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Parents Forum
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<p>"Many are pretty hostile to the suggestion that there is something wrong with the process that they have so wholly committed themselves to."</p>

<p>If this was in reference to me, Calmom, you could not POSSIBLY be more wrong! I assume it was, since it was almost immediately after my post.</p>

<p>Each of my kids took the SAT ONCE, each applied to ONE school and got in; we have SO TOTALLY IGNORED "resume building" that my kids LEFT OFF THE APPLICATION almost 2/3 of the things they did, especially things that were paid for (trips etc).</p>

<p>FAR from being an elitist, my kids went to PUBLIC schools, I have been nominated for a number of state and regional Human Rights Awards, I have taught in prisons.....I could go on and on and on and on.</p>

<p>The article I read by Sacks was a rant; what I wrote was pointing that out, albeit strongly (I was still stunned and amazed at what I had read!). The idea that we are all motivated by absolutely nothing more than maintaining our positions of power, and we don't give a damn who we step on or hurt or discriminate against to do it, is false and reductive.</p>

<p>However, all that said, it is NOT the case that people who do other than I do - who send their kids to private schools, etc. etc., are all class-conscious "power elites."</p>

<p>And yes, of course we question the process - we are not idiot drones! But the issues need to be FIRST resolved at a lower level - better public teaching, etc. - BEFORE viciously attacking people who have worked very hard all their lives to get where they are.</p>

<p>FINALLY: My parents were immigrants. I was first generation. They did not expect Yale or Harvard to cut me slack because of them. They expected me to work my tail off. I went to a state school. Then I got into an Ivy grad school. My kids can apply to better schools than I did. Although my parents were treated like dirt when they came over, and when my mother tried to apply to a local college she was told that "people like her" didn't need college, we kept on going.</p>

<p>Things are FAR different now, and to PRETEND that we are still living in the 1930s and 1940s, is just stirring up class warfare for no reason.</p>

<p>So, Calmom, as a non-hostile, first generation immigrant who does NOT play the college resume game, and who has a full, rich life including many awards and recognitions for helping others, and who is no more obsessed with college than anyone else, I accept your humble apology.</p>

<p>PS Calmom - one of my kids goes to a school that does not even REQUIRE SATs, so there goes another of your judgments!</p>

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<p>Yours are the most intelligent posts on this thread. Yours too, Homeschoolmom.</p>

<p>I may have been a wee bit hard on Sacks, but when I read that very polemical Chronicles of Higher Education article, I was struck far more with incredulity than with hostility! I was truly, truly amazed at his sweeping generalizations and reductionism toward everyone who might not agree with his black and white worldview.</p>

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<p>Calmom, your comment, "Kathy, isn't the idea that your son needs to go to a "good" LAC part of the whole mindset?" reminded me that when I say good "LAC" on this board it's assumed that I'm talking about an Ivy League or tier one school. Nope, my son is a B+ student who I doubt will get much more then a 1200 on his SAT's and that will be with some prep. I mean merit aid at small LAC's here in PA. </p>

<p>I think the point of Sacks book, Standardized Minds, is all about how testing and scores makes our schools focus so much on the results of tests that they do not teach content as much as just answers to a test. The recent thread on AP's spoke about just that trend.</p>

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<p>Kathie, I tend to agree with you about tests like the SAT, and I may even agree with Sacks on "Standardized Minds" (I disagree on class; as someone who came from an immigrant family, I find it condescending) --- however, the thread on the AP pointed out that not all AP courses are the same. My school taught critical thinking, research, analysis, and essay writing in the AP courses. They did not teach to the test.</p>

<p>Other schools may differ, but you cannot generalize.</p>

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<p>The biggest push toward standardized minds has been NLCB because it demands hard, quantifiable data. It has also put unprecedented pressure on teachers and principals to ensure that struggling students pass the test; given budgetary and time constraints, however, this has resulted in less attention being given to students who are not struggling but could be motivated, with some support, to do better, namely the average and the above average students.</p>

<p>As for separating the dull stones from the shiny ones, my district experimented with heterogenous classes, which ended up putting students reading at 3rd grade level with students reading at college level in the same classes; no honors classes and no intermediate classes between these heterogeneous classes and AP classes; a reduction in the number of sections of AP classes because teachers were re-assigned to remedial classes. The idea was that in heterogeneous classes, the shiny stones would help dull stones shine more brightly, to use the metaphor Voronwe used earlier. But the proponents of heterogeneous classes forgot that they were not operating in a closed environment. In four years, our school lost 400 students to suburbs and private schools. We did not want a school where shiny stones were leaving in droves, leaving behind only the dull stones with nowhere else to go. This year, the school re-instated honors classes. An interesting bit of data: Despite all these efforts, 20% of the students failed to pass the school exit exam after multiple tries. While the absolute numbers are dismaying, if the 400 students who left the public school over the last four years had remained, the percentage of failure would have been significantly lower.</p>

<p>Income is not the only factor shaping a student's succees or not. I am often surprised, when visiting the homes of others whose income is either equal to mine or greater, to see hardly any book, except perhaps some popular novels or how-to-books. My kids did not have to take SAT prep courses. We bought some SAT and AP review books. Of much greater usefulness have been the many many books they've bought or borrowed and read over the years. Now that my S is a junior, I have noticed how much emphasis is being put by the school on SAT prep, presumably as an attempt to equalize the playing field among students of varying SES. The result is that in every single class except the two he is taking in college and PE, my S is getting SAT review. Since he's already taken all the SAT and SAT-II he wants to take, he is extremely annoyed.</p>

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<p>All I can say is that I don't understand anyone's being hostile to the idea of giving the gifted any and all support they can, given the miniscule support they receive in public education in this country. Every time I see a headline in our newspaper that mentions "exceptional students," and my heart lifts a little, it drops again as soon as I read that they are once again referring only to the lower end of the scale.</p>

<p>Our family is an aberration in any case--everything that people who are taking on opposing positions here are assuming makes no sense for us. We are close to qualifying for the new Harvard free tuition proram and yet our son scored extremely high on the SAT and ACT using only the $20 prep books we could buy from Walmart.com. And the only gifted support we got for him was through the program in which I teach. </p>

<p>I think people who make assumptions on both sides are just wasting their energy when we all need to be agitating for more support for the gifted and talented at all income levels. It's pathetic how little is done for them!</p>

<p>__And I meant to add: The other aberration in our house is that the SOLE reason that our son wants to get into one of the upper echelon schools is that they are the places that offer the CogSci major he wants, not because of any misplaced desire to acquire some sort of intellectual or social snobbery. So many assumptions! We can't possibly be the only house where things like these are true.</p>

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<p>I couldn't agree more, ctymom. As I understand it from research, 2 cents out of every $100 (not two dollars, two CENTS) in education funds are spent on the gifted, no matter what end of the income or class spectrum they come from.</p>

<p>They often get bored to tears in regular classes. The attempt to lift up ALL classes is admirable, but the gifted STILL get bored! I have worked with gifted kids who did not get extras, and some of them ended up juvenile delinquents (to use a kind of old fashioned term). We accept giftedness in music, sports, etc., but somehow cannot seem to fathom that some people ARE in fact not only quantitatively brighter, but QUALITATIVELY different kinds of thinkers! To try to twist this into "class warfare" is simply misguided, and it's probably why we have to IMPORT most of our really smart people! Other countries do not have the same hysteria about trying to make every "equal" in ways they patently are NOT equal.</p>

<p>Peter Sacks is wrong if he thinks all white kids are put into gifted programs and all minority kids are put into "remedial" classes. (I read the same Chronicle of Higher Education article mentioned above!) It certainly is NOT true in my ten-town region, where we did a study on this.</p>

<p>PS - I have smart kids, not profoundly gifted ones, so I am not saying all this to support my own children! I was happy my kids were in Honors and AP classes -they were yawning in regular ones, and when classes were mixed they were held back because the teachers taught to the lowest common denominator - but I also know of others who were very, very gifted who could have benefitted from other programs.</p>

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<p>Thank you for the statistic, nedad, which I had repressed, apparently. And amen to the comment anout "twisting" this into class warfare. To me, it seems like a form of warfare on the intelligent. And that is exactly what it's felt like to my son throughout his secondary school years, with all the ridicule he's gotten every time he's gotten excited about his interest in something intellectual or academic. He's only this year become strong enough to completely ignore it and do everything he wants to do in spite of it--some of it countenanced by teachers who witness it.</p>

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<p>"The class-based thing at some of the LACs(and at Yale and Princeton) were just hard to miss...It really did bug my d, ...She finally chose the eastcoast LAC with the largest percentage of low-income students..." (Mini)</p>

<p>followed by:</p>

<p>"The class-based thing (that turns up at Smith about as often as it does elsewhere..."
and
"...I also think that having 'elite' (as in financially elite students) on campus is a positive..." (Mini)</p>

<p>Thank you for the clarification. My head is spinning.
If you believe that "it is a good thing when there is a critical mass of folks of all race, ethnicities, and social classes..." then why discourage ANYONE who may have what it takes to get into the top schools from doing so? And yes, specifically referring to some schools with negative comments that may well apply to any number of schools (or none) is discouraging to those who may be considering those schools. Everyone has personal preferences and fit issues, and everyone is welcome to those, but the fact remains that some (not all) of the best educations in the world can be had at the top schools here. As many above-- including Blossom, Canuckeh, and Voronwe--have so effectively pointed out, and as Blossom has said, it is NOT the case that people who send their kids to private schools nor who go to private schools are "all class-conscious power elites." To make sweeping generalizations about the make up of a university based on the cars in a parking lot on a give morning is sadly missing that there is a mix of all sorts of people there, even if one might wish for a different proportion of various groups within that mix. People might be surprised at just how much the top schools, as Nedad said, "take the whole person " into consideration in admission. As more and more kids (and their parents) realize this, they make it possible for even MORE of a mix to come. As Marite said, "Income is not the only factor shaping a students success." There are glaring imperfections and inequities in our society, yes, but I would hope that people would seek educational excellence and opportunities, perhaps towards a better future.</p>

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<p>I think it's insevurity Cricket. It's so hard for me to understand. Canadian boy off the farm here, embraced as an equal by all around me. NYC/Hamptons friends coming to the farm for Thanksgiving, farm boy spending a week of Christmas break on St. Barts. Ahhh, international/economic/intellectual meeting of the minds.</p>

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<p>It seems really funny to assume income or education level by the cost of cars in the parking lot.
It is almost a cliche that many folks in the inner city sometimes seem to have cars that would cost more than their home. I don't know what that is about, but if you look at the high school parking lots in the poorest section of the city, you will find new cars and Suvs more often than old beaters.</p>

<p>( In fact the old beaters probably belong to the teachers !)</p>

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<p>If someone remembers the source... there was an article last year about Georgia and the fancy cars in the parking lots of the public U's since so many middle and upper middle class people told their kids they would buy them a fancy car if they qualified for a Hope scholarship.... the end result of a well-intended but poorly executed program has been that it shoved the poor and lower-middle income kids out of Public U's in the state...</p>

<p>There are "elite" schools with lots of rich kids who are deeply commited to working in the community in which they live.. and not just nobless oblige stuff, and there are non-elite schools where the kids spend their free time vandalizing their dorms, drinking, and playing internet poker. I would never tell my kids to pick a school on the basis of the SES of the majority of the students there... every college will have a portion of the population who won't share your kids values, whether or not the parents have the same income as yours.</p>

<p>I learned one astonishing fact by watching my prep-school friends once I got to college-- at my large, urban high school, I spent 4 years avoiding contact with grownups and authority figures. Teachers raced out of the lot when the bell rang... so it wasn't too hard. Prep school kids came to college armed with the ability and the interest to actually show up at professor's office hours, make small talk with deans and administrators, enlist the help of faculty for internships, special projects, recommendations, etc... 'cause that's how it's done in prep school, and the teachers are around in the afternoons and evenings as advisors to the poetry society, or to attend a basketball game or whatever. I was just as smart as they were... but this essential bit of socialization was not taught in my high school. It was a good lesson for me to learn at 18....</p>

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<p>Our superintendent has focused on ECs as a way of improving the academic performance of struggling students. Unfortunately, the kids who do academic ECs are not the struggling students, but the ones who want extra challenges. I don't know whether teachers who coach ECs are paid extra--I hope they are--, but school-based ECs cannot function without teacher supervision. So, no hurrying home for the teachers. At any rate, there's been a lot more involvement of teachers in ECs, and thus more informal contact between students and teachers.</p>

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<p>Voronwe, I was pointing out the AP thread because other posters talked about all AP classes teaching to the test there and I think we both said that was not the case at our schools. I think my last post even said what you did about not generalizing.</p>

<p>That's one of the fascinating things about this bulletin board we all come to it with our own background and tend to think that what's taught in one state, one school district, even one school is the same.</p>

<p>In our school district it's the middle kids who are the ones left behind. Gifted kids have some pretty cool perks in high school and some nice ones in middle and elementary school as well. Kids that have behavioral or academic problems are given extra help. However, great students that are not labeled (however interesting and quirky they may be) will have to fight to get an internship or a class at a local college. I guess I should be grateful that my kids don't need extra help but it would be nice if for once they had a very small class with some personal attention to bring out what makes them different, just like the kids at the lower and upper ends have. End of my little soapbox.</p>

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<p>I'm with you, Kathie. There's a wealthy district nearby that totally ignores the kids in the middle. If you're at the bottom or the top, you're golden -you have it made with all kinds of extra attention, small classes, etc. The great crowd in the middle is virtually ignored. And some of those kids may just be late bloomers, or otherwise have something unique to offer. It's a shame.</p>

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<p>I think kids in the middle are ignored in our school district as well. These are good but not stellar students. We are not a wealthy school district but for the most part middle to upper middle class. Don't know if this is a general phenomena everywhere.</p>

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<p>The kids at the lowest level in our district are underserved as well.
Example, if you are level IV you just have seen your class size increased as a negotiating tactic with teacher union and district. This includes students who are medically fragile and who need assistance for eating and personal care as well as students whose behavior puts them in this classification.
At my daughter old school we have several students in wheelchairs, they each had aides which improved the ratio. The aides go with them however throughout their day , one child who had CP and had difficulty communicating was in self contained classes for much of the day, but another student with ALS was highly verbal and voted senior class president and was in "regular" classes. She needed an aide however for physical assistance.
The district pays for this, but other students who need assistace to stay focused in class room( and who can be very disruptive), because of autism or other disorders often don't have aides.
Students who may not have a diagnosis or students who are barely passing despite obvious intelligence and hard work, are often overlooked cause they aren't disruptive.
I knoow that some district have very good support for students with learning differences, unfortunately in our district they do not. Whats more is there is a general perception by parents that SPED kids are getting all kinds of support becuase money is legally supposed to be set aside for their needs. Unfortunately this isn't true, principals have control over the budget, and during the pst 3 years that I have been involved with the budget process, money is put into the general fund, when it is supposed to provide support for SPED students under IDEA
I think all classrooms need to be smaller. I read about some schools on CC that have 18-20 kids in a class and I am just amazed! We had at least 30 in a class in high school and in some schools for instance when 45 students want to take an advanced math class, they add them to the room rather than have a class of less than 30.
Ridiculouso!</p>

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<p>When our high school abandoned honors in favor of heterogeneous classes, parents made the argument that it was the kids in the middle who suffered the most. Struggling students had remedial classes, high achieving students had APs and college classes, the students in the middle had nothing. One parent told of his D who was too bright for the heterogeneous CP biology class, but not interested in biology enough, or good enough for AP-Biology. The old honors Biology class would have served her just fine (and has now been restored, but she's graduating). Many of the parents who left for the suburbs or for private schools said that their kids were average bright kids who were not getting the support they needed or challenged enough.</p>

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<p>good post marite. In our schools the kids have reading lists in middle school but are only required for AP and honors english classes in HS. It's as if they're telling the kids that they know they're slackers and not much is expected of them.</p>

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<p>Since this thread was started by Peter Sacks, I'm going to try to focus on issues related to his writings that I am familiar with.</p>

<p>To Veronwe -- you managed to read a lot into my post that I didn't say, personalizing a lot of generalizations that I made in a post directed at Sacks, not you. I don't know you so I have no clue as to the source of your personal anger - all I know is that you seem to have a very outraged and visceral tone in response to ideas you attribute to Sacks -- which are not ideas that I draw from his writing. For example - you claim he is hostile to the notion of gifted education, when in fact he writes about the use of IQ tests and other standardized tests as the screening criteria for gifted education -- an entirely different issue. Thus Sacks writes: "Using IQ tests as the prime gatekeeper to this school is unconscionable public policy and backward educational thinking." </p>

<p>I happen to agree with that; I've been very involved with gifted education, but many highly gifted kids do not score above cutoffs on standardized tests, especially if their talents are somewhat lopsided. Many gifted programs have broader criteria for admission rather than being test-based. I'm not saying that you have to agree - but if you take what Sacks writes to be an attack on all gifted programs, you've really missed the point. </p>

<p>I think a lot of posters here have also missed whole point about standardized tests and "class". Sacks writes that test scores in general are correlated with income levels - not that income governs individual scores. So of course a poor kid can score very high on the SAT - and a rich kid can bomb the test. But the point is that the average income level of a group of kids who score over 1500 is going to be a lot higher than the average income level of kids scoring in the 1100-1200 range. So when a college sets the bar for admission -- or for its merit scholarships -- at 1400, it is automatically narrowing its applicants to a higher socio-economic strata -- again not because there won't be any lower income kids in that group, but because the percentage of low income kids is significantly less than the overall percentage in the population. </p>

<p>There is a big difference between full equality and tokenism. </p>

<p>I'm not expressing an opinion pro or con. I personally think that the problem in our society is NOT that the mostly east coast elite colleges are bastions for the privileged - but that the upper/privileged class has managed to market the myth that these colleges somehow offer some magical quality of education that cannot be attained at the top public universities. That myth has the effect of causing a lot of unnecessary competitive pressure on teens both to increase scores on an arbitrary set of tests and to follow a rigid AP track in high school. It also leads to prejudice in employment -- it is NOT true that a graduate from Harvard is necessarily smarter or better educated than a graduate from the University of Texas -- but it is true that the prospective employer will be more impressed by the Harvard degree. Of course - the "class" aspect of that is that many extremely capable students from middle and lower income families turn down spots at the elites for spaces at public universities or at less-prestigious private colleges precisely for financial reasons .</p>