (the other area many lower FFC buyers are cross-shopping). Sorry to hear about your son's performance, but AP classes are structured more like college courses at DHS (more independent) than high school classes, and the format isn't always best for certain students. Most colleges these days don't accept high AP scores anyway as class credit, rather they put the student in an elevated section, which sometimes works against a college freshman. Regarding bullying, it is a problem, I would suggest getting her involved in a sport or activity where she can find her fit.