Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Regions Boston/Cambridge Area for Quirky Kid

Hi,
We are considering a move to the Cambridge area, and I am investigating school options for my son, who will be in 4th grade. He is currently in a small Montessori school and thriving there after a few years of public school, where he wasn't very happy. He tested as gifted several years ago, but I'm not necessarily looking for a school of high achievers. He really likes that he gets to work by himself at his Montessori school. He's introverted and kind of a rule follower, but he does have a good imagination. I'm looking at Montessori schools in the area, and we aren't wedded to Cambridge...just has to be within a decent commute for my husband. I'm also not wedded to Montessori, but like that they don't push him into group work. Any suggestions? We would probably prefer private unless there are some awesome public options that fit a quirky kind of kid who's not an extrovert.

Some schools I noticed were....Birches, Acera, Sage (seemed very competitive and high achiever so didn't seem like good fit) and some of the Montessori schools around like Thacher, Meeting House, Adams....(I know there are two in the Cambridge/Boston area but I think they are out of our price range.)

Is there anything I'm missing? Small is better...open to one room schoolhouse kinds of places if faculty is good.

Thanks!!!!

Have you considered Buckingham, Browne & Nichols? Several years ago they hosted an activity that lots of gifted children participate in hoping to recruit new students. Other than that I don't know much about it (but I see it every day on my drive to work).

Birches is in Lincoln, MA. They're small and fairly new, but closer to Cambridge than Sage. I think they're more laid back than the others mentioned, but I could be wrong.

There's a Montessori School in Lexington (http://www.lexmontessori.org/home) and a Waldorf (http://www.thewaldorfschool.org/) - they're closer to Cambridge too.

There's some schools out in Framingham area that you might want to consider too - though they might be too much of a hike for you. There's the Macomber Center and the Sudbury Valley School (http://www.sudval.org/).

Bay State Learning Center (http://www.baystatelearning.org/) is in Dedham and might be doable. I think they're fairly new.

Odyssey Day School in Wakefield (http://www.odysseydayschool.org/) is another one you may consider (or not). They have some gifted kids there.

Phoenix School in Salem, MA is a small, open one-room schoolhouse and Montessori-ish/ gifted school, but again it might be too much of commute from the Cambridge area.

Another alternative is to consider joining Voyages out of Acton (co-op that has gifted kids) and the growing un/homeschooling community around Cambridge/Arlington greater area.

Forgot Parts and Crafts in Somerville - https://partsandcrafts.org/ - some parents are using as an alternative with schooling.

BB&N is very much not the right school for a gifted kid. OP is correct that Sage is a competitive high achiever type of school.

Thanks for these suggestions! I have heard of most of them, so I must be doing good research! I am familiar with Sudbury Valley, but that's just too out there for me, as would be Parts and Crafts and other democratic "let's trust the kids to educate themselves" kinds of places. My kid would play video games and draw all day.

But I would certainly consider places like that if I homeschooled and was looking for some extra educational options and social time for my child. That's my main worry about homeschooling. My child would have no friends in a new city, and although he's an introvert, he needs a friend or two.

I did like what I saw on the Phoenix school website, but I do think that would be too far out, and I also liked the Odyssey School website. That was so much less money than the other schools, I was a little wary. Why? :)

I know there is a public Montessori in Cambridge, but there is currently a waiting list. I don't know how I feel about a public Montessori. I wonder how Montessori it is vs. how public school it is.

I am kind of leaning toward homeschooling for a year to get our bearings...I go back and forth. Does anyone know if there are good socializing opportunities for homeschoolers? Is it easy to make friends? There seem to be a lot of great programs available for extracurricular learning.

Thanks!

[quote] OP is correct that Sage is a competitive high achiever type of school. [/quote]

I noticed that Sage said they specifically looked at processing speed and gathered that meant they wanted kids who produced a lot of output. My kid is not like that.

I don't know about homeschoolers, but I met a really nice lady in a park one day who was in her first week of unschooling!

Depending on the town you choose this is a great area to meet really fun people.

There's homeschoolers in Cambridge and active groups around west of there - in Arlington, MA for instance. There's a homeschool book club that meets at Cambridge Public Library for upper elementary/tweens. There's a bunch of homeschoolers who meet at a playground in Cambridge - I think Homeschooling Together (http://www.homeschoolingtogether.org/) has the details.

There's also group that meets Wed at Beaver Brook in Belmont near border with Waltham when the weather is good; during the winter they meet at Robbins Library in Arlington, MA on Wed. I think they'll be meeting at Walden Pond in Concord on Fridays soon since the weather seems to be improving.

I'd suggest looking at AHEM (http://www.ahem.info/index.html) and MHLA for homeschool groups (http://www.mhla.org/support/supportgroups.htm) and other details on homeschooling. This is my third year un/homeschooling my ds; I basically cut/paste the ed plan and progress report from AHEM.

MIT, Harvard, Museum of Science, various public libraries, and other institutions have many events and other activities - usually throughout the school year - for plenty of learning opportunities.

Yikes, you're right!



I can see the appeal for a school of having a class full of very similar kids, bright but fast. It would be so much easier than differentiating.

It's interesting though, they have a reputation as a gifted school, but according to this they select against kids who meet the common criterion of being at least 2 SD above the mean. Would a child with an IQ of 115 even have trouble at a normal school? Faaascinating!

A lot of these gifted schools seem to want the same type of student - high achieving, high output, and with a high IQ as a measure of intelligence. This would include Sage, Acera/Anova, and other schools like perhaps BBN.

The 'other' gifted schools seem to do a better job at catering to kids with ADHD, SPD, dyslexia, Asperger's, etc. -- who are operating a grade or two above their chronological peers. These schools (Sudbury, Phoenix, Clark and others - maybe Odyssey too) fall more under this category.

BUT the numbers of gifted kids who meet these guidelines and have parents willing to pay the tuition isn't probably high - especially within certain geographical locations. That's been my experience; my ds has been in two g/t schools here.

That's why a number of the g/t schools will accept kids who are not g/t or 2e regardless. There's just not enough of larger pool of students to draw from unless they're centrally located or positioned to draw from a larger population based or population base who has the money to pay for the tuition. With increasing fees and tuition, many families are seeing un/homeschooling as a viable alternative.

cdfox, that's not true. It's been a while since you were investigating schools, and you son has some fairly challenging needs doesn't he? I am guessing that you, like me, ask questions specific to your kids needs, so you may have been mostly concerned with them being able to deal with his behaviours in a classroom setting to really notice whether they were high output or high IQ or whatever. Just like I mostly care about (not) high output and differentiation.

For some kids, a classroom is just not going to work. For example, from Odyssey's website

Sage: middling IQ, high output
Acera: high IQ
BBN: high output
Odyssey: normal IQ
Phoenix: normal IQ
Sudbury: democratic community, I wouldn't call it a school, but yes, it's good for severe ADHD.

It would blow your mind to know how many kids with high (including very high) IQs and other needs not too severe to preclude a classroom there are in this area, certainly not so few that a school has to go out searching for them.

Well that's eye-opening about Sage. If the 115 is the cutoff then perhaps the average is 125. On the other hand, that's not that different from the honors/AP track students in many schools throughout MA.

Tallulah - I am think you misunderstood my point. There are schools that use IQ scores and seem to subscribe to the notion that IQ has meaning. There are 'other' schools that are not so IQ dependent.

Admissions decisions at those 'other' schools are not solely based on IQ. They use other means of assessment. They also tend to accept kids who are not g/t because as I mentioned - there simply isn't the amount of g/t kids within certain geographical cache areas to support having a solely g/t school based on strict parameters like IQ and without kids who are 2e as well. I just spoke to the Waring School in Bev about this last week and with others within the last year; Waring School has had musical prodigies and other g/t have attended there as well.

There are many reasons why some schools may be better suited for a particular child than others. Some g/t schools are more traditionally structured; others less so. Some kids will struggle more with a traditional setting; others will excel in it. It really depends on the child.

Parents can get caught up in the numbers with IQ or other assessments but lose sight of the whole picture with schools (gifted or not). It's easily done. There are many variables to school regardless - the teachers, the curriculum, the delivery and presentation of subjects, how structured or not the school is, the other students, and it goes on and on. Some variables, you can control. Others you cannot.

Sorry, calling them 'gifted schools' threw me off. But the high output label didn't apply correctly, either.

You are right, I agree, that only Sage and Acera have the IQ test cutoff. But, for people with kids far from the mean those cutoffs really help enrich the population with peers for our kids. It's definitely better to have a progressive school (that's a technical education word, apparently) than your average public or output focussed school, but it's still not too useful if your five year old needs to be in with seven year olds. A progressive school with a hefty proportion of the students working a few years ahead is magic, and I'll bet you can't find it in too many other parts of the country.

Even those schools don't use the IQ score as the only measure, it's just the base you need in order to apply. Deciding who to admit or not admit is then based on other things.

Mithawk, I know! They certaInly don't bill themselves that way. I'd guess that Newton or Lexington would have a higher average IQ than that and/or be working at the same level. I don't know why you'd pay for private when the same environment can be found at public (for only a modest increase in your mortgage )

Yup. Spent some time in Brookline, where there were kids measured in the 110s across the board (cognitive and academic) still receiving special ed services.

in our house processing speed and output are not correlated.

Aeh -- So in a typical Brookline high school class, how many kids might be 99.9%tile types?

I've always wondered if there is ever a meaningful cohort of HG/PG kids in elite public (non-magnet) schools.

UlH

I don't know about Brookline, but I would say that yes, at my daughter's elite, public, non-magnet school there is a meaningful cohort.

I don't have group data on that, just anecdotes. I'd guess more than 0.1 %, though. I do know that Brookline is among the systems that actually has a protocol (or did at the time) for early admission to kindergarten, heavily weighted toward the cognitive assessment. (WPPSI and WJ achievement, at the time.) And that some kids were able to get gifted pullout in elementary on the basis of an interview, history, and observation, without testing. Of course, it's been a few years, so things could have changed.

I'm afraid they have. A colleague is sending his gifted daughter with an October birthday to private school for KG and 1st grade because the Brookline public schools will not let her into KG before age 5.

Boston assigns children to elementary schools based on a lottery system http://www.bostonpublicschools.org/assignment , so your child may not get into the nearby school. My colleague did not like this, which is why he moved to Brookline. In general, affluent people either send their children to private schools in Boston or move to suburbs such as Brookline but do not send their children to Boston public schools.

A friend of mine recently listened to me describe my DS (a quirky gifted 4th grader) and immediately suggested we look into the school she used to teach at -- Fayerweather in Cambridge. Its seriously pricey, but she said its amazing. She described to me what she did for the one truly gifted kiddo she had in her class once, and it sounded like a dream. And that was just the expectation there...

I'm from a tried and true public education family (both my parents, husbands parents, and my brother in law are or were public school teachers) so a private elementary school is a non starter for us (plus its too far AND too $$ for us for 5th grade...) but if you don't have those issues, it might be worth looking into. Trust me, I had a moment of trying to figure out how to make it work!!

Also, if you aren't 100% committed to living in Cambridge, in addition to the other places folks have mentioned, the McAuliff school (a public charter) in Framingham is entirely project based and might be a great fit for the right gifted kiddo since you can work within your own range in a PBL curriculum. I am not entirely sure which communities it draws from, but perhaps one that might be a decent fit for you living wise (nothing quite like Cambridge though!).

This may be too late for the original poster, but the public Montessori in Cambridge is AMS accredited, i.e. a "true" Montessori. It does also have to conform to public requirements e.g. standardized testing. They do allow classroom observation by current or prospective parents.

Also, although entry for three year olds is via a very competitive lottery, my understanding is that due to the high fluidity of the population in Cambridge spots often open up for children in higher grades as families move away from Boston (typically for professional reasons) or out of Cambridge (typically for housing cost reasons).

fwiw, the figure I have heard for g/t students in Cambridge public schools is ~7%.