I thought the children at the "top" private schools were...

[Anonymous]

Subject: I thought the children at the "top" private schools were...
Anonymous



I thought the selection process of "elite" independent schools produced well-behaved and very bright children. Only a couple of children in the K class are reading well; some do not even understand simple math - like counting. Didn't all these children score 99.9% on the WPPSI? At least the effort is made at placing them into different reading and math levels. Apparently, my expectations of what these high priced schools were much too high. The teachers compliment how DC's manners stand out. My goodness, how well do you progress in this kind of environment? Am I missing something? Perhaps DC is better off in a GT center (public school) later.
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Yes, they apparently did score 99.9%.

I gather D.C. privates prefer the Danish model of education --- reading later in life.

You're not missing anything.

Some K pupils are quite facile readers with number sense and basic computational skills...others are not. If you are in the latter group, you can still emerge as a top notch student; being in the former group doesn't necessary guarantee academic stardom but those students have an early leg up.

[Anonymous]

The emphasis on reading well in Kindergarten as an indicator of intelligence is misplaced. For some kids it can be an indicator of true intellectual gifts; for others it is not. There is so much more to intelligence and learning than reading early and yet I've now read multiple posts on this subject by parents who seem disappointed that their reading kids are somehow being held back by their non-reading peers. Nonsense.

[Anonymous]

I would think that if you are paying $30,000 for private school and many of the kids have the 99.9% test score, it is not unreasonable to assume that there would be greater emphasis on reading.

[Anonymous]

OP, the teachers have to teach reading. They can't assume anything. They have to start from scratch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would think that if you are paying $30,000 for private school and many of the kids have the 99.9% test score, it is not unreasonable to assume that there would be greater emphasis on reading.

Why? I am thrilled that our DC's " 'top' private" school really seems to be cultivating a love of learning. Early reading is a prediction of...nothing. Exempting children with true reading challenges, a third grade teacher is not able to look at a room of students and identify those who read in K and those who did not read till first grade. If OP had been paying attention on school tours last fall, then OP would've heard K teachers at all the top privates indicate that the goal is to have all children reading by the end of FIRST grade. Yes, there will be 99.9% WPPSI kids not reading till the end of first grade, and most likely will be indistinguishable from their peers in second.

[Anonymous]

OK, now I am confused. I don't think you all know what you are talking about or are being willfully delusional. First, I am willing to bet that there aren't that many 99.9 kids as people think there are. At least not ones that are well-rounded, and are at that percentile across subtests. That is statistically rare. Second, if a child truly scores at the 99.9th percentile across subtests, that kid is pretty damn smart. I think those children do stand out in. If those children have been exposed to letters and sounds at all, they tend to read early. They ask deeper questions. They also do math computations earlier. It does not mean they'll all go on to be academic superstars in middle school because many different things go into becoming an academic superstar. IQ is just one of them. But these kids look different at 4 and 5, and they learn faster than average. For goodness sake, thats what it MEANS to be at the 99.9th percentile in IQ. Its astonishing that there are people on this board who would pretend that that IQ is meaningless. Your insecurity has no bounds.

[Anonymous]

23:10 I agree. You are confused. No one has suggested that IQ doesn't matter.

[Anonymous]

22:40--Obviously early reading IS a sign/predictor of intelligence. Of course, a child who is not reading at an early age may be intelligent too, because everyone develops at their own pace and kids have a variety of talents. But to actually suggest that children who actually can read at 3 or 4 years old (or can do math early or play an instrument early) are not particularly intelligent is absolute hogwash.

LOL! You would think that your child's admission to a "top private" would have eliminated such insecurity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would think that if you are paying $30,000 for private school and many of the kids have the 99.9% test score, it is not unreasonable to assume that there would be greater emphasis on reading.

Why? I am thrilled that our DC's " 'top' private" school really seems to be cultivating a love of learning. Early reading is a prediction of...nothing. Exempting children with true reading challenges, a third grade teacher is not able to look at a room of students and identify those who read in K and those who did not read till first grade. If OP had been paying attention on school tours last fall, then OP would've heard K teachers at all the top privates indicate that the goal is to have all children reading by the end of FIRST grade. Yes, there will be 99.9% WPPSI kids not reading till the end of first grade, and most likely will be indistinguishable from their peers in second.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:22:40--Obviously early reading IS a sign/predictor of intelligence. Of course, a child who is not reading at an early age may be intelligent too, because everyone develops at their own pace and kids have a variety of talents. But to actually suggest that children who actually can read at 3 or 4 years old (or can do math early or play an instrument early) are not particularly intelligent is absolute hogwash.

LOL! You would think that your child's admission to a "top private" would have eliminated such insecurity.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would think that if you are paying $30,000 for private school and many of the kids have the 99.9% test score, it is not unreasonable to assume that there would be greater emphasis on reading.

Why? I am thrilled that our DC's " 'top' private" school really seems to be cultivating a love of learning. Early reading is a prediction of...nothing. Exempting children with true reading challenges, a third grade teacher is not able to look at a room of students and identify those who read in K and those who did not read till first grade. If OP had been paying attention on school tours last fall, then OP would've heard K teachers at all the top privates indicate that the goal is to have all children reading by the end of FIRST grade. Yes, there will be 99.9% WPPSI kids not reading till the end of first grade, and most likely will be indistinguishable from their peers in second.

Don't be such a dick. It almost seems like you're intentionally misreading PP's post to create an excuse to bash her. 22:40 clearly was not trying to claim that kids who read early are not often smart. Her point was simply that all kids (whether they are smart or not) learn to read at different rates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Its astonishing that there are people on this board who would pretend that that IQ is meaningless. Your insecurity has no bounds.

It is astonishing that there are people anywhere who place such faith in a single, unreliable test often administered when a child is 3 or 4.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, the teachers have to teach reading. They can't assume anything. They have to start from scratch.

I don't think this is entirely true. In the first few weeks, perhaps. But at our child's school, after the first few weeks, the kids are sorted into ability groups. (The groups are fluid, and there is no discussion of how the levels differ.)

[Anonymous]

re teaching reading from scratch. Our DC's private says that if you don't, some of the early readers run into problems later on because, for example, they may lack certain decoding skills (e.g. learned phonics but not context clues).

I was a very early reader; my husband was not. We're equally smart.

Our daughter could have been an early reader had I been inclined to steer her in that direction, but my take was that her own direction was taking her to more interesting places and places she wouldn't necessarily go in school, whereas if I taught her to read, she'd most likely end up being re-taught. And I realized that independent reading at that stage would actually significantly diminish the quality and quantity of the literature she was being exposed to by being read to and listening to audiobooks.

I had a literary critic before I had a reader. She's now as strong a reader as any early reader and remains a subtler critic of what she reads.

I'm not saying early reading is bad -- I loved it -- just that it's not particularly important.

One thing I valued about private over public schools (MoCo, specifically) was their "it's not a race" attitude toward education. When it comes to skills that, barring a learning disability, most every bright kid will fairly easily acquire in elementary school, I don't see the value in pushing and tracking at a very early age. What's waiting for you at the other end? Going to a not-so-hot college at 14? No thanks. I'll take depth and breadth over acceleration any day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most of the private schools still follow a play based K approach with formal reading instruction in 1st.

Where is this still true? I thought most schools were now teaching reading in K, even if they don't expect all the kids to be reading on their own by the end of the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Our daughter could have been an early reader had I been inclined to steer her in that direction, but my take was that her own direction was taking her to more interesting places and places she wouldn't necessarily go in school, whereas if I taught her to read, she'd most likely end up being re-taught. And I realized that independent reading at that stage would actually significantly diminish the quality and quantity of the literature she was being exposed to by being read to and listening to audiobooks.

I agree that early reading is not that important, but you seem to be going further and emphasizing the disadvantages. Early reading need not diminish the quality of what's read. Many early readers move quickly through the "easy reader" stage and on to real books (E.B. White, e.g.), and you should, of course, continue to read to your early reader for many reasons.

Also, I think you overemphasize the amount of parental choice involved. Many early readers are not "steered" in the sense of being subjected to lots of phonics drills; they just emerge. Their parents probably do a lot of reading but not necessarily more than parents of later readers.

[Anonymous]

Also also...I think early readers should be given skill-level-appropriate instruction even in K. This can include basic skills, to make sure they're not missing anything, but should not be limited to that.

But to get back to OP's concerns, I agree that the number of readers in a K classroom is not a measure of average intelligence; nor are readers necessarily the smartest kids.