Middle School is Easy, But Does it Matter? (Not Deal)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No, I'm serious. My small town high school was ranked in the bottom third in my state and my family wasn't well off. But our little town had an excellent Carnegie library where I spent a great deal of time from a young age. I scored 700s on the SAT and went to an Ivy (the only student in my graduating class to do so). I don't think that intellectually curious kids need to be spoon fed most of their reading material by a curriculum, particularly not here in the Information Age.

Ok but it doesn’t sound like OP’s kid is self driven or intellectually curious where he would spend hours at the local library. In fact, the overwhelming majority of kids are not self driven.

[Anonymous]

OP, I am with you. My rising 8th grader gets all As and A-s, held an elected office, and plays on a sports team. He is happy and has lots of friends and is a really nice kid. I have no interest in forcing him to do more and find the grinding and striving of some DC parents to be exhausting. (Also not Deal)

[Anonymous]

Hey it’s OP again and I acknowledge it’s sometimes great to win in the meritocracy. But it’s a narrow and uncertain path to get there, right? And PP not to fight you too hard but you’re talking about a professor who got tenure - a few decades ago, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whatever happened to challenging yourself? I went to a less-than-challenging public middle school, but loved to read. I routinely read for a couple hours on a weekday afternoon in middle school. I also played instruments (including in a garage band) and sports, and acted in plays.

I'm a firm believer in middle school kids being allowed to explore interests in both structured and unstructured ways in the afternoons. We bailed on BASIS partly because we didn't care for how programmed our kid was there.

Yeah, I know the world is a different place now, but I wasn't remotely challenged in middle school and went to a top SLAC where I had no problem doing the work. I read everything in the library for the fun of it, played an instrument, and did have the opportunity to go to a challenging summer program. But there was no challenge whatsoever in regular school.

[Anonymous]

I have a rising seventh grader like that. We've chosen to let her focus on her extracurricular activity, which is demanding and taking up a lot of time, but she is also doing very well in it, and getting amazing results.

My gamble (because who knows) is that she is quick to catch on to academic things, and will catch up in high school, in terms of rigor. But this activity keeps her busy/focused. Most important, though, the activity was her choice and she is the one most motivated to do well in it.

We do supplement a little with math, but it's online, not very structured or stressful, and math is her favorite subject.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, i think it's funny that you think Deal has high-level programming. The reality is, it doesn't. It's pretty darn easy to get straight As and the academic high flyers are not challenged in any way, outside of maybe math.
In math they offer 4 levels by grade 8 (math 8, algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2). I had 2 kids finish Algebra 2 at Deal and go on to private high school (Sidwell/NCS). They did well in math but the rest of the transition was a
crazy and rude awakening which Deal did not prepare them for. It took a full semester to rewire their brains to think and to get their organization skills up to par. The homework demand went from 30 minutes to 3 hours. My kids are still (several years later) not the best writers because
DCPS often does not (outside of some teachers) teach kids to write a top quality essay, analyze literary text, etc. We really like MANY things about DCPS and Deal specifically but we have moved our 3rd kid to private for middle
school because it's almost too late (or at the minimum rough) to make this jump in expectations at high school.

Did those problems partially rooted from students not being high performers, transfer trauma, unrealistic parental expectations or too much pressure at the new school?

I'm the poster your'e replying to. My kids are not prodigies but they did very well at Deal with minimal work, always scored 99% on the PARCC, etc.
The privates are just next level of work. My Deal kid last year went from reading 4 books at Deal to at least 8 in Freshman English and having to write 12+ papers. Exams are also essay in all subjects outside of math and science.
Deal had never taught him to write a literary analysis of the text. He could write a half decent essay (Thanks to his elementary school) but never really had to at Deal. The private school work load is also a giant step up: from 20 minutes (maybe?) at Deal to 3, 4 hours a night. Plus no retakes (ever---on any assignment) and no credit for late work.

I am not here to tout the wonders of private school as there are plusses and minuses (and that is another post) but private high school has highlighted how little work my kids did at Deal and honestly, how poorly they were prepared in all subjects outside of math.
This is both pre-covid and during covid (different kids).
So I'm not sure what the point of my post is except maybe to say to the OP that Deal is probably not much better than whatever school her kids attend. Because it's kind of weak academically. It has many other strengths (many extracurriculars, teachers that care, a committed principal, racial and
economic diversity, etc) but it's by no means a strong academic school with all sorts of differentiation. It's kind of bare-bones schooling.

This post is chilling, and should be a wake-up call to more of us. Supplement, Deal folks. Whoever posted this, thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:this is OP; part of it for me is, I don't actually want my kid to get some finance or biglaw job. The rat race is not for me and I'm not going to start my kid on the treadmill at 12 so that they can "have opportunities" like a finance job at 22, a biglaw partnership by 32, or academic tenure by 42. I don't see any of those meritocratic choices as lifestyle-friendly, so feel no need to enable them.

I get that some here want that for their kids, so try not to judge too harshly.

I don't know if you are trolling or if you're serious. I will say that my dad was a tenured professor, and it is one of the most lifestyle friendly careers a person can have.

Yeah if you want to go on the job market and get shipped off to Iowa.