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<p>J’adoube,
Our neighborhood elem school used to complain ever so subtly about this with my kids. The “extensive background knowledge” they cited in reports often muddled the school’s ability to accurately place my kids into the right reading or math group – because they were off the charts from what was expected. Rather than acknowledging that there might be a zebra in the classroom with unusual needs, the school regarded “background knowledge” as something we force-fed our kids while keeping them tied to chairs, and if the school ignored this background long enough, the zebra would lose his stripes and become just like everyone else.</p>
<p>Ha! There was no “pushing” at our house – just the sound of parents being dragged along by kids who wanted to know everything, age-appropriate timelines be damned.</p>
<p>I also like QM’s categories of folks who would benefit from prep. We never did the CTY/TIP thing, which was unusual among our kids’ academic peers. Didn’t seem worth the $$, S1 was finding plenty of things to keep himself amused, and they were in schools with a critical mass of academic peers, so the social part was good. Both kids applied to programs with competitive admissions, so they were familiar with testing routines and had demonstrated excellent skills in that regard.</p>
<p>S2, my junior, tends to benefit from direct instruction, so for him, spending time actually going over questions (esp. math) is quite profitable. He would not improve his score by poring endlessly over practice tests. He did, however, dramatically improve his math skills (and, by extension, his math scores) with us working w/him on reviewing HW, extra practice and test problems, thereby remediating the less-than-wonderful Alg I and Geometry courses he had in MS. Didn’t cost us anything except time, and it helps that DH and S1 are competent in math and could offer that kind of assistance.</p>