Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Regions Experience with Cupertino Elementary schools

Does anyone have experience with how PG kids do in Cupertino elementary schools? I understand the standards are very high, but are they equipped to handle differentiation?

Sorry that i don know the answer of your question, it seems that only a few members here live in SF bay area, have you tried to ask this question in some other groups in fb? If you know how to read chinese, the group "舊金山灣區媽媽小孩同歡會" in fb is a good resource, I actually want to ask similar questions for my son's public sch, we live in bay area too ^^

I have 2 friends in that school district. They do "in room" differentiation until 3rd grade which is highly teacher dependent. They have pullouts for LA and Math from 3rd onwards. Apparently, they use the STAR test scores to select the top students and then administer a COGAT type test for the 3rd grade pullout selection - I am not sure what the cutoff percentile is. My friends think that the differentiation is nothing special and have their kids in after school academic enrichment as well as in summer camps. good luck.

Cnthialcy,

No Chinese unfortunately. Could you provide a summary of what they are saying?

Oh, sorry, i just want to say that u may ask about it there. Forget it if you can't read chinese, it doesn't matter.

I have send an email to the GATE Program Specialist in Fremont United School district to ask a similar question, may be u can also send an email to your sch district or phone to ask,
http://www.giftedcalifornia.org/districts.php

How old is your kid? Mine is 4 and will go to K in 2016.

Cynthia send you a private message.

Cynthialcy, you have probably already gotten this information, so apologies for the repeat (and sorry for the threadjack!) FUSD tests for GATE in 3rd grade; there is no GATE program before 4th grade. The good news is that they test all students, not just those nominated by teachers.

We saw mixed in-class differentiation, it was highly dependent on the teacher.

We pulled our kids (both DYS) before 3rd grade to homeschool. One DYS family I know also was unhappy with their experience, but another DYS family is fine with FUSD.

VR00, we don't have kids in Cupertino but know people who do/did. This is what we have heard:

* very competitive environment with a large population of very bright and driven kids.
* regular mix of teachers of different caliber. There used to be a fabulous Science teacher who was pivotal in helping get her students to top ranking in Intel Science competition but I am told she has moved on to a gifted only school.
* some schools have eliminated GATE programs because almost all kids qualify.

That said, we see no shortage of parents paying million+ dollars even for small, old homes in the Cupertino School District.

Our understanding is that unfortunately there is no public school we know of in the Bay Area that is great for PG kids. We put our child in a public school environment knowing that most of his academic learning will happen outside of school - even with some accommodations at school. We hoped for a relatively safe social learning ground though.

When he started as a kindergartner, he could not comprehend why his classmates did not engage with him mentally at the "fun" level. A wonderful gift of him being in a public school is that he has learnt to cultivate humility and have empathy for children who struggle and finds ways to connect with them that are not necessarily academic. Recently he came back from school and exclaimed, "Mom, Sarah is an amazing artist! She is even more gifted at art than I am in Math!".
Also, easier academics has freed up time for him to focus on a time consuming extra curricular activity that he loves.

As far as differentiation, it is very hard to find enough PG kids for a thriving group for differentiation. Also, when teachers talk about differentiation, I will request them to clarify what they mean by differentiation. Unfortunately, often differentiation is just more of the same old or sitting alone and learning. Perhaps other parents have had a better experience.

If your child is a DYS, there are many here, as well as Lyceum of Santa Clara Valley, Math Circle and Mensa get-togethers all over the Bay Area. We have Tech Museum, Computer History Museum, NASA, many amazing museums in San Francisco, California Academy of Science etc. Also, some private schools specifically for the gifted (sorry no first hand information) such as the Nuevo School in San Mateo and Proof School in San Francisco.

Wishing you good luck!

We live in a neighboring district. Here's my impression of Cupertino schools and parents:

1. Likely very high pressure. Last summer, my eldest often attended a Sunday gaming day in Cupertino. I'd drop him off and go to the library. Even on a Sunday in July, the quiet rooms and desks in other areas were always packed with kids doing AP summer coursework. They didn't look like they were there out of love of learning so much as out of compliance.

It was the same on a few occasions when I ended up at the library on non-Sundays during the summer. Very depressing.

IMO, this stuff starts in grade school. I suspect that there are an awful lot of tiger parents in Cupertino.

2. Cupertino schools are still California schools, and that's not a good thing. When we bought our house, our real estate agent (from Saratoga, another high-pressure district) told us that the reputations of the good local schools were due to the parents, not the schools themselves. There was a lot of truth in that statement. Kumon and other tutoring services are very, very popular around here.

3. I worked at a skating rink in Cupertino for a while on Saturdays. The first thing they told me when I started was to stay in the center of the rink on report card days to avoid the parents, who would get angry at me for not passing their snowflakes from, say, pre-Alpha to Alpha. In the end, the parents would just sign the kids up for Alpha anyway, and you'd end up with students who hadn't mastered the skills necessary for that level. One of the teachers once had a class she called "pre-freestyle-2" because none of her students had passed freestyle 1 but all had been enrolled in level 2. She mostly taught them the level 1 skills.

This is my way of saying that the pressure for externally visible success in Cupertino is very high.

4. You will pay $1 million for a shack on a postage-stamp-sized-lot in Cupertino.