Reply to Would you send your non-jewish child to a jewish school?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The Jewish schools in our area have not been competitive academically with the independent (private) schools. Makes no sense to me to put your child at a disadvantage unless you are religious. [/quote]

This is interesting to me.  My kids are at JDS.  The school is working to increase enrollment and one of the committees is focused on what can be done to bring more students to the school.  If the school is not academically competitive with the independent private schools, then that is something that should change.  My question is why do you think the jewish schools are not academically competitive?  Which schools do you consider academically competitive?  What do you think the differentiators are?[/quote]

I am not the PP here, 15:41 is my only contribution to this thread so far.

I think that many parents in this area define "academically competitive" as "academically exclusive".  That is, they think that if a school limits enrollment to kids with high academic skills and high academic potential, that the school is somehow "better".  They measure the success of the school by the academic achievement of the average student there, without asking how the school serves a wide variety of students well, and how well they develop the skills of the kids at the margin.

This philosophy doesn't match up with the philosophy of many faith based privates, who view their mission as to serve the variety of learners in their faith community.  Those schools are more likely to take a chance on a kid who may need support.  In serving these kids, they develop the abilities of their teachers who learn to differentiate up and down.  Every student benefits, but since including those kids means that their ERB scores drop a little, they get a reputation as less "academically competitive".

In my experience, JPDS has a well earned reputation as a warm nurturing place that celebrates and educates a wide variety of children, all of whom are challenged and stretched.  That's way more important than being "academically competitive" IMO.  [/quote]

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