<p>this is quite an interesting discussion. i don’t have a lot to contribute to it except a few observations.</p>
<p>first, i believe that the gladchemms schools want to know how well the applicants are academically prepared, not simply what their aptitudes or iq are. going to a gladchemms school from public and most private middle schools really is a jump onto the fast track.</p>
<p>our kid got a 79 percentile on the math ssat despite being 98 percentile overall on the ssat. the ssat score report remarked that his math score, although only 78 percentile on the ssat, would probably place him in the 98-99 percentile of all 8th graders nationally. indeed, that is exactly how he ranked on national math exams taken in his 7th and 8th grades of public middle school.</p>
<p>because his math ssat score was so relatively low, his chosen gladchemms school asked him to take a math placement test before starting there. after that, he was placed in a “medium difficuly” math course for his first term.</p>
<p>during that first term, he struggled really hard, too hard, in math. despite getting a "reasonable’ final math grade for his first term, the school recommended that he step down to a somewhat less advanced math course for his second term. he chose to accept that recommendation and it has worked well for him.</p>
<p>this is not a kid from a failing inner city middle school. this is a kid from a very highly rated suburban public school system in a town with a highly educated demographic made up of many accomplished physicians, attorneys, academics, etc.</p>
<p>my point is that there is a huge performance gap between very good public schools and the gladchemms boarding schools. here i am referring to performance of the schools, not performance of the kids. it’s really a national catastrophe. last time i checked, our american public schools ranked about 20th in the world, whereas only a few decades ago we ranked among the top 5 world-wide. our public schools have been in a state of continuous decline for the past 20-30 years. </p>
<p>this should be alarming and actually has gotten a lot of news coverage but not much, if anything, is changing for the better. one can question whether perhaps this is because the schools in other countries have improved while we have stagnated. i don’t think so. last year, i read an interview with a long-time university of washington math professor who was decrying the increasingly poor academic preparedness of students there. he claimed that for several decades his department had needed to continuously water down the rigor of their courses in order to match the preparedness of their students. along that same line, a knowlegeable friend recently mentioned that even harvard university now needs to provide remedial courses for a pretty large percentage of their entering students.</p>
<p>ssat test results are, indeed, not a perfect predictor of success. however, i do believe that (much more than the sat test) the ssat test is a reasonably reliable indicator of how well our kids are prepared for the much greater academic rigor of the gladchemms schools.</p>