Reply to Parents making "pact not to pursue CES & get more enrichment @ home school...anyone pulled this off?

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Reply to "Parents making "pact not to pursue CES & get more enrichment @ home school...anyone pulled this off?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You can't argue that schools have nothing to do with children's abilities and then also argue that the school needs to change.

You also can't use the fact that your kid has 99th percentile test scores as evidence that they're better and so the school should be eager to keep them, and also that the fact that they have high test scores is irrelevant.
[/quote]

Are you this same PP-- "-- parent of two 99th percentile kids (out of 3) who will never understand this mentality?"

Your logic confounds me.

I never said the schools have [i]nothing[/i] to do with children's abilities.

You absolutely [i]can[/i] argue that the schools have nothing or very little to do with children's abilities, and that the school should make some changes. Public schools are at least theoretically obligated to serve the cohorts they end up with, just as if (okay, similarly to the scenario in which) they serve a significant cohort of kids with SN, or who have ESOL needs, etc.

I would like the "school to change" [i]not so much because of my child's abilities[/i], but largely to serve the community. This is not a scenario in which a school just loses "gifted" kids, which is problematic enough. It's a scenario in which the school loses half of its white/Asian American kids and about half of its UMC kids-- to a program that is mostly comprised of those kids. I don't find this particularly healthy for the kids who leave or the kids who stay.

I NEVER used "the fact that your kid has 99th percentile test scores as evidence that they're better!" Better?! No. So that the school should be eager to keep them? Well, I think the school should be eager to keep all of its students. We (and similar families) have been involved members of its community for years. But I do see that they might like to keep higher scoring students-- perhaps a bit cynically, but whatever helps them while they have to work within the system-- so that their average scores don't take such a big hit in 4th/5th grade. That drop is artificial, BTW! So I'm not talking about anyone gaming the system, I'm talking about them keeping what they should be able to keep, as some similar schools with local CES-type programs are able to do.

And I never said high test scores are irrelevant, per se. Only that they are most strongly correlated with family SES and education, not the school's rigor or whatever. This is a proven fact.

Why did I just spend 15 minutes of my Saturday morning on this?

I feel like the responses here are really reflecting a failure of imagination.

Just because a lot of people on DCUM are all about giving their kids a leg up by nagging their principals for special treatment for their special snowflakes, paying boatloads of cash for tutors for their kids to score an extra 50 points on their SATs, etc., does not mean that a person who would like a small, under-resourced school to get more resources is doing the same thing or coming from the same perspective!

I don't think I could be clearer, but if we have more resources, then those resources can also serve a cohort that is totally "CES material," but might not normally be considered for CES for reasons of institutional/systemic classism and racism. Or who could be selected from a lottery pool, but might choose not to go to CES because of concerns about transportation, leaving the community, etc.

I should have known better than to post here, I guess?

I appreciate the comments that are actually about the feasibility of this idea, even if they are discouraging. But posts like this one... man, IDK.

-OP[/quote]

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