Reply to Deal kid is floundering in private high school

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There is just more work at a private school than a public, it doesn't mean your child isn't able to do it--they just need to get used to the volume. I do think that the volume of work prepares them more for college, but it does take a lot of fun out of the high school experience. [/quote]. Come on, such BS. Other US cities offer far more HS rigor in the public system than DC. My alma mater, Boston Latin,is the HS sending the most grads to Ivies on a per capita basis, not a Top DC (or NYC) private. Spare us your misplaced snobbery, PP.[/quote]

This thread is local.[/quote]

But the point is a good one. Tony private schools aren't magic bullets. Coddled kids in cocoon environments, with no more than token poor and lower middle-class peers on scholarships, don't necessarily put nose to the grindstone, hustle to get ahead, or appreciate their opportunities to learn like public students might.  This is true matter how terrific the teachers and curriculum.

After almost a decade in DCPS, we learned not to rely on school inputs to provide serious humanities challenge long ago. We enroll our children in a variety of on-line workshops and classes each school year to beef up and round out the education on offer at our neighborhood MS. We started hiring a tough writing tutor with another DCPS family last year.

We require our kids to read at least one challenging novel weekly, mainly classics we discuss with them, on top of what's being assigned at school. We shut off the Internet in the afternoons, to promote reading.  We have them earn "reading points" they can cash in for adventures of their own choosing, e.g. horse-riding lessons and zip lines. We opt out of PARCC, which we consider a waste of time, in favor of having them read during testing hours.  In the summers, we send our children to several weeks of academic sleep-away camps.  We spend 8-10K per kid per school year to supplement, a bargain compared to Sidwell, GDS etc. [/quote]

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