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My daughter is dating a guy whose parents "had" to put their kids in private school for the same reasons. These people as young adults are not doing anything spectacular. They are employed and two of the three have PhDs, and the other (DD's bf) a master's, but so do many people who go to public schools.
Some people level out and some don't. A sample size of three is just anecdotal evidence on both our parts.
We have to make decisions for the children we have. That's why I am skeptical of policies that assume that everyone will be "normal" eventually. Why should a young adult be doing something spectacular in order to justify receiving appropriate schooling as a child?
Some people level out and some don't. A sample size of three is just anecdotal evidence on both our parts.
We have to make decisions for the children we have. That's why I am skeptical of policies that assume that everyone will be "normal" eventually. Why should a young adult be doing something spectacular in order to justify receiving appropriate schooling as a child?
I'm saying the public schools could most likely have accomodated these kids. In my example, they live in a university (ironically state supported) community, and the father teaches at this public school.
My daughter is dating a guy whose parents "had" to put their kids in private school for the same reasons. These people as young adults are not doing anything spectacular. They are employed and two of the three have PhDs, and the other (DD's bf) a master's, but so do many people who go to public schools.
I have to say we live in a pretty scary world if having finished grad school and working in a position compatible with such educational background no longer makes anyone blink an eye. I wonder what will happen to everyone who will NOT be able to go to grad school.
You have consistently indicated that you want your children to have a broad, as well as deep, education. Your school may be fine, but I would want to know from other parents as to how much time is spent on drilling for state tests.
You are right about the broad+deep education. As for the school's emphasis ...whether the school freaks out about high standardized scores or not, that I don't know.
All I know is that this is a school that DOES score very high, on average, but I am not sure whether that is because kids are drilled and forced into scores-friendly classes or simply because they have a large percentage of bright and/or pushed-at-home kids - due to the socio-economic characteristics of the area.
I'm saying the public schools could most likely have accomodated these kids. In my example, they live in a university (ironically state supported) community, and the father teaches at this public school.
They could have, but they flatly refused to. The whole experience influenced me to join the district's strategic planning committee in order to be a voice for the profoundly gifted. Not only was I unwelcome at the meetings, which had been advertised for anyone interested to join, but ultimately, the leader of the committee said to me, and I quote, "We just can't meet the needs of ALL the students." (Emphasis his, not mine.) That was the last meeting I attended, and I was glad that our daughter was "just gifted enough" to get her needs met, as we couldn't have afforded private school tuition on a teacher's salary.
My district seems to do a pretty good job of accomodating these kids. Of course, I never had to face that issue myself, though both of mine are college graduates, one with a doctorate and the other now in grad school.
Our district does kindergarten assessments, but I don't think they use them to compare kids.
Our district did pre-K assessments. Our daughter turned 5 the week after school started and apparently passed the reading, recognition and number sense test. But the test didn't measure emotional maturity. All the girls in her class were turning 6 that fall. There was a huge difference between them in areas like small motor coordination and being able to sit still enough to read. During the first quarter the teacher pointed this out to us during a conference and the next year, at her recommendation, we held our daughter back. We got a lot of flak for this from neighbors, grandparents and her friends' parents.
(She did get her period in 4th grade and it was very upsetting for her. She survived.)
Interesting article, thank you lhpartridge for posting it. That being said I will choose to take Mr. Princeton's article with a grain of salt because it's a dish that screams for it.
Nobody seems to question anymore why all of a sudden it is so healthy for children and their brains to start academics so early - instead of starting them later and doing them well and hard once they started it.
This has little to do with the needs of our children's brain and everything to do with the needs of the labor markets. Yes, butchering my child's childhood is going to help those synapses in her brain at the age of 4-5; AND give her an extra year of earnings!! Yey. Buy one, get one free.
Otherwise, if she starts academics at 6 (still early by many countries' standards) her brain is going to stagnate and turn into mush.
Most of my generation was completely illiterate at the age of 7. I started with A, B, C at almost 7 years of age - something 3 year olds and much younger are exposed to now. Somehow our brains did not turn to mush for lack of academic stimulation.
Nothing changed in our brains - only labor markets have and now the brains are forced to change with them. Parents are urged to provide the right kind of labor force to the market. The kind that will start early, study an enormous amount of information cursively and superficially, joggle 100 activities with perfect time management skills and have zero "just be" time.
THAT has changed. Our biology is just expected to follow.
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