<p>I think this is an area where it should be a concern – or at least well-understood – by parents whose kids are not attending feeder schools.</p>
<p>Consider how teachers at “non-feeder” schools act:</p>
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<p>Is there reason to believe that this teacher (or these teachers) are hard-wired to be writing report cards with an eye towards sharing an accurate student biographical account for other professionals to review? They’re acting like the OP’s daughter was selected for the next Space Shuttle mission. And not so professionally.</p>
<p>And consider this reaction from another non-feeder school parent:</p>
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<p>Where teachers at feeder schools understand that part of their mission is to maintain a good track record of admittance into top prep schools, the exact opposite can be true at schools where the teachers and administrators are expected to retain students in the system and prepare the students only for success in the upper school or high school that everyone else typically advances to or through.</p>
<p>Parents from these schools need to understand that they lack a very important resource in the application process: a school that’s savvy to boarding school options and being as committed to aiding students achieving that near-term goal as they are committed to aiding students navigate educational pathways that are more commonly followed by the student population.</p>
<p>I don’t know if the word “intellegence” was the spelling actually used by the teacher who wrote the comments in Linda S’s son’s report card:</p>
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<p>I do know that, in our experience, my wife and I would laugh at how poorly educators spelled in report cards and other school communications…when, in fact, those sorts of gaffes reflect poorly on the school and teachers who, an admissions committee might think, may not have prepared the applicant quite as thoroughly for a top prep school as they would like. I suspect that a feeder school is not going to let comments go out that reflect back on the school in such a negative fashion.</p>
<p>And Linda S nailed it when she pointed out the distinction between “Johnny is developing” and “Johnny HAS developed” – with a junior prep school teacher being much more likely to consciously choose the latter while it’s a crapshoot as to whether you get one or the other from teachers at middle schools where they assume their comments are seen by the parents before going into a black hole, never to be considered again.</p>
<p>Parents from these non-feeder schools have a little extra work to do. And they need to be aware of the fact that they need to be diligent and vigilant about helping their child’s school deal with the application process. That’s tough for parents who are often facing a steep learning curve of their own. And these parents need to understand that – as in the case of Britham – a report card comment by a coach or P.E. instructor who is affirmatively resisting the applicant’s efforts might be seen by the admissions committees.</p>
<p>That last fact from Britham is what triggered me off on the whole “report card/transcript” thing. It struck me that a parent might be dealing with a teacher who resists the applicant’s boarding school efforts but assume that there’s no real threat since that teacher isn’t writing a recommendation and a comment tossed in to a report card will go no further than that black hole.</p>
<p>I think the point is not that parents need to engineer a educational biography of their child that departs from reality. It’s that parents whose children are in non-feeder schools need to have a better understanding of – and play a role in educating – what their child’s schools are doing with respect to supporting their child’s application.</p>