Reply to Top private (Sidwell, GDS) versus top public (JKLM) for early years: what are the differences?

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Reply to "Top private (Sidwell, GDS) versus top public (JKLM) for early years: what are the differences? "

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
As an aside, re pressure cookers -- ironically, the pressure cooker atmosphere to me involves the obsession with APs and acceleration that kicks in in HS here/now (sooner if you live in the burbs and your kid tests gifted).   BASIS is self-consciously built on that model.  Its pitch is you don't have to be smart or rich to take lots of APs (or take Algebra in 6th grade) -- you have to be disciplined and motivated and be given the resources.  (And we have to be allowed to kick you out if you don't get with the program). For my kid, what was valuable about the private L/MS experience was breadth and depth and play and experimentation, which is a very different educational model.  [b]HS at the same school has been a decidedly mixed bag -- with the AP/acceleration model arguably eclipsing the other approach in the later years -- or maybe an attempt to do both in a way that's utterly unrealistic given time pressure and previously instilled standards about what it means to do something well.[/b]

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To me, this is one of the most interesting and thoughtful posts from a private school parent, and something that anyone considering private in the "early years" and probably staying at the same school should think seriously about.

Maybe it is more difficult for kids to have the [b]school change on them than changing schools entirely[/b] for the upper grade, pressure cooker years.

I hate that Basis makes the kids start doing serious homework so early (they start in 5th), but at least there is no false advertising - the kids know what they are getting into from the start.  Coming from the play-based, mostly no serious homework, JKLM world now two of our kids feel like they have landed in a hard core intellectual environment.  But they also revel in the intellectual stimulation (especially the ability to accelerate in math) and starting in 6th Physics, Chem, and Bio each year, and have found peers who are also geeky where geeky is cool.... they are geeky STEM kids, don't know what it would be like if they were not math/science kids.... and we have one taking APs and it is not as pressure cooker as I would have thought because the kids for the most part cooperate instead of compete.......[/quote]

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