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The problem with your analysis is that it's not random. Higher IQ parents will tend to cluster and bring their kids with them. Even brilliant ne'er-do-wells like myself who'd otherwise be living hand to mouth are pulled into the cluster by our spouse choice.


Depends on the school. You want flexible, a school that doesn't claim to have all the answers and so can accommodate variability. By only having gifted they at least reduce the variability, creating a cluster and increasing the odds of your kid not being the smartest one in the room.

Now that we have a great educational fit I am not here nearly as often. I come here intentionally to help others if I can.

I'm offended by your implication that people with older children are somehow neglectful. Did you mean that how it sounded? Because I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not make a snarky reply. I composed an awesome one, just so's you know.

Have you ever considered that your child's personality will change and develop as she gets older and your perfect school will no longer be so perfect? Maybe she'll be a social butterfly, or a language whiz, or be obsessed with the outdoors/computers. Even if she fits the school, she'll need a middle school and a high school and a post-high school option all too soon.

I'm not sure what your chosen definition of a micro school is, because wikipedia says it's a school with smaller classes which meets only a couple of days a week, not necessarily a small number of students. If you just mean a very very small school my concern would be friends. My kids' school is growing at a controlled slow rate, and we all (kids, teachers, staff) are excited for new friend opportunities with each added student.

I disagree with this - We are in a recognised non cluster - particularly now that we lost a good portion of our population and had it replaced with construction workers (not commenting on their intelligence level - just lost lots of teachers and professionals. We live here because of my partners work - which is not related in any way to his talents (or I would strongly argue his intelligence.)

In our city I guess there are smallish clusters, but we are not in one, and I think the bigger clusters are in the north island. South Island tends to attract doers not thinkers.... (massive generalisation sorry!)

OK, In the endless hunt for appropriate academic options for DD, I've spoken to a couple of what I call boutique schools. Basically, these are very small, non accredited, admit based on IQ, etc. Here are the reasons we never considered these schools:

1. They were started by a single parent or small group of parents who were sick of not having anywhere for their smart kids to learn. Sounds nice, but my concern was that the school was created for those specific gifted kids and not lots of different kinds of gifted kids.

2. The schools didn't have a history of longevity. I got the feeling that I'd never feel secure from year to year whether the financials would work out and the school could keep running. It's one thing to leave a school that isn't working. It's another to have to shut down a school at any moment.

3. DD was also on the boundary of grade and middle school and, surprisingly, these schools seemed very unprepared to deal with older kids. Like it's all smart fun and games for the little ones, but what happens when you need algebra or middle school LA or whatever (which can be years earlier than expected). I found this lack of planning, disturbing (the one guarantee at a school is that your client base will get older with time).

Basically, I got the feeling that some mom with energy and time decided to build the perfect school for her little kid, and got other kids' families to pay to be a part of the kid's peer group.

This is a really valuable perspective. Thank you so much for sharing it, Ivy!

We are (happily) jumping ship from our large and lavish private school to a wee gifted school come September. I was initially reluctant, being very concerned about the long-term viability of the school and the centrality of the head of school to the operation. I have satisfied myself that the school does have a long range plan that is both prudent and feasible, but succession planning remains a concern. The reality for us, though, is that even with that uncertainty it is far and away the best option for our DC's immediate future. One thing I have learned from this board is to remain ready to change course!

I'll have a more useful report next year, but I can say that, so far, the difference in the communications I am having with administrators is astonishing. And wonderful.

The world "tend" does not imply a hard and fast rule. You don't happen to live in a cluster. Does that mean they don't exist, or don't happen very often? And no offence, I love NZ and kiwis, but it is such a tiny country (smaller than the metro area I live in, the whole population of the South Island is smaller than many cities, and they're certainly not within commuting distance of each other!), outliers are going to have few peers over the whole country, let alone in one very small town or city. But, I'll bet if you went to the suburb with single family homes closest to a large university you'd find the local school's IQ average was over 100, or the suburb where a hospital's staff tend to live, or some big engineering company.

oh man I typed up a very long response - long story short - read the rest of my posts - we do have some small clusters, just not 145+ - also I am familiar with the definition of tend.

I'm not offended that you mention how small NZ is, I'm trying not to be offended by the implication that its' size precludes me from having an opinion on this issue or your somewhat patronising tone.

We're running into this problem. DD's school owner and teacher is an early childhood teacher who opened her own school because she had a vision and her vision (exploring sustainability in depth, making time for free outdoor play, a heavy emphasis on actually teaching social skills, critical problem solving over skills and drills) was very closely aligned with ours for early childhood education.

But DD4 has been ready for higher math for some time, at least conceptually. It's not that I think she has to do it just because she can but she's been asking to do more math and science and I know she needs more. Thus, we're going to do mix-and-match next year.

I think for children who have strengths that make them outliers in that area, at some point, they would need a teacher/mentor who is highly trained in that area and a micro school teacher cannot be a specialist in everything for everyone.

While this may be true for a micro school, it may be equally true in a large public school teaching to the common core, with a stated goal of closing achievement gaps.