<p>OT: I recently talked to a Harvard freshman from CA. He told me his school was originally built to accommodate fewer than 2000 students and yet had over 3000. The overflow was accommodated in trailers. Classes had 35-38 students. I felt blessed that my kids attended a school where classes are capped at 30 and often had fewer than that (AP-French had 11) Honors Latin 3 had 12. The school also had 12 GCs for about 1800 students.</p>
<p>Donemom:</p>
<p>One reason why HMC stayed on the list while Caltech did not was that HMC is part of a consortium. S was thinking he'd get diversity of interests that way. He had not yet focused on other kinds of diversity. If we'd been CA residents, Stanford would probably have made the top of his list as he does not like to fly.</p>
<p>stickershock</p>
<p>We don't even have an attic, so our whole house is one...or a landfill.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Would she have preferred not to take honors classes, or to live in a community with a lesser school system without as many opportunities? Sure. But if she had done so, she would have eliminated the possibility of attending a top school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I can categorically tell you that that is not true. Kids go to top schools from "lesser school systems" all the time. Mine went to some pretty darn good schools, I believe, coming from one of "those" school systems.</p>
<p>chedva, I'm confused here. You think the competitive school system is destructive, but the uncompetitive ones are useless. What would be better?</p>
<p>I never said that competitive schools were destructive. I think that the competition can be managed. I guess my point is that parents need to take the lead, and know what their individual kid requires at any moment. I "allowed" my d to drop honors math when it became apparent that the amount of work she was putting into it began to compromise her work in areas in which she had more interest. Many people thought I should have pushed her to stay in honors math. And she's "only" taking 3 APs while many of her friends are taking 5. Her weighted GPA is just fine, and she's still in the top 10% of her class.</p>
<p>I have many friends whose kids take no honors or AP classes. And that's OK, too, for them. And these kids from this school system get into good schools too. But they had choices that they could make, and decided to do what they're doing. That's my only point - I prefer the choices to be there and to let every family make its choices itself.</p>
<p>What is meant by "competitive?" I'm confused. Does it mean that the school is not very good or that students do not measure themselves against one another and try to outdo one another? Two different things.</p>
<p>Our school covers the gamut of struggling to high achieving students, of students who do not manage to pass the 10th grade exit test to students who take college classes in 10th grade. Similarly, the school has a range of classes, many of which are remedial. But none in my Ss' cohorts saw themselves as competing against one another for the same slots in a limited range of colleges or taking classes so as to be "competitive" with their classmates. When a previous principal abolished honors classes in favor of heterogeneous classes in a misguided attempt to achieve equity and motivate struggling students, lots of parents complained that their kids were being forced to choose between unchallenging CP classes (aimed at students reading below grade level) and AP classes in which their kids were not really interested. I did not see support for expanding the number of AP classes available. I tried to lobby for AP-Stats; that was four years ago, and still no AP-Stats.</p>
<p>Maybe the schools with cutthroat competition are located in Lake Wobegon areas where all the kids are above average?</p>
<p>Thanks, marite - once again clarifying a sticking point. I suppose then that my d's school is one that is "very good" and has a handful of top students measuring themselves against each other academically, but in which she can easily avoid this particular type of social competition. (At least she seems to have done so.) I've managed to avoid it within my group of friends as well. In our town, competition seems to go on more at the adult socio-economic level: who has the biggest house, most expensive car, can throw the biggest bar or bat mitzvah party, etc. That does trickle down to the kids in at least one of the elementary schools. Since we're on the tail end of that economic competition, I'm thankful that my kid didn't go to that elementary school! (But then again, we'll be able to pay full freight to whatever college she wants to go to, while many of the other "social climbers" won't.)</p>
<p>Again, there's a fine line, which is why I argued earlier in this thread that colleges should stop telling kids what they're looking for - then kids couldn't try to "mold" themselves into the perfect applicant. But going too far in the other direction, and not "pushing" kids at all, is also not healthy.</p>
<p>Chedva:</p>
<p>You managed to interpret my post the way I meant it, not the way I wrote it, which is quite confusing! I should have put a "not" before "competitive" in the first line. </p>
<p>This applicant is "not competitive" means that the applicant's qualifications are not as strong as others'. When I say that "My S is not competitive," I mean that he does not care what grades and scores other students are getting. I do agree, though, that having a peer group can be very motivating. In many ways, that is a big purpose of study groups. In effect, our high school Science Team was a large study group with members helping one another prepare for competitions by learning new materials together. But a large part of the attraction of the Team has been its social aspect rather than winning prospects.</p>
<p>Thinking back on other discussions, students' competitiveness can take totally opposite forms. One is to take the hardest possible courses, for fear that not doing so will not look good to college adcoms. The other is to take easier courses to protect the GPA, again for fear that lower GPAs will not look good to adcoms.</p>
<p>chedva</p>
<p>We can agree to disagree and I'm not making judgments about you and your family, but a blanket statement that not pushing your kids at all is unhealthy...I don't buy it.</p>
<p>I'D rather say "stimulate" than "push". Taking a child to another city to shoot a rocket, or let him join a science teacher late at night to watch a special event thru telescope, or help arrange transportation so that he/she can attend classes at a college because such classes are not offered at HS, that's enabling his/her interests. Paying for a student to take SAT prep course, and said student not caring to study, then why force them to? Their GPA anf SAT grades will reflect their motivation, and they will probably succeed best at a "match" college. I've lived with both kinds of students, and I definitely see my role to help each student fulfill their goals/interests, not mine</p>
<p>We live on Lake Wobegon...it's a tough place I put my older son in a private school that is extremely competitive but has that "nice country club feel." At least that's what it says on the brochure. The place makes my younger son want to throw up. He craves being with "real" people, not just the jet set. Can't blame him. My older son has found his place there in the academic/music set, but my younger son has a larger world view and casts a larger social net. My problem is that all the public schools around here are INSANELY competitive...the education process is completely lost in the quest to achieve standing in the top two percent. The private schools as filled with kids of the rich and famous. Where to put a really good-hearted, smart and motivated little kid who loves diversity and wants to be in the thick of things? I know it's a rhetorical question...sigh.
As between a crazy high school and a useless one, I guess you've got to choose the crazy one and navigate through the storm.</p>
<p>"As between a crazy high school and a useless one, I guess you've got to choose the crazy one and navigate through the storm."</p>
<p>symphonymom, I relate to that, and yet as you know I mourn the near- disappearance of sanity & normalcy in the high school years. It's not even the "frenzy" part that gets to me as much as the streamlining of all students into the intellectual/academic fast track (including for college) when that is not equally appropriate for all kids, INCLUDING very, very bright kids. When all one hears at school is "Ivies, Ivies, Ivies," what's a kid to do? Resist the peer pressure? It is so hard when one has an artistically gifted & oriented student, & yet somehow that S or D feels that to attend a school slightly less academic & more creative in its thrust is selling out or accepting Second Best. A teenager feels less empowered to maintain & defend one's private inclination to take only a few AP's, to participate in more fun school activities, to apply to a variety of kinds of colleges -- or feel that he or she will be labeled as academically inferior, etc. Nothing I say is nearly as powerful as what is said by classmates. When I encourage her to take fewer AP's, she comes back with, "You must think I'm stupid." Now where did she pick THAT up? Certainly not from me.</p>
<p>Sigh indeed.</p>
<p>And P.S. I can vouch for symphonymom's accuracy when she says "insanity," because I know the neighborhoods, the SES, the particular schools involved. It's frustrating that we seem to have no middle or moderate choices.</p>
<p>What I did, in answer to the question in post #911, is homeschool. My kid sees a broad socioeconomic spectrum of our town, can challenge himself academically in his favorite subjects, and doesn't obsess about grades. I like to look for a high school experience that is neither crazy nor useless.</p>
<p>Thanks Epiphany...I appreciate your understanding...you know my dilemna. It's a tough one...and I'm struggling. And my kids say the same thing with regard to APs...I told S1 to take two...he took 4 (and, as I predicted, is jammed for time for his music).<br>
My friends say that the world is getting more competitive and that I should just get on board. I can understand the a competitive world of business, but I can't understand the competitive world of education.</p>
<p>tokenadult...you are singing my husband's song. He's been itching to homeschool the guys forever...(of course, not personally:) I was thinking about it for my younger one this year, but he's the student council president kind of guy and he needs people. I'm not sure that he'd get that in his extracurrics either...or I'd jump on that online high school in a minute.</p>
<p>I'm not proofreading any of this...forgive me:)</p>
<p>Our society is becoming increasingly mobile. When you relocate and must select a community in which to live, you may inadvertently end up in a town that you might not have chosen had you lived in the immediate area around that town prior to moving. For example, if we were moving into this area now, there is a neighboring town to ours that we might have chosen based on school reports and accessibility to transportation into NYC, as well as other perks such as good sports programs. However, having lived here awhile I am now in tune to some more subtle information about the tenor of the community, such as the snobby attitude for which it is known and a very high divorce rate.</p>
<p>So, a family can end up someplace and not realize what it is like until they've lived there awhile and have already set down roots. A lot of what I was seeing I was attributing to just being the way metropolitan NJ is, as compared to the state where I grew up. Secondly, the hyper-competitiveness in my town has been increasing gradually since we moved. Apart from some nonsense in sports, we didn't see too much until my oldest was in 7th or 8th grade, and not in earnest until high school really. But by then we had been there many years and it would have been tough on my kids to move. With my second child, the telltale signs have been evident much, much earlier.</p>
<p>And lastly, I was going to explain that the alternatives are not really a better option. I can identify with the crazy vs. useless situation! We already moved out of one town because of poor schools (I was told it was due to a high number of school-aged crack babies from the lower-income housing units who were disrupting the classroom). For whatever reason, I became concerned when in November the kindergarten teacher (supposed to be the best at that school) admitted she was still working on discipline and hadn't taught anything yet, despite having already removed 5 incorrigibles from the class. I also got worried when the teacher told me my S didn't know all of his letter sounds, but they would work on it after things got settled so he could learn to read. Meanwhile, my son had been reading at a pretty high level for over a year--something I would have thought she should have figured out by Nov. My S explained she was too busy keeping the kids from throwing chairs. When we moved to our current district, it took just days in his new classroom for the teacher to determine my S's strengths and weaknesses to a T.</p>
<p>Lastly, despite the craziness, we need a school district with adequate resources for special ed. for my youngest. The others might survive with "useless", but she can't.</p>
<p>The above is a long answer to why we live in a crazy town.</p>
<p>Interesting answer, GFG. I can see how coming from the first school might lead you to the second.</p>
<p>I do believe, though, that there is a substantial, maybe a majority of schools, that are neither crazy nor useless. No one's throwing chairs in our schools, and no one's taking 24 APs, either. I think my kids, overall, got what I'd call a "good enough" education, with a minimum of outside stress. I have seen "better" school systems which didn't seem too stressy, but the line seems to change quickly--once the perception of "better" sinks in, the crazy seems to start. It does seem to be getting worse and worse each year, though. I'm glad we are fortunate to be done with all that.</p>
<p>"once the perception of "better" sinks in, the crazy seems to start"</p>
<p>Exactly!!! When we moved here, our town's schools were good but not the best in the area. Housing prices in the surrounding towns with "better" schools were too high for us, even if we had wanted to live there. Our schools still aren't the best, but what has changed is that now they're closing the achievement gap. It seems now they can taste being at the top and are striving to reach it. That is what has led to the craziness I think.</p>
<p>GFG</p>
<p>This begs the question of what is "the best", doesn't it? IMO, it's up to parents to "stop the madness" by having sane and realistic expectations for their kids.</p>
<p>Right, bethievt. </p>
<p>Lesson 1: A school district's ranking in terms of test scores must be balanced with a healthy learning environment. What is "best" for kids cannot possibly be living under an intense pressure to achieve and having to worry about friends back-stabbing you as they claw their way to the "top".</p>
<p>Lesson 2: A school district's high test scores are irrelevant if the reason for them is something you are unwilling or unable to engage in. I didn't identify initially that the underpinning of high achievement here was a reliance on outside tutoring and summer classes. Since I am both unwilling and financially unable to have my child participate in that, the value of a "good" school district is less than what it seemed to be.</p>