Reply to How intense/competitive is GDS?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm not sure many parents on this board understand what's actually happening at area public schools. I have had one kid in each system and chose GDS because of my daughter's profile - a big school would have swallowed her up, and she needed something different. She's now off to a top school (not quite top 20, but close to 30) and loves it. Great SLAC fit.
My son, on the other hand, did an MCPS IB program with some APs. He has various spikes that wouldn't have been nurtured the same way at a private school because of the lack of opportunities they are bound to from access to stem, theater, nationally winning music debate programs....
As a parent who's stayed in the know around assignments, I often hear the comparison that private schools produce deeper writers and thinkers while public is just memorization, drill-based teaching to the test, and looser grading. I'd push back hard on that. My son's IB English and History classes required the kind of analytical writing and independent thinking that would hold up anywhere. We're talking extended essays, oral commentaries, source analysis where they have to construct and defend an argument not regurgitate what the teacher said. The IB program in particular emphasizes Theory of Knowledge, which forces students to grapple with how we know what we know, question assumptions, and think across disciplines. That's not surface-level stuff.
And the writing? His teachers weren't handing out worksheets. They were assigning real literary analysis, research papers with original theses, and revision after revision until the argument was tight. He learned to write through struggle and feedback, not hand-holding. The expectations were high, and the kids who rose to meet them came out as strong as any private school student I've seen. You can clearly see this in college outcomes. 
Additionally, I'd invite you to sign up for a few public school newspapers and compare, or come to some robotics competitions or sporting events. These are some of the highest-skilled kids in the region and they did it largely on their own in ways that private school kids don't always have access to. There's something to be said for learning to advocate for yourself, seek out resources, and push through without a safety net.
Both systems have their merits. I had a kid who couldn't hang in public, so I made a different choice. But I might change my mind the second time around, because eventually they need to stop being coddled and enter the real world—and that has nothing to do with the ability to retake a test.  All this is to say is both can be valid choices but don't make it out of fear or college outcomes. [/quote]

This is great insight. I agree, we have one in a private high school who did not want the big public and I think would have been lost. Our second, I think we will send to public. [/quote]

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