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So. we are thinking of moving to Asheville in the next year and we have three children. One will be entering middle school and the other will be in third grade. The youngest is still in preschool.
My understanding is that Asheville has several theme elementary schools and that you can choose your school. Can anyone fill me in on how that works in real life and on which of these schools is considered the best? Also, my children have been in expeditionary learning (ELOB) schools and I hear that one of the theme schools in Asheville is an ELOB school. Is it considered good?
My kids are currently gifted identified and I imagine that they would test into gifted in NC also b/c the requirements are similar. How do they handle gifted kids in Asheville City Schools?
Finally, I have heard very mixed things about Asheville Middle and have heard that it is in a very bad neighborhood (apparently there was a murder across the street from the school recently???). Is this true? What is the situation with Asheville Middle academically and as far as safety?
The ELOB school in Asheville is Evergreen Community Charter School (Evergreen Community Charter School Home Page). It is not connected with the city of Asheville or Buncombe county schools. They accept applications for enrollment, and there is generally a waiting list.
There are five Elementary schools in the city. Claxton and Jones are the best from what I know. My wife student-taught at Claxton while in college and really enjoyed the kids and the atmosphere. The other three ES are Vance, Hall-Fletcher, and Dixon.
Asheville Middle is not in a good neighborhood. I don't know about the academics there, but I do know Asheville HS has a great gifted program, so AMS must be feeding a good supply of bright kids into the HS.
My daughter has a friend that teaches the "gifted" kids at Jones. Her son is gifted and since she teaches there he could attend Jones. She said she would not consider putting her son in the program and he attends Haw Creek Elementary, a county school.
Evergreen IS indeed connected to Asheville City Schools; it is a charter school.
SILSA is NOT specifically a program for "gifted" students (my youngest just barely finished his freshman year in SILSA, no thanks to the principal or Geometry teachers, I might add), nor is it very good in my opinion. Having put 5 kids through the city school system, 4 of them, including my youngest, supposedly "gifted," it is my contention that the gifted programs in Asheville city schools do little except provide more busy work rather than higher caliber, more challenging assignments.
ALL kids are gifted; it is a good school's job to figure out in what way each and every child excels and make something of those multiple and diverse talents.
Yep . . . and the model upon which our school systems are based is inherently flawed in many respects because it simply doesn't meet the diverse needs of children. But then, that was never the intent.
The American school system, with it's standardized tests and assembly line "education" principles, was borne out of the industrial revolution to churn out worker bees.
Yep . . . and the model upon which our school systems are based is inherently flawed in many respects because it simply doesn't meet the diverse needs of children. But then, that was never the intent.
The American school system, with it's standardized tests and assembly line "education" principles, was borne out of the industrial revolution to churn out worker bees.
Conformity is the goal, not "education".
Seldom do we see eye to eye, but on this one we do. No child left behind is merely the dumbing down of an entire system to the dumbest "gifted" child in the class.
Give them all a gold star and pass them 'all' along, don't worry about the fact as a nation we will never be able to compete with the next generation currently being educated in every other industrialized nation.
Give them all a gold star and pass them 'all' along, don't worry about the fact as a nation we will never be able to compete with the next generation currently being educated in every other industrialized nation.
But that's the problem . . . it's not about "education", it's about competing for jobs. The system is focused on spitting out workers, not citizens, much to the detriment of our society as a whole.
As a result, we have a culture mostly filled with technicians who are narrowly trained in a particular skill set, but who are sorely lacking in important social and personal skills that are required to be better human beings, not just workers.
If you want a school that tries to 'buck' the industrial system of education by teaching from what children love and focusing on community, try Isaac Dickson. It is a city school that teaches the NCSCOS in an innovative and creative way that honors children at their own level and moves them forward, challenging them regardless of their "grade level." It creates thinkers, not worker bees. It feels like a real community school, provides your child with a diverse population so that he/she can learn to get along with all kinds of people (unlike Evergreene), and has strong outdoor education and arts components.
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