Reply to New 9th graders / transfer kids outperforming the "lifers"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Amazing how many of you have actually engaged in this ugly discussion.  Yay!  My child is smarter than those other children!  I'm such a great parent!

Ugh.  [/quote]

Not OP, in fact a NP. But you guys seem to be focusing on one small part of OP's post, which was the three words: "outperform the lifers."

The rest of OP's post, which contained many more words, asked whether going to a Big 3 for elementary school was worth it in terms of preparing your kid for a competitive high school. I think that's a valid question. If your kid can learn good work habits and a love of learning at many schools in the area, is it worth all the stress you see on DCUM about getting into Sidwell for K?[/quote]

Not OP either, but I think you have highlighted the most compelling part of all of this. I have always believed its too hard to predict what my childrens' needs will be 3, 5, 7, 10, etc years out, since I am not a psychic and don't own a crystal ball! Your delightful 4 year old will evolve and change into a young adolescent who you may not recognize at all! So with school choice, like anything else, you just continue to evaluate and adjust as necessary. Many, many people start at one school and then move to another. The thing that bugs me about this board is that when a person gets an admission to Beauvoir/NCS/STA, Sidwell, GDS or Maret, the reaction is as if they have won the lottery. I wish more respect was shown on this board for all of the wonderful schools in the DC area. My goodness, aren't we fortunate to have so many amazing public, charter, private, independent and/or parochial options to choose from. My feeling about most things in life is if you like it, I love it. Different strokes for different folks. I have one child that went all the way through a Big 3, graduated and is now at Villanova, another who had to leave that same Big 3 at 3rd grade (and transferred to what you all would call a "2nd tier private K-8 and then public HS -- is an 11th grader now -- btw, the counseling out process was handled HORRIBLY by the school, they were so dismissive and mean) and third child who was always been in public school and is currently a middle schooler. Quite honestly, at the lower grades, the Big 3 was NO better than the 2nd tier private, or MoCo public. People just want the cachet of a big name school. We found the parent body to be obnoxious, pretentious and overbearing and the academic requirements to be stressful from the earliest grades for no reason. 3 hours of homework for a 2nd grader? We've just always tried to find the best match for each of our kids. Quite honestly, our best experience school-wise, as it relates to all around great experience was at the private K-8. I think the nicest and most grounded & down to earth people send their kids to K-8 schools. And thats reflected in their kids. When I started this school journey, it was BIg 3 or bust. Honestly, I have learned through the process that things are not perfect ANYWHERE and school cachet is a bunch of malarkey. Do whats best for your kid, pay attention and then adjust course when its necessary. [/quote]

I've had a similar experience of a child who left a "big 3"  -- not for academic reasons but because of a bad social dynamic.  The change to a "lower tier" school has been incredibly illuminating.  DC is still engaged academically, is in fact getting more out of classes because the focus is on learning and not competition, and is happy.  And his classmates are happy.  Looking back, I wonder how many kids at his previous school were actually happy.  We're talking upper school.  The ones who seemed happy, in retrospect, were still highly stressed out.  There's a life lesson here.  Why do we as parents put up with the idea of our kids being stressed out and unhappy because of the prestige of a school?  Why do we care about their grades more than their happiness?

DC will go to a very competitive college, I'm sure.  And he won't arrive burnt out.  I know there are parents at his former school who think he bailed because he was somehow not cut out for the place (and right there is a red flag -- why do you have to be cut out for a place, in high school?) but the jokes on them because I have a happy, intellectually engaged child.  Do they?[/quote]

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