Reply to Anyone turn down HGC admission in favor of neighborhood school?

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Reply to "Anyone turn down HGC admission in favor of neighborhood school?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Query - is the HGC comparable to a Sidwell or Georgetown Prep?  Also, are the teachers different?[/quote]

Um, no - not even close.  I have one in private and she has between 11-14 kids in her class depending on the subject.  They don't follow a state-mandated curriculum and as kids, aren't bused far away to put in a school to increase scores.  [/quote]

The difference is that the 25 children in a HGC classroom are all at the same high level so the teacher does not need a smaller class size to provide a superior learning experience.  The curriculum is also very different from what you would get in any ES in MCPS and teachers are given more leeway to enrich their lesson plans as they see fit.  These children routinely work at least two grade levels ahead of the MCPS curriculum, the teachers dig deeper into every topic and they get through material much more quickly - it is advanced, enriched as well as accelerated.  I suspect the private schools you mention might be enriched but may not be as advanced or as accelerated because their ES classes are mixed ability.  FWIW I know one parent who had a kid in Sidwell and another in a MS magnet and this is what she told me about their experience.  She felt that overall the quality of education was comparable but it was very hard to reproduce the MS magnet peer group in Sidwell.  The HGCs are less selective than the MS and HS magnets so perhaps her insight is not that helpful for this thread but take it FWIW.[/quote]

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