No secret. Workbooks in elementary. Supplemented with math classes in summer in middle school. Private music lessons.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought the stereotype was that "old money" people had to make their academic achievement appear effortless and that "trying to hard" was declasse.

I posted about our private, and yes, the “secret” tutoring and quiet complaints about academic rigor is mostly the white families and the public tutoring and loud complains about academic rigor is mostly the 1st gen parents.

We’re a mixed and immigrant family so everyone assumes I’m one of them and I hear all of the complaints!

Also my experience. I remember a particularly cringy group chat where one of the Asian moms was trying to be helpful and recommended all the CogAT and NNAT prep resources she used to help her child get a better score after not making it to the gifted program the first time around. She didn't know it's one of those things you're not supposed to admit.

Racist pig

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought the stereotype was that "old money" people had to make their academic achievement appear effortless and that "trying to hard" was declasse.

I posted about our private, and yes, the “secret” tutoring and quiet complaints about academic rigor is mostly the white families and the public tutoring and loud complains about academic rigor is mostly the 1st gen parents.

We’re a mixed and immigrant family so everyone assumes I’m one of them and I hear all of the complaints!

Also my experience. I remember a particularly cringy group chat where one of the Asian moms was trying to be helpful and recommended all the CogAT and NNAT prep resources she used to help her child get a better score after not making it to the gifted program the first time around. She didn't know it's one of those things you're not supposed to admit.

Anonymous wrote:None. My kids are above grade level and in advanced programming at school. If I heard your kid had a tutor I would assume it is because they are behind.

The problem is not all schools have advanced programming. The outside supplementing is because some families want more from their school, academically, but can't get it. It's easy to scoff at people in this situation and tell them to change schools, but that's not always an option.

Is this a thing?

It's not a secret for us. We do music lessons which includes a decent amount of theory, weekend language school (including writing in cursive) and math for fun at home. My 3rd grader is probably doing 5th grade math at home, reading geometry games books etc.
she still manages to miss math stuff at school as she tries to race through and not pay attention.

DS goes to TJ. No extra supplementation other than joining the Math Counts team, and being in the public AAP since 2nd grade.

He is just smart. And we limit screen time.

I do NOT consider this supplementation, but I’ve read to both my kids for bedtime; I still do even though they are in HS. That, and early bedtime makes a difference, IMO.

None my kids are brilliant and athletic

We've never done any outside academic enrichment, but we definitely don't keep music a secret. We talk about it the same as we talk about sports or other activities.

None. My kids are above grade level and in advanced programming at school. If I heard your kid had a tutor I would assume it is because they are behind.

Anonymous wrote:I thought the stereotype was that "old money" people had to make their academic achievement appear effortless and that "trying to hard" was declasse.

I posted about our private, and yes, the “secret” tutoring and quiet complaints about academic rigor is mostly the white families and the public tutoring and loud complains about academic rigor is mostly the 1st gen parents.

We’re a mixed and immigrant family so everyone assumes I’m one of them and I hear all of the complaints!

Anonymous wrote:If kids are ranked, even informally, nobody wants to share resources. And if rankings are real and affect outcomes further down the line, then people are much more hush hush about it.

Also, there is the phenomenon where a school gets a reputation for being "good" because of high test scores, but it is all because of the work that parents do on the side. The academics in the classroom are weak, which surprises newcomers to the school who are unaware of the secret supplementing.

This is exactly how our private prek-8th school is. We’re on the west coast so it’s not just a dmv thing. We have test-in gifted private schools as well as some very difficult to access private HSs. Families join our school and then complain about the academics after 1-2 years.

There’s an entire culture of secret supplementing to ensure that your kid will either do well enough on standardized tests to get into gifted private school or competitive 5/6-12 schools, or to ensure that your kid will get one of the 3-4 (or less) slots that our school typically maxes out at at each of the selective private HSs. That also requires getting into the top math track for 6th grade.

Some people will move away or switch as early as 3rd or 4th grade when they realize their cohort has too many smart kids or sports recruits of their kid’s gender.

Anyway, through “no” RSVPs for parties, cancelled outings, missed scout meetings, and failed carpools, plus chatty kids, I realized that 75-80% of kids my in kid’s grade do private tutors, RSM, mathnasium, Kumon, etc. There’s even a not-so-secret market of summer teacher tutoring that parents pass from one to the other, with the end result that one clique of parents always magically has access to our school’s teachers for private tutoring at home.

Both of my kids do Beast Academy and it's not a secret. This is upper elementary.

To the OP's point though, my gifted child has been invited to groups with a private writing tutor, math, and various stem activities (robotics team, coding camp). Those things have limited openings and small groups so parents don't really advertise. I declined them all because it's also very expensive for us.

Anonymous wrote:Soviet Union math at home.

Wow you dumb

Soviet Union math at home.