Sorry for the flood of new posts from me - It's neat to be in an (on-line) environment with parents in similar situations...

And speaking of peer issues...

I've been looking up various comparative test scores for the suburban public schools are kids are in and WILL be in (when H.S. comes) for some time. By most measures, they're moderately above average - good but not great.

Our district is large, with 4 high schools, and the one our kids are headed towards is the weakest, test-wise, of the 4.

Something inspired me to look at a different measure - National Merit Semifinalists. I was able to find lists online, compare them to rough school attendance, and...

The results are pretty ugly for our school. One NMSF in the last 3 years. There are roughly 297 kids per grade at our school, so the frequency (admittedly inexact with only 1 "hit") is close to 1 in 891.

At the other schools in the district, the frequency runs from about 1 in 47 to 1 in 121. At the best public H.S. in our area (not in our district), it's about 1 in 14, and at the best private school in our area about 1 in 4.3.

This is a dramatically larger spread than I would have guessed from looking at reported ACT averages.

Bottom line, it seems the average kid at our H.S. will be a perhaps moderately weaker than at some of these other schools, but the elite group will be MUCH smaller.

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Interestingly, within our district, despite the large difference in NMSF frequency across high schools, the general curriculum should be similar, funding levels and the like should be similar, and the G&T offerings and the like are similar. (There are some small difference that are more at the practical/implementation level.)

But this NMSF info makes me wonder a bit more about peer influences. According to my wife, aspirations of many parents at our school are to get their kids into our state flagship university (NOT a quasi-elite state U. like Cal, UVA, Mich.) Not surprisingly, we are aiming much higher...

Athletics seems a focus for many kids and parents, not so much on the academics.

That said, our kids have friends, and there are at least clusters of bright kids that our two older ones hang out with.

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Anyways, I realize intelligence and learning is not a process of osmosis. Having our kids at a school with a higher frequency of NMSF will not automatically improve our own kids' learning or make them NMSFs.

But, I also think being in an environment with a higher percentage of fairly elite students might help them internalize higher goals for themselves, would give them more gifted peers to interact with, and might at least subtly encourage the teachers of the challenge classes to aim higher with material and pacing.

It's kind of a "feel" thing, I guess, and like many, we're balancing a lot of trade-offs in education.

Thoughts?

Last edited by psteinx; 04/26/13 10:05 AM.