Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Gifted schools - Are they only for the wealthy?

I can only speak about California schools here.

In my area of this state (Bay area), the public schools are basically atrocious. The courses are watered down (see our recent discussion about geometry textbooks), the teachers and principals that I've encountered are mostly not really well-qualified, and the schools are poorly run. Add to this our ridiculous budget deficit and you get a disaster of superficial teaching.

In contrast, the private schools tend to be better-run and the teachers are better qualified and more responsive to gifted kids. They don't truncate the school year, either. We send our kids to private schools because we had no choice. Our eldest skipped two grades thanks to private schools. My DD7 skipped kindergarten because the staff at the private school said that it was "obviously the right choice." Yet the principals of the local public schools all told me that they are generally against grade skips. My eldest is in a charter this year (complicated reasons why) that advertises itself as being all about math and science, yet his math teacher believes "there's no such thing as a mathy mind" and teaches basic, superficial geometry at a snail's pace. Other courses (to be fair, not all of them) lack depth and go for memorization of facts without delving much into ideas. Etc.

Private schools aren't perfect. We've had our share of frustrations with them. But they don't compare to the frustrations we've had over the last few months with the charter school. YMMV. I know there are great public schools and woeful private ones. I wish I could send all my kids to public schools. I really do.


Yes, but think of how miserable your kids will be for 7 hours a day in the wrong school. I'm NOT saying that private schools are better! I know nothing of schools in your area.

I'm just saying that you might want to be careful about thinking that tutoring or summer trips can solve a problem that your child deals with all day, five days a week, in school. As only one example, what if he has a ton of busywork as homework and teacher won't exempt him from doing it (a real possibility)? He might be too tired for tutoring after doing a sheet of 30 6+8 type problems when he's doing 6587/124. Summer trips are great in July, but they can't cure what happens during, say, November, when there are still months and months to go until that magical day in June (or May, as the case is around here).