Here are some of the gifted schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. A good start is
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/schools.htm and I also recommend this in general
http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/table_of_contents.htmI will try to stay objective in this initial post. Subjective comments can be added to this thread, particularly if you have actually participated in one of these. There is also some discussion at
http://www.greatschools.org/ and at
http://www.yelp.com. See also
http://www.pampclub.org/ and
http://parents.berkeley.edu/. None of these are strictly about gifted, but some parents discuss some relvant schools. See also
http://www.glassdoor.com/ for former employees grousing. Bear in mind that people do tend to be more motivated to post negative than positive.
http://www.sfbaghs.org/ has a google mailing list and hundreds of members and frequent gatherings. They are focused on actively homeschooling gifted children in the Bay Area. You can usually participate for a while but if you don’t end up homeschooling after all you then withdraw. They don’t support a wider ranging discussion of public/private schools.
And that’s why I’m starting this thread. And note that home schooling is a very viable option in the Bay Area. So here are some "gifted" schools in the Bay Area:
http://www.altavistaschoolsf.org/https://www.altschool.com/http://www.athenaacademy.org/http://www.baywoodlearningcenter.org/ http://www.beachhigh.education/http://ourgiftedchildren.net/http://www.gateacademy.org/http://www.harker.org/http://www.heliosns.org/http://www.hillbrook.org/http://mcnaughtschool.org/http://www.nuevaschool.org/http://www.odysseyms.org/http://www.synapseschool.org/These schools range from small to large, from a few grades to K-12. Note that your mileage may vary as far as what gifted means in practice at each of these schools. There are schools that use the word gifted on their website but don’t in practice do much with it except file away an optional IQ test. Conversely there are schools that don’t use the word gifted, but where a gifted child can do well. For example AltSchool’s goal is to customize every student’s education. And there are school districts like Palo Alto who stopped even using IQ tests. Since, all their students are gifted…
How do you define gifted, and how does the school? Do they IQ test applicants? What do gifted students need and how does their school provide it? Which of their staff have background in gifted? How many of their students are how gifted?
