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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We looked at a number of privates, and even among the TT, all but HM and Trinity seemed like they would be a step down in STEM (at least from what we could gather).  Humanities would probably be a step up.  Not sure how manageable the social adjustment would be.[/quote]

My sense is that over the last decade or so, private schools have coalesced towards an approach to math where they go through the standard elements of a math curriculum at this same speed for everyone, a bit more slowly than an accelerated program at a public school: a pace which they expect more-or-less every student can keep up, at least with help. Then with the advanced kids they teach them a bunch of additional math to fill out the year, but everyone gets the same core, so it's easy to move people up / down between years and no one is permanently on a slow track. (and the pace is still fast enough to let anyone who wants to take calculus senior year)

So I wouldn't necessarily judge private school math curricula by course catalogs or curriculum websites - it's going to be a lot more influenced by how good at math the top 1/3 or so of students are, because the teachers will figure out a way to keep the honors class occupied.

Humanities: yeah, I think the key thing there is that with smaller classes they do a lot more graded writing (because the teachers have time to grade it all) and there's more opportunity to participate in group discussions.

I expect the class size law will close this gap somewhat, though, and the new ELA curricula too. For example, a key element of Wit & Wisdom is that even in elementary school everybody reads the same book and discusses it, which is going to generate a lot more of the sort of Socratic debates we associate with "good" humanities education compared to everybody working on their "Just Right" Level Q whatevers in the bad old Calkins days.

[quote=Anonymous]
PS6 or Collegiate?[/quote]

I mean that's kind of an apples to oranges comparison - do you want your kid at a school with girls or with only boys? Do you want them at the same place all 13 years? Collegiate's reputation is not at a particular peak right now, it could recover or it could get worse, and if your kid is bright enough for Collegiate now they should have lots of interesting choices for middle and high school.[/quote]

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