After reading the thread about Tiger Moms and Ivy League schools, this caught my eye.
In court papers, Nicole Imprescia suggests York Avenue Preschool jeopardized little Lucia's chances of getting into an elite private school or, one day, the Ivy League.
She's demanding a refund of the $19,000 tuition and class-action status for other toddlers who weren't properly prepped for the standardized test that can mean the difference between Dalton and - gasp! - public school.
Read more:
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local...ughters_ivy_league_ch.html#ixzz1GnTWAQt9
Well, I can see that these parents are taking this MIGHTILY seriously...
Hmmm.
How to say... ummm...
I guess maybe my perspective is colored a bit by not having attended an Ivy... or maybe by the fact that my child is beyond elementary school, I don't know.
But--
well, no, there just isn't a 'nice' way of saying what I'm thinking here.
And people have accused
us of hot-housing and being pushy... Yikes.
I don't understand the pricing model of private schools. I know it's not the common purchase you can just return. I know this because a friend of mine was not due a refund on her daughter's Montessori tuition when the school turned out not to be a good fit for her son because her daughter still qualified for the program, nevermind the fact that it would be driving out of her way to take her preschool daughter to the school to the school if her school-age son was no longer attending. So that's how a school contract goes apparently.
If the lady in the story paid for French classes and test prep and museum field trips it was wrong for her to only get daycare and block sorting. It was unwise for her to muse on the future educational implications and what was her lawyer thinking?!
But that is judging the story at face value only and based only on the way it was worded to us. Perhaps the two year old shapes and colors class was the appropriate test prep class for that child. My 3.5 year old would tank a 4 yr. Old SAT based on color recognition because he recklessly labels black, brown, and navy blue interchangeably, for example. And while he loves tanagram-style puzzles and tesselations thanks to Nanny IPhone and lately Neopets, he would need to be taught the names of hexagons and octagons and parallelograms which would more than likely be on the test.
We can give everybody the benefit of the doubt and assume the child was put in the appropriate class for that reason. The mother, unaware of this came to get her child. Outraged, the mother demanded an explination from the nearest member of the staff who, in an effort to explain did that causation/assumption error thing when she saw a four year old in the two year old class at the same time there was construction in the four year olds area, the rest of whom, by the way, were at the museum.
I guess maybe my perspective is colored a bit by not having attended an Ivy... or maybe by the fact that my child is beyond elementary school, I don't know.
Well, gosh, it's just far too late for you to think about the Ivy League, then! Didn't you know you have to make sure they're born in the right hospital to get into those schools?
LMAO at the comment below that story that says she should send the kid to public school and send the $19k yearly to the Ivy League school as a donation, which will guarantee they'll take her when it's time!
This story has been huge in some circles in NYC but I thought the author might have missed the point. There is a perception here about feeder schools, you get into the "right" preschool, it gets you into the "right" private which then puts you on the path to the ivies - and even then they rank with harvard, Yale and Princeton being SOOOO much better than the others. And there are very strongly held beliefs about some excellent, expensive schools and some expensive mediocre ones! Bottom line, even with economic downturn the pool of applicants for these schools is still larger than the number of seats, so parents get desperate - not usually as desperate as this woman but it's possible she really did think she was screwed.
DeHe
Here's a
timely piece on the subject:
In the next few weeks, hundreds of thousands of high school seniors around the world will begin hearing from colleges and universities in this country about whether they have been lucky enough to be accepted for admission. But will it turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory if they get in?
...
...is the much-sought-after four-year education at the nation�s elite colleges and universities even worth it anymore?
Increasingly, the anecdotal evidence against spending such outlandishly high sums of money is looking more and more persuasive.
...
For most people � if they can afford it, or are fortunate enough to get financial aid � a college degree has historically been a solid investment. Whether the calculus still holds in a shrinking job market when the cost of that education is $52,000 a year, and rising steadily, remains to be seen.
It's an interesting piece.
Val
erm ok then yeah! flip and we are the pushy ones when we just want our kids to enjoy school?
although I can understand the reason these top schools charge so much, I don't know if it's really worth it any more. Life is no longer about "work hard at school to get a good job". More and more its about experience, attitude and ability instead of just your school.
More and more life is becoming about the small business and not corporates.
well at least here it is. Besides which here in SA there are SERIOUS quotas to dictate who gets into the top degrees regardless of the school you attended beforehand. in fact, I don't know that here any preference is offered for those who attended the top private schools.