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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

I love it. A 36-month-old can now be in a grade.  With a curriculum.

And yes, I know that really is the case in dcps but I think it's stupid.

-- mom of talented 5th grader who was pooping his pants occasionally at age 3, squeezing play dough, building free-form towers and so on.  It's so weird to me that a dc resident now has to PAY serious cash to get that kind of developmentally appropriate nursery school experience in a private preschool. "I want my kid to fingerpaint all day, so that means tuition!" [/quote]

But this goes right to the heart of it. DC is a historically struggling school district. Thus almost every dollar is focused on remedial work, and that's why there is a curriculum at 3 yrs old yet no gifted magnet for MS or HS.

The public preK3/4 program wasn't designed to provide free daycare as a perk to affluent DC residents. It exists because of the high % of impoverished, female-headed households in the district.

The charter schools weren't designed to provide a free alternative to private school for the wealthy. They were a solution to a broken public school system with off the charts drop-out rates and poor test scores.

None of this was designed with the DCUM segment in mind.

Well-adjusted people in affluent school districts don't worry terribly about their 3 yo olds - they just let them play (with some pre-reading, pre-numeracy). That's a key aspect of privilege in america: not having to worry too much about things, because you know they will work out. DC's parents historically have not had that luxury, and the system as a whole is not built around that luxury.

I totally agree with you (PP) from a parenting perspective, BTW.

[/quote]

They aren't doing terribly well on remediation either, but I guess the logic is that with this as an excuse, it's fine to underserve [i]ALL[/i] kids in DCPS.

I'd agree that most parents don't worry about their 3 year olds...  And let's get off of this stale, cheesy old "special snowflake" kick that's underpinning the latest bunch of posts to this thread.

But, if when they are 5 years old, they are reading at a college level, going through one thick volume after another, and when they are 7 years old, can point you to a map and walk you through very complex and detailed things like the historical geopolitics of the Balkans from recent times, through the Cold War, to WWII and back to the Ottoman Empire - then you need to start paying attention.  Your standard DCPS history lesson about Pilgrims and Thanksgiving, in comparison and complexity, is cartoonish fluff (not to mention, the teacher will probably be embarrassed when the student corrects her on the historical inaccuracies).  Or, if your kid is capable of doing calculus in middle school and can explain things like string theory and Higgs bosons, and why they are significant, you have to recognize that your standard DCPS Everyday Math lattices and multiplication worksheets are just not going to cut it - nor will in-class differentiation or a once-a-week pullout for that matter.  These kids exist, there are probably far more of them than you realize, and if you think DCPS is meeting their needs, you are sorely mistaken.  They need direction, focus and mentoring in order to develop, but there's only so much parents can do - most parents are not experts in pedagogy or all areas of subject matter, and even the student's advancement can rapidly overcome a parent, and parents don't always have the resources to be able to deal with it - if they did, they'd probably be homeschooling G&T kids or sending them to CTY and other programs.  So they do the best they can - most of them pulled out of DCPS or avoided DCPS altogether knowing DCPS is unwilling to meet their needs and instead are pursuing charters and other options in the hope that while not perfect, it at least holds a greater hope of being able to provide a suitable environment.[/quote]

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