Possible move to Boston/Cambridge--can someone walk me through the public schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Boston prices are no joke, in the desirable parts of the city and Cambridge you are probably looking at north of $2 million for a not huge property that would accommodate a family of four. You could probably find something larger in Newton/Belmont for $1.5, maybe less.

Yes, that's the thing, you cannot "save" money on the Boston house and use the difference to go private. The Boston property will cost as much or more as a close-in suburb if you want to be in a decent area. We ran the numbers, it didn't make sense.

A lot of people are moving out of Boston because a lot of companies have decided to let their workers stay remote even once the pandemic resolves (for lack of a better word). My sister is a realtor in MA and she’s seen a lot of people moving to the south shore and cape. She said she heard Harwich Schools (on the cape) got 25 new students this year. That’s a lot for little Harwich! Prices are going up a lot except in the city where they are going down but are still incredibly high.

There isn’t really anything like AAP up here. I worked in FCPS but am from MA. Up here if a child is truly gifted (no offense but people don’t rush to take the COGAT up here and only 2% of the population is truly gifted, right?), then the child usually gets an IEP. There is no culture of prepping for COGAT and trying to get into certain classes only in third grade. I’ve had fourth graders that range from a first grade reading level to a seventh grade reading level teaching in MA. I do believe Josiah Quincy School in Boston might have a gifted program of some sort, as well as Hingham and Brockton public schools. But up here the standards for third and fourth grade are essentially somewhere between “gen Ed” and “AAP” VA standards. I found the math standards for “gen Ed” kids to be incredibly low and I don’t think the kids needed them to be that low but VA had its own state standards and MA uses common core. The “gen Ed” standards for math in VA were below common core standards. I think the whole gen ed vs aap thing is bad for student confidence too. Up in MA there really isn’t a culture like that. In high school you can take honor or AP, but they don’t separate kids like that in elementary school which I think is better bc in VA I saw kids in AAP bully gen ed kids and I’ve seen gen ed kids refer to aap as “the smart kids” and I just don’t think that culture is healthy at all for elementary kids. At that age any separating by ability level should be unknown to the kids. So I don’t think you’re really going to find a school with anything like AAP and I think that’s for the better honestly. If your child is truly gifted you could ask for an IEP of that might help them get what they need.

I commented before and if you’ll have to work in Cambridge (no WFH option- which is really popular in MA right now), I would go with Belmont. Then Newton or Brookline. Then look into the better suburbs.