Please convince me: DCPS over MoCo for smart kids

[Anonymous]

It's a nicely counterintuitive theory (and don't we academics love the counterintuitive), but I hope you'll forgive me for saying that I would give it more weight if you had actually tried it out.

[Anonymous]

Not quite the same issue but I am reminded of this by this discussion: I have taught at both a large third tier urban university and a small rural somewhat selective (but not prestigious) liberal arts college. A lot of my students at the small college went to private school. A lot of my students at the university went to public school.

However, the brightest students at the public university were generally more interesting, more independent, and self-motivated than most of the students at the expensive college. In fact, my first semester at the college I was shocked by the results on the first test to see how little better the college students were than the best university students. They had a little more polish but overall they weren't smarter and they weren't intellectually more engaged.

First caveat is that, of course, the majority of the public university students were not as smart and/or not as well-prepared by their k-12 schools, but we're not talking about those folks here. We're talking about DCUM children who mostly come from privileged backgrounds and have highly educated parents.

The second caveat is that I'm sure that in the scheme of things the private college degree sounds more impressive to employers than the public university degree -- so if that's what you care about, go for the fancier place every time.

But in terms of students, I wouldn't assume that the best private school students are any more intellectually engaged than the best public school students -- and sometimes intellectual engagement is developed the most strongly through a committed family.

But, as I always say, match the kid to the school -- that comes first -- but keep an open mind as to what that school should be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hey, the kids I taught didn't learn stuff in high school that I thought they should have learned in high school, but they had a good enough high school education to get into good college, and they learned that same stuff there. No lasting damage. But they didn't have (nor was I likely to have inculcated) the kind of intellectual character (or motivations) that I wanted my daughter to have.

I think you, like many academics, are setting the bar too high (not too high for your daughter, but too high for any school system). I taught at Harvard while in graduate school, and most of the students I saw were not all that curious. Smart, yes, but not driven to question and learn. Bottom line, I would not write off MoCo because it turns out only a small minority of students who are truly intellectually engaged.

I think you sort of prove the PP's point. Consider where many of those Harvard students you were teaching were coming from -- highly competitive private schools and top suburban public schools. The point is that the environments focused most heavily on producing "Harvard-caliber" students often sacrifice broader intellectual engagement for tangible results. A highly competitive environment doesn't reward intellectual risks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's a nicely counterintuitive theory (and don't we academics love the counterintuitive), but I hope you'll forgive me for saying that I would give it more weight if you had actually tried it out.

For what it's worth, it's not an argument I would have made until recently (and we chose a school for our daughter 8 years ago). But, having become somewhat involved in DCPS reform politics, I've met some really impressive DCPS parents. So it's not a matter of learning from my own experience, but it does involve observing/asking about other peoples' experiences rather than just armchair theorizing.

[Anonymous]

think you sort of prove the PP's point. Consider where many of those Harvard students you were teaching were coming from -- highly competitive private schools and top suburban public schools. The point is that the environments focused most heavily on producing "Harvard-caliber" students often sacrifice broader intellectual engagement for tangible results. A highly competitive environment doesn't reward intellectual risks.

I was going to try to make the same point but couldn't without thinking of words that sound pejorative ... well said!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think you sort of prove the PP's point. Consider where many of those Harvard students you were teaching were coming from -- highly competitive private schools and top suburban public schools. The point is that the environments focused most heavily on producing "Harvard-caliber" students often sacrifice broader intellectual engagement for tangible results. A highly competitive environment doesn't reward intellectual risks.

My point, which I could doubtless have made more clearly, is that true intellectual engagement is rare. Therefore, it's not so terribly surprising that PP didn't encounter it within it the population she taught. Nor should that be considered a black mark against MoCo schools because, IMO, any school or school system is likely to produce only a small number of truly engaged students. What's more, I see no reason to believe that highly competitive schools perform worse by this metric than less competitive ones. I am more inclined to agree with the PP who emphasized the importance of family over school.

[Anonymous]

My point wasn't (just) that the successful MoCo grads I taught weren't intellectually engaged -- it was that they lacked analytical skills and seemed to have no clue that they lacked analytical skills. Because they were able to learn such skills when I taught them, my take was that these were skills that they never needed before.

If kids are successful for 12+ years of schooling without learning how to think critically, they are unlikely to be intellectually engaged. I think that's a function of nurture rather than nature -- i.e. we live in a culture that generally doesn't value/foster intellectual engagement -- it's not that intellectual engagement is inherently a rare ability. I also think that a family whose own intellectual values go against the grain of the school system's/dominant culture's intellectual values may be better off in a school system that isn't so all-consuming/rewarding/highly-praised -- but if and only if at least one of the parents is interested in being very engaged in their kids' education.

In a highly competitive school, the work can be demanding enough that it keeps kids busy/stressed/driven without encouraging them to be creative, playful, experimental, or curious. And when a parent tries to up the ante by emphasizing the importance of the latter set of traits, the kid is likely to be resentful. By contrast, when the school isn't giving a kid all s/he needs and wants intellectually, that kid is much more likely to be receptive when a parent offers a different, more interesting, approach to learning.

I came from a school that didn't challenge me, so I learned to challenge myself. I was born to teenaged parents and my mom finished her BA/MA the year I graduated from HS, so at least one of my parents was in college my whole childhood. As a result, the schools I attended didn't define (in the sense of limit) what learning should look like to me. There were always interesting discussions and challenging things to read in my house and I tended to set my own agenda. I had the freedom to do that in part because my school wasn't interested in pushing me as hard as I could be pushed down a relatively narrow chute.

And exercising that freedom didn't cost me anything in terms of test scores or college admissions. In fact, it probably made me a more interesting and better prepared student when I got to college. I don't know how smart or ambitious or whatever you need to be for this strategy to work, but it worked for me and I've certainly met kindred spirits who tell similar tales.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

But I also think that, if you are in a situation where there isn't institutional support for this project (i.e. you don't have access to a simpatico public school), then, as a parent, you'd have a higher chance of success producing it in a context where the alternative you reject (teach to the test, differentiate based on speed/accuracy rather than breadth/depth of knowledge, get it right/make no mistakes and you're done) clearly isn't working rather than one where everybody around you seems happy with the results. That's the logic behind what may have been my too cryptic statement about favoring the dysfunctional (DCPS) over the hegemonic (MoCo).

And, again, I'm not suggesting anyone should write MoCo off -- just presenting another way to think through this decision.

OP here: I had to look up "hegemonic," so you can see where I'm coming from. I agree in theory with everything you've said. But in practical terms, would it not be easier to reject something tangible (a gifted program, for example) than to fill in a void (lack of a gifted program, for example). You have not chosen the second route, although you are holding it up as a better choice, and I agree that with that in theory. Perhaps that's what my parents thought when they left me in a dreadful public high school. I got into a great college, and did OK, but I was not educated when I got there, and I still feel uneducated (see above). Were I one of your students, I would have been dismissed as intellectually complacent. I didn't have a clue how to analyze anything, and I blame that on my education. I was lucky that I went to a good college and to grad school, but I always felt handicapped by the years I spent doing nothing in school. My parents, by the way, were very well educated (private schools all the way) and involved in my education, but they could not change what I was learning while sitting in school all day. This is where I feel your argument falls apart. I see my DC having a nice social time at school with her professor's kids friends, yet she's always taught a few levels below what I think she's capable of doing. Her smart friends and her involved parents don't make up for that. (OK, we live in the suburbs, so she's not getting that urban stimulation either).

[Anonymous]

Nah, you wouldn't have been dismissed as intellectually complacent -- remember, my interpretation was that these were smart kids whose schooling didn't teach them how to analyze things (or that there was any point in analyzing things).

But people have different personalities and learn in different ways. You know your kid and what works and what doesn't. Go with your gut.

Sometimes finding yourself disagreeing vehemently with someone is the best way to clarify your own thinking. (When I seemed to vacillate about a decision, my Dad always told me to flip and coin and not to follow the option that the coin dictated but to see how I reacted to a particular outcome.)

I'm not trying to convince you (in fact, I'd feel a little bit nervous if I did) -- just give you another perspective to wrangle with!

Good luck with your move!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for your responses, and please, keep them coming. It helps so much to hear different opinions and experiences.

12:30: If I seem nervous, I am because of my experience at our current (out of state) public ES. DC tested three grades ahead (!) in reading, but the school would not put her in language arts classes in the next grade up. Why? "It's not our policy." So, DC thinks everything should be easy (mostly it is for her), and gets extremely frustrated when she encounters something that she doesn't get instantly (math is a bit harder for her).

Quite honestly, I need to be convinced to take the risk on DCPS. But there are risks in the suburbs as well (kids developing a sense of entitlement, for one, extreme competitiveness, too many material goods, lack of diversity, cultural blandness, etc.) that are often discounted in the search for "safety" and good schools.

Thanks again for your perspectives.They are helping me weigh the variables.

You are more likely to find these conditions in upper NWDC than in some close-in suburbs!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP: I am a DC resident who lives in the Lafayette elementary school district, and I send my kids to private school. I had a big second-guessing of myself about this until I started e-mailing with the principal of Lafayette and learned that there was no gifted program in DCPS.

That, to me, was a deal breaker. I grew up in a very highly regarded school district outside of another large metro area. I struggled early on in elementary school with boredom, etc. Nobody knew what to do with me until they finally gave me an IQ test in second grade, and even then, it just stopped them from deciding I was a discipline problem rather than just bored. The schools didn't start a gifted program until I was in Fifth Grade (ok, so yes, I'm really, really old, but that's another issue). Middle School was fine academically; just the usual social angst. High School was a whole different issue, despite being in the gifted program. By that point, I felt in some ways it was too late; the damage from all those years of being unchallenged was too great. I did go on to top college, grad school, etc., but it was not a particularly great experience.

I don't want that for my kids. I want a school with a great gifted program that can challenge my kids in appropriate ways from day 1. The only reason we are not in MoCo now is because at the time we looked to move, it was the top of the real estate bubble. So we stayed in the city and went to private instead.

This may not be a perspective that is useful to you or that you want to hear, but I feel a lot of empathy for your high-testing elementary school kid, so I thought I would share my thought process with you.

I wanted to agree with you here. It can be terrible for kids who are quick, bright, academically-oriented and self-motivated to sit around in a classroom which is doing things the child already knows most of the time. This kind of environment had a serious affect on our own child by second grade -- drooping self-esteem, deliberate hiding of interests in school, frequently left to read books alone during much of class having finished work early, and increasing emotional problems when faced with challenge or failure (because 95% of work was not challenging), teacher's pet or teacher's peeve but never a regular student, etc.

Interesting that we solved this problem by moving to MoCo and taking advantage of gifted programs instead of going private as you did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A series of disjointed reactions.

Smart kids don't need gifted programs to be challenged. The parenting challenge here is to help your kids learn to challenge themselves. It's a gift that keeps on giving, so it's really worth the effort. Abstractly, it's a matter of getting them to think of learning as more of a web than a line -- there's not a clearly marked path and the question is how fast you can traverse it; there are a million roads not taken and if you're quick, you get to decide which other ones to explore while you're waiting to rendezvous with the rest of your party. Nothing wrong with going way beyond what's expected or required of you. Why let someone else set the standards for you when you'd set them higher?

School isn't the only place where kids can/will be challenged. And if you want DC to have more rigorous assignments and/or an equally talented cohort and don't find these things in school, then look at programs like CTY (Center for Talented Youth) which is run out of Johns Hopkins. It offers both summer courses and school-year online courses. Wide range of fun topics. In the summer courses, lots of the instructors are Hopkins grad students.

You are right that school is not the only place kids can find challenge. BUT, until they graduate, kids are in school 6-7 hours a day. A 3-week CTY course doesn't make up for sitting in a class which is still working on math facts, when one is far beyond that. Or sitting in a class secretly reading pages ahead while another student stumbles over words. Week after week of this is boring, demoralizing and saps motivation.

Think about it. Personally, If I had to go to a job day after day where all I could do was stuff envelopes with pre-written letters, and my boss told me I was going to fast and must slow down so I won't finish early, well, I think I'd be suicidal.

Wanting to be interested in what you're doing, wanting a sense of challenge and accomplishment are normal human drives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Wanting to be interested in what you're doing, wanting a sense of challenge and accomplishment are normal human drives.

Yeah, which is why a smart kid who doesn't have that provided to him/her may well respond by developing his/her own interests, challenges, projects, sense of accomplishment, etc. Conversely, when you have challenge and reward built into a system that isn't especially rich but that is demanding, kids are less likely to look elsewhere. But it depends on personality (and values).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Wanting to be interested in what you're doing, wanting a sense of challenge and accomplishment are normal human drives.

Yeah, which is why a smart kid who doesn't have that provided to him/her may well respond by developing his/her own interests, challenges, projects, sense of accomplishment, etc. Conversely, when you have challenge and reward built into a system that isn't especially rich but that is demanding, kids are less likely to look elsewhere. But it depends on personality (and values).

What are you saying? That kids need to be bored for a certain part of the day (i.e. "doesn't have that provided to him/her") in order to find self-motivation and self-challenge? That kids who are challenged and must work in school are more likely to slack off at home and not develop their own interests?

This has not been our experience. Our experience has been that an unchallenging school day is frustrating for a child who has to sit and wait for others. That sense of frustration bleeds over into other social and academic aspects of school. It might not kill off our child's sense of motivation and challenge outside of school, but it was deadly to our child's feelings about school. By contrast, if school is interesting (but not in the sense of 2 hrs. of mind-numbing worksheets busy), then that sense of inquiry and interest in the world feeds our child's natural interests and motivation.

We didn't like the idea of settling for school as a "dead zone" and home or out-of-school as the place for fun and interesting things.

I do agree with you if part of what you're saying is the idea that it's not helpful for a school to provide such a large amount of unchallenging busy work that a kid doesn't have time for sports or music or other activities outside of school (or even just down time/play with friends).

But, I get tired of these false dichotomies for gifted or above grade level kids. It shouldn't be a choice between being bored in school and having time to follow desires outside of school or being crushed by work at school and getting burned out.

[Anonymous]

Probably not a productive discussion at this point (just a difference of opinion), but I'll give it one last try.

What I get tired of is smart = bored. The smartest people (kids and adults) I know are rarely bored. They're resourceful, they're self-reliant, they're confident enough to speak up, and they don't just do what's put in front of them and then sit and wait for something else to be put in front of them once they're done.

On the other hand, I've seen reasonably smart kids put in situations where the challenge always comes from outside. They're not bored as long as they're jumping through hoops, but they're at a total loss as to what to do when there's no ringmaster setting them tasks.

Ideally, you look for a school where the assignments are interesting and open-ended -- they should provide enough direction to get students going down a fruitful path and then give them a fair amount of freedom in a context where the more they put into the assignment, the more they get out of it. Such schools/teachers are rare, but they exist.

The dichotomies arise when all the schools available to you teach/demand the same stuff and the difference between them is how much and how fast. I'm just saying that if your choice, for example, is between a school where the bright kids learn their multiplication facts in 1st grade vs. one where the bright kids don't move beyond addition and subtraction in 1st grade, it's not at all clear to me that the former option is always better than the latter.