Reply to Information on Park School or Friends School in Baltimore?

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[quote=Anonymous]Meant to add: on "differentiation". Neither Park nor Friends offers AP classes. In my experience this is an advantage. Teachers are not forced to "teach to the test". That being said, many students do elect to take AP exams (and do very well). Colleges actually view it as a plus if the kids take the AP exams and do fine not having had an official "AP class". Shows they're willing to go the extra mile.

Park prides itself on "differentiated instruction", which (roughly translated) means that kids can opt to complete different sorts of projects to demonstrate their mastery of material they've been studying. It's not all "exams" or "term papers". For example, my kids like to write; one of my kids opted to write a sequel to "Animal Farm" in middle school, based on the Chinese Revolution (instead of on the Russian Revolution). Another opted to write a prequel to "Merchant of Venice". But in different grades you'll see kids preparing board games, or posters, or memorizing a monologue from a play, or constructing a wooden model of the sort of Greek ship used by Ulysses... again, not all "papers or exams".

Park does offer different "tracks", beginning in middle school with math. By high school, students can also be placed in accelerated science, language, or history. If kids have particular talents (e.g., math), they may even be encouraged to skip a grade in math (and take just that one class with older kids, remaining classes with their peers).

Park has a reputation for REALLY teaching kids to write. I don't know how universally true that is, but certainly I have no complaints.

Lots of emphasis on "design your own experiments" in middle school science, not pursuing canned ones. That's the way science should be taught.

Oh, and I don't think it's any harder to get in during "off years". A lot depends on the existing size of each class and on its male:female ratio. The current edition of the school newspaper, the Postscript, has an article on how they're currently processing a second wave of applications. It's available from the school's website.[/quote]

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