Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Regions Boston area schools advice?

Lexington is one town in particular that is filled with MIT/Harvard/high-tech/bio-tech folks. It's true that the kids there tend to be bright because of the skewed population. It's also true that there's a competitiveness in this town that you may not find elsewhere; I know Concord and Bedford, for instance are less competitive than Lexington. The other issue is that Lexington is quite expensive, though not as much as Weston which is the most expensive in the state and has the top school system in the state as well.

I will say that I love Lexington and especially the playground with a full bathroom by the high school. We were looking to buy there last year as well as other towns west of Boston. I kept drawing that circle over and over again. When I discovered that Lexington and Concord do not address giftedness, I began to question. One of the issues for us is that my son has a late birthday so he would not have been in kindergarten until this September despite the fact last October he was already reading and writing at the 2nd grade level and bouncing off the walls in an integrated, pre-k program.

Lexington is considered to have a better school system than Arlington. I think Boston Magazine ranked it 4th in the state this year.
See http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/best_schools_2010_the_rankings/
But Arlington's Brackett elementary school is higher rated than Lexington's elementary schools - based on the MCAS tests.

I spoke with a teacher at a Lexington school fair last spring. This teacher lived in Arlington and said that the kids in Lexington have access to more resources (i.e. extra help, music, arts), than many kids in the Arlington schools. Take this with a grain of salt though.

That said, I know some parents with gifted kids moved out of Lexington because the schools did not want to differentiate the curriculum for them. These parents banded with others in Winchester (another top school system) who were frustrated over the issues of giftedness to create the Anova school in Melrose.

West of Boston has some excellent school systems, but there are other areas of the state as well with equally excellent school systems (Hamilton-Wenham, Topsfield, and Hingham come to mind).

Visit the playgrounds and area and talk to other parents. You'll hear what I'm talking about. There's a perception within the state that you've got to get your kid into a school system like Lexington or Newton or else you've doomed your child to failure. I disagree with this perception, especially if you have a gifted kid.

Some of the school systems west of Boston are a bit obsessed with MCAS and testing. It looks good on paper to see the high test scores and it helps boost property values, but there is a flip side to the testing and hamster treadmill approach to education.

I'm just saying that there other factors to consider when looking at the various towns and school systems.

Sage School is located in Foxboro. It's expensive.

Hi cdfox - I see what you mean about various factors to balance. Thanks for giving some more thoughts and examples.

Everyone's thoughts and links are very helpful.

I do a lot of special ed consulting and as such see many school districts and am familiar with the culture and resources. cdfox has hit it spot on. Lexington is very competitive and has an excellent program for bright kids (without learning disabilities!), but you need to be cookie cutter. Concord is also high - performing, but the culture is a bit more inclusive and less high powered. Acton Boxboro is also high performing and has a similar, competitive culture to Lexington, but in a more rural setting. I'm less impressed in with Arlington. I am very familiar without the North Shore Schools, and agree that Hamilton/Whenham and Topsfield/Boxford/Middleton are the best on the North Shore, they are much more relaxed than those in the metro west area - and in general test scores are slightly lower. If you are looking north or north east of Boston, I'd also look at Andover (not North Andover).

I don't have any personal information to help you, but I did want to mention that in Hernandez' A is for Admission book (college stuff) Acton-Boxboro Regional (public high) is on the list of schools with the highest acceptance rate to Dartmouth (which is a stand in for "Ivy League" ). It's up there on the top ten list with Phillips Exeter, Phillips Academy, Deerfield Academy, etc. Just an FYI while you are considering your options.

I note that Mich has also mentioned this school district (and its competitive culture), and with first hand experience, may be able to give you more information if you want it. I don't know about this, but I imagine that Acton is just far enough west to be a little more affordable than Lexington...

Ok so Boston is now officially on the radar for us, I appreciate those who have shared personal info. Mich, do you have any info. on where we might find a district that would work for my 7 yr old son with Down syndrome (high functioning for lack of a better term), as well as dd10 (MG+?) and dd4 (some sort of gifted--I think >MG). (Oh--and financially I am thinking that towns like Lexington would be prob. too big of a stretch financially--will check out Acton. Thanks for any feedback!

(Been reading this board on and off for a while, but now I actually have something to say that's constructive! Yay!)

We bought a house in Arlington because of the same amenities that the OP wants - proximity to Cambridge's jobs, excellent subway/bus access, vibrant culture, high civic engagement, lots of people in high tech and academia. But that was before we had a child. Turns out that Arlington's school system, while good, is not as good as some of the more expensive Boston suburbs... and it's especially thin for highly gifted children. I know several such kids who are homeschooled, and several others who go to private schools.

But we stayed in Arlington, because we just weren't sure about pulling up stakes and moving to a much more expensive house, just for the option of public schools we may not ever use anyway! We saved our money, swallowed hard, and looked at private schools instead. (DS is in K this year.)

We tried one school, but it wasn't a good fit - they differentiated, but not enough, and he was bored and stressed. In January, we transferred him to The Birches (http://birchesschool.org), a new "one-room schoolhouse" in Lincoln. Much better! It's a multi-age classroom, not exclusively for gifted kids, with a ton of science and nature work. He works at his own level in math, Spanish, writing, etc., but he can still be a kindergartner socially. And the teachers are fantastic. They really "get it" about gifted education.

Stepping back a bit... one of the interesting things about the Boston area is that when parents get frustrated enough to start their own school, they do. :-) Several schools around here are very new: Birches, Tremont, and Acera (formerly Anova), just to name three. Plus homeschooling groups, and math programs, and "maker spaces" like Einstein's Workshop. There's a *lot* of entrepreneurial energy around here. Definitely don't limit yourself to the public schools, with a gifted kid! Such kids, especially those with unusual combinations of abilities and asynchronies, are not served well in Massachusetts schools. GT education is severely underfunded here (though MA schools are good overall, compared to national averages), and MCAS/NCLB plus budget cuts assure that gifted kids won't be prioritized anytime soon in most towns. Other entities pick up the slack, but at a cost. Be prepared for that.

(BTW, Aimee Yermish rocks. You should absolutely contact her if you haven't already.)