Reply to Anecdotally seems like applications are up this year across schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We're applying to privates because we gave public a try and it's just not working. I cannot wrap my head around the idea that I send my child to school all day and then I have to do quite a bit of supplemental work at home. The time and money I spend on supplementing public education is frustrating, I might as well try to get my kid into a school that actually teaches and get our evenings back.

When I raised my concern that my kid isn't getting much out of school and asked what options there were for kids working well above grade level, they just shrugged and said they don't do acceleration in elementary school.[/quote]

Our kids are in private and honestly, what they get out of the school day is hit or miss and we’re in the maybe 10-15% of parents who don’t supplement for math, and sometimes it shows. Even if the instruction was sufficient, nothing is enough for most of the parents of my kids’ classmates, and they won’t be satisfied until they are sure their kid is the best as measured by some standard that might not even exist. There’s an entire secret culture of parents going to teachers and division heads and arguing that their kid isn’t sufficiently challenged, and then the school throws all sorts of extra attention and work at the family to keep them happy. We realized way too late that this is a way that kids get marketed by parents to the school, which eventually believes them and earmarks those kids for special opportunities, pushes their path into higher level courses, or prioritizes them for college apps or HS exmissions depending on the type of school (have kids at k-8 and k-12).

I’m a product of public schools and am astounded at how much time during the school day is spent on meaningless fluff and transitions, plus the curriculum is all over the place. Some years are great if you get a strong teacher who really takes ownership over their grade curriculum, but other years you’ll end up with a real dud and in June you’ll wonder what happened to the year. What the curriculum guide says vs what actually gets done varies, and sometimes the curriculum guide represents a vision for the future and/or marketing and accreditation rather than what actually happens.

Privates are also just as stretched and challenged by behavioral problems as publics, it’s just less visible.

Apply but be ready to play the game and don’t come in with any illusions. [/quote]

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