<p>GFG:</p>
<p>Gee, so gifted kids should be in private school? Why should they have to pay for being bright? </p>
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<blockquote> <p>She does get small group support for a small part of the day.>> So should gifted kids. </p> </blockquote>
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<p>What's wrong with busing 8 years old to the university if that's what they need? As a cancer survivor, I hope that some bright 8 year-old will one day cure cancer.</p>
<p>Based on the comments in this thread, I think there are large variations in the definition of "helicopter parent." Nobody expects first or second year college students to be so independent they never consult their parents with questions about academic choices, dorm contracts, etc. Heck, even adults ask other adults for advice in many situations.</p>
<p>I've always reserved the "helicopter" designation for parents who contact professors directly to argue about grades, complain to university officials about living arrangements, etc. These are battles that the student needs to take responsibility for.</p>
<p>"Their goal is to ensure, via their own actions and interventions, that their child is always fairly treated (if not given preferential treatment), does well and receives every honor and privilege (even if that means other deserving kids get none), and never has to be uncomfortable in any way. "</p>
<p>OMG, that characterizes a good percentage of the parents at my kids' (ex) high school. One of the reasons they wanted to go to a public university. Not that it's exclusive to private institutions, but it sure did give all of us an extremely bitter taste in our mouths.</p>
<p>I can't even imagine contacting a college teacher. Ever.
I can imagine contacting the housing department, the hospital/infirmary, financial services, disciplinary affairs, the police department, the department of health, am I leaving someone out?</p>
<p>Sometimes I believe a parent needs to step in and advocate for a student. When I went to college, the girl I was to roommate with had no parental support unit. She also suffered from Crohn's disease, to the point she almost died in the hospital our senior year. She wrote on her application that it was imperative for health reasons that she be in no bigger than a double room with a roommate she knew she could co-exist with (happened to be me), as we had heard rumors that 3 people were being crammed into doubles because of too many applicants that year. Not only was she not placed in a double, we were put in a 3 person room with 5 roommates. I suppose we should have been happy we hadn't been housed in the common rooms as some were. My mom went to bat for this young lady, as her folks had done nothing for her for years (she'd lived with a sister). It took 3 weeks, but through my mom's persistance we were moved. My friend would have had to drop out of school if we hadn't been moved. </p>
<p>zebes</p>
<p>zebes, I have a friend with Crohns. How did being (or not being) in a triple make any difference in this girl's treatment? It's a hard issue to deal with, but I don't really see how the number of roommates would matter.</p>
<p>Doubleday,</p>
<p>The physicans at the time, and maybe things have changed in the last 30 years, felt that undo stress in her situation would put her back in the hospital. She had severe Crohn's, and as I said, she'd almost died about six months before. The doctors told her that stress exaserbated (sp?) her condition. There had even been discussion of her not attending college at all, but if she did ... it was determined that things needed to be done to remove controllable stress. Five roommates squeezed into a 3 person room (not a suite, but a square room with 3 bunkbeds) was not what the doctor ordered, so to speak. The stress on the rest of us was huge (not getting enough sleep, personality issues, etc.), but we weren't battling a debilitating disease as she was. Academics were never stressful for my friend, but other things were, i.e. not being able to get a huge amount of sleep. And freshman had to live on campus.</p>
<p>zebes</p>
<p>I noticed the lower grade connection too when I read this in the Post. Interesting.</p>
<p>Marite, I'm completely in favor of reasonable accommodations for kids on both ends of the spectrum. My older 2 kids could have greatly benefitted from G&T classes if such programs had been available to them, and I think a small group pull-out situations for very bright kids would be super. That's what I'd call a reasonable accommodation. But what I am talking about here is not that.</p>
<p>For example, if a certain child is naturally extremely bright and really needs to be given more challenging work, and there are resources within the school or even within the district to meet his need, then every effort should be made to do just that. However, what we now have are parents who provide year-long private tutoring for their average to slightly-above-average children, and also send said children to school on weekends and all summer long every summer with the goal of one-upmanship versus their peers. So eventually they end up maxing out of the regular curriculum and more extreme measures are required than just skipping a few math levels or something. Then the parent marches into the school and demands that the district provide their little darling with a special program just for him.</p>
<p>Let's say the parent sent the student to language school every summer. Now the kid can't just do AP Spanish 5 or AP Spanish Lit., he needs even more. Well, the only problem is that the public school does not have unlimited funding, and as such, should it be allocating resources to send high school students to Princeton? If the high school offers Spanish up to AP Level 6 (Lit), well then it's doing the job it's being funded to do--provide children with a high school education. Why should the taxpayer foot the bill for more? </p>
<p>This is all about over-involved parents wanting to grab for their child the very best of everything whether he legitimately NEEDS it or not. It's the same as wanting a four-year-old to have a Coach purse.</p>
<p>Oh, and then if other like-minded parents notice that Little Darling got to go to college to take Spanish (especially if Little D were to eventually get into Princeton!), then they decide to follow the same path with their kids because they think it will look really good on their kid's college application. After a few years, the high school is pushed to offer a new, uppper upper level Spanish class to accommodate all the students who are accelerated in Spanish. </p>
<p>This is not always harmless to the average student, because once the school invests in that course, then they have to ensure there will be kids in it in the future once the fad passes. So, down in middle school the teachers start moving through the curriculum faster and faster and soon they're skipping the better kids a year in Spanish, and after a while the curriculum is officially changed to adjust to a faster pace. Then Spanish 2 is no longer what it used to be, the average kids start struggling to keep up. Eventually that middle group starts dropping out of Spanish, thereby limiting their options for college.</p>
<p>GFG, I think it's great your school district is so accomodating. Where I live there is no AP Physics in the HS; the last teacher qualified to teach in retired a few years ago, and although we've got plenty of former techies in town who'd be delighted to teach on an adjunct basis (former IBM engineers who "took a package") the barrier to getting certified is a high one. It's easier to get an adjunct job at a college!</p>
<p>So you're describing something that sounds like nirvana to a lot of us.... a school system that's trying to meet the needs of the kids at the upper end of the spectrum. I don't see the harm. You're implying that all kids are able to be accelerated and coached to a fair thee well.... which is not the case as anyone who has taught in a classroom can attest. The kids who can understand multivariate calculus or read Lorca and understand it in the 8th grade are a very very small minority and if your schools are prepared to deal with these kids I think your tax dollars are very well spent.</p>
<p>I had a kid who was accelerated in math but struggled mightily with foreign languages-- so if you're implying that it's the same group of kids that get all the goodies I think you're mistaken. There are kids with extreme abilities in certain subjects who need remediation in others; there are kids who need help across the board; there are kids who cluster around the median in terms of ability. Your district sounds geared to teach all those kids which I think is fantastic.</p>
<p>blossom, it's not without its benefits to be sure, but our property taxes are getting so high that residents are being forced to move. Also, meeting a real educational need is one thing, creating need and demanding it be met is another. I mean, in the above example, why couldn't those kids take Latin I or French I if they'd maxed out on what the hs could offer them in Spanish?</p>
<p>We have 2 levels of AP Physics already, so IMO the school is fulfilling its mission as a high school. As a taxpayer, I'm not sure I'd support the creation of a class in quantum physics or whatever the next level would be. That's not to say that if I had a science whiz kid I wouldn't be glad such a class existed. But from a public policy perspective I'd think twice. As it is, the hs is no longer hiring science teachers that don't have PhD's because the level of what they have to teach has really escalated. Hear the $$ adding up? Again, couldn't the child just wait until he got to college to take quantum physics, and in the meantime maybe expand his horizons and take an art or music course?</p>
<p>
[quote]
with the goal of one-upmanship
[/quote]
And you know these parents' goals how? Perhaps they're just trying to keep their already bright kids engaged and out of trouble?</p>
<p>I know what you're saying, The GFG. My kid could have used more G&T stuff, especially when he was really young and his writing skills hadn't caught up with the rest of his brain. I knew the school couldn't afford more than they were doing so I became his enrichment teacher. Not every parent has the time for that, but I was fortunate. I've seen plenty of parents skip their kids ahead, especially in math and then that kid slows down the pace for the entire class. I don't mean it's never appropriate, but some parents are such squeaky wheels that they make it happen even when it shouldn't.</p>
<p>And my son DID jump from French I to French III--at the teacher's suggestion--but I would never have insisted the HS add on an extra year of French just for him.</p>
<p>GFG - </p>
<p>Our school district (which is probably not too many miles from where you live) is totally different than yours. We do not have parents pushing their kids to accelerate academically in the way you describe, and the administrators and school board in our district are not at all focused on the education of the most advanced students. We do have a very strong football program though :) and the principal is very keyed into that! I would say we were among the few parents who even were aware or thought about the types of opportunities and issues you discuss.</p>
<p>We do have a pull-out gifted program (one day a week for about 3 hours) for elementary and middle school, which my kids both enjoyed and benefited from. However, there was no math grouping, math enrichment, or math acceleration whatsoever until 8th grade, when the better math students take Algebra 1. My son was very bored with math all through elementary school, and I am sure there were many other classmates like him. We were not very keyed into asking for accomodations, but we did speak to the school a couple of times about this - in elementary school, a teacher told us that she could put out extra worksheets he could do, but this would have to be offered to all of the students. In middle school (grade 6, I think), my son and another strong math student were allowed to work independently on a math teaching program on the computer for part of class time. My son was so bored and frustrated with the math that he had to sit through day after day - it is a good thing that he did not have a tendency toward disruptive behavior when bored.</p>
<p>The highest math course offered at our high school is Calculus AB (with a graduating class of over 750 each year) and only about 20-25 students take it each year. Computer science (first year and AP) are also offered, but the teacher does not even know the programming language used currently by the AP program, so there is a lot of self-teaching in that class.</p>
<p>My kids did their own "enrichment", as it was not provided by the school at the high school level in their areas of interest. My son's enrichment consisted of two summers at the CTY program and one summer at our Governor's School. Very few, if any, students from our school attend CTY or similar programs (although the school provides the 7th grade testing), and I would say we were considered "odd" among his peers and their parents for sending him there. At those programs, he met many other kids whose school districts provided a much higher level math curriculum, and he was pretty upset that he did not have the same opportunities. </p>
<p>The language curriculum at our high schoolis very weak. Languages are one of my daughter's strengths, and she is studying Chinese in college. Only French and Spanish are offered at our high school, and French/Spanish 5 are nowhere near the level of AP courses. Also, the foreign language teachers are basically unfamiliar with the SAT 2s - when we asked about it, we were told that few if any students take it and the teachers don't know anything about it. </p>
<p>My daughter's "enrichment" was doing an independent study of a subject of interest to her, Art History, under the supervision of a teacher who also has a strong interest in that subject. This was done totally on their own, outside anything officially connected with the school, so it was just a stroke of good luck on my daughter's part that the teacher, whom she knew from a class and as an advisor to several of her ECs, offered to be her mentor for this independent study. She also spent a month during the summer in Spain in a language immersion program. </p>
<p>There is no opportunity to take classes at nearby colleges, because of the way the school schedule is structured. </p>
<p>All through high school, I was very worried that my kids would not be looked favorably upon in the college admissions process because they did not have the opportunity to take the advanced courses offered at some other high schools. I was concerned that we had made a mistake by living where we did, instead of in a district more like the one GFG describes. In the end, they were both accepted by excellent schools and did not feel unprepared for their rigorous college course work. However, in retrospect, if they had not done their own "enrichment" (CTY, independent study, etc.) to go beyond what is offered by their school, they would likely not have been admitted to their colleges. At GFG's school district, in contrast, it appears that parents have been successful in getting the school district to provide these higher level academics as part of the public education. It is pretty amazing to me that the whole "culture" of education is so different in two suburban school districts which are probably not more than 30 miles apart.</p>
<p>Chevda, all you have to do is have a kid who has demonstrated a high level of success in a particular area, and you'll get all kinds of questions from eager beaver parents. You can tell by the tone (kind of angry or bitter) and phrasing of their questions that they are trying to keep up with the Jones' and resent that your child has succeeded, and has gotten attention for that success, whereas theirs hasn't yet. This questioning is very different from that of a parent genuinely motivated to helping their child pursue a passion or interest or area of giftedness. I can't prove to you I know, but I think I do. These helicopter parents spend their lives chasing after the wind, trying to find a formula for success for their child. That is what is guiding them--not a sensitivity to what their child wants or needs. If they think a friend's son got into Columbia because he did a science program there on Saturdays, then next thing you know they'll have their kid there too.</p>
<p>GFG - You have summed up what I see as the difference between our school district and yours in a short phrase - "Keeping up with the Joneses" is unheard of around here, at least as far as academics are concerned. I think there are pluses and minuses to each situation, as you have described how academic pressure can escalate to ridiculous levels where you are, but I do not know if you would be happy in our school district either. I guess a happy medium would be the ideal.</p>
<p>GFG,</p>
<p>There are two things going on in your town, one healthy, and one not-so-healthy, but I would question whether the one actually causes the other.</p>
<p>1) accelerated curriculum, which I think is just great, fantastic, and can we have even more of it without the extra cost? Let's find a way to let learning flower for all. And of course the school should be excited and support this, because if they don't, accelerated learning will be limited to those lucky few with motivated, involved parents, or rich parents. </p>
<p>2) Competition, one-ups-man-ship, and general primate pecking order behavior. You're right this is ugly stuff, but if it's not over academics, it's over sports, or who has the nicest car or lawn. It seems to me it doesn't have to go hand-in-hand with improved academics, and the best way to combat it is to be a leader who promotes acceptance and inclusiveness, and (subtly) makes fun of this kind of silly competition.</p>
<p>GFG, we are the parents you describe; educated our kids in private schools so we wouldn't have to helicopter. Overall we were pleased; the private schools were not uniformly better, but they certainly had an academic culture to them that the football and soccer crazed public schools in our area did not. (Mother- I hear you!) The schools we ended up in were pretty good at identifying strenghths and weaknesses and were also great at telling us when they thought we were making a mistake (their tendency was always to accelerate to "see what happens"; we were more cautious and often declined the suggestion to move a kid ahead.)</p>
<p>So I don't have a personal axe to grind- but as taxpayers in the town we live in, I think the anti-intellectual bias is a terrible commentary on our society. A kid who shows promise in kicking a ball across a field is given many opportunities to develop and shine to his or her maximum ability; a kid who shows promise in number theory is told to wait until college to develop that talent and oh by the way, don't you want to take ceramics or basket weaving instead of having to be bussed to a college campus to take multivariate?</p>
<p>The distinctions that differentiates a helicopter parent from a humming bird parent are 1) noise level 2) intimidation due to use of force 3) objective for hovering. There is a difference between trying to draw the nectar out of the flower, and crushing flat all the other flowers but the only one you're interested in or else conscripting all the local worker bees to make sure by gosh that nectar is extracted.</p>
<p>Geomom and Blossom - You are both more articulate than me, and have expressed my thoughts on this topic perfectly.</p>
<p>Blossom - Some of my kids' classmates here left the public schools after eighth grade to attend private high schools. We thought about it, but never seriously looked into it. We told our kids that if they took advantage of every opportunity offered to them in the public high school they would do fine. I will admit that when we said this to them, we were hoping very much that it was true, but we were not at all sure that it was true. Fortunately, everything did work out fine for both kids as they were admitted to and flourished in the colleges of their choice. One good thing about them going to that school was that they had to learn to seek out opportunities for themselves within a large bureaucracy, as opposed to private schools, where, as I understand it, the faculty tries to make sure that students are involved in ECs etc. </p>
<p>However, it was interesting and surprising to me that several years later, either when my son was a college senior or after he graduated from college, he brought up again the fact that we had not sent him to an excellent and well known private school near here that several friends attended. It was really water under the bridge at that point, but he still was complaining about how bored he was in high school. Oh well, at this point I have no regrets....our circumstances allowed us to send our kids to private college, but I don't think we could have managed private school and private college.</p>