Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Regions Bay Area public middle and high school

Hi,

We're looking at private middle schools for our gifted 5th grader and have not found a best fit. Can anyone share information and experience about public schools?

We've had poor experience with our local public elementary school. Despite its beautiful campus, wonderful facilities, dedicated teachers, and well-behaved kids, the curriculum based on Common Core just does not work. We had to opt for private schools, which offer more acceleration and differentiation.

My question is, are public middle and high schools different? Is there a different philosophy, ideology or approach to gifted education after elementary school? Is there more acceleration and differentiation in middle and high school? I know students graduating from Gunn or Paly get top SAT scores. How do they get there, if they are taught single-digit addition and phonics at 2nd grade?

Thanks for any input!

Hi Totoro,

Welcome to the forum.

Where are you? Feel free to PM me (click on my name and then choose send a PM). We're in the Bay area. I can offer meandering advice on the schools that my kids have attended and that we've looked at here.

Re: Gunn and Paly. Very high pressure. Also, a lot of the success of the public schools here is due to both the parents and the talent levels of the students.

Middle and private schools depend on where you live.

Did you say phonics in 2nd grade??? That makes your school district the most rigorous and advanced in the bay area! (just kidding - ours only taught sight words).

There is a lot of parental involvement in the kids' success in the bay area (notably in a few school districts, especially PAUSD). Where there is a high density of very gifted adults there is a high density of gifted children as well. And people worried about SAT scores and Ivy admission prospects flock to these "elite" school districts.

That being said, I heard that the rigor in public schools ramps up after 8th grade (I have no first hand experience, just heard rumors).

ETA: Have you seen the number of "tutoring" places (RSM, Kumon, Mathnasiums, Sylvans) and SAT Prep places littering PAUSD and CUSD areas? Rumor has it that many of them have waiting lists.

We're in MPCSD, Menlo Park. Our experience is that parents only get to get involved with "extracurricular" stuff, such as art programs, field trips, drama, STEAM fair, etc. But there seems to be nothing we can do about the "academic." After we complained that our child should be doing more than "2 plus 3" the teacher gave him "20 plus 30."

My concern is not so much about how our children can learn math--we've used Aleks, Khan Academy and other paper and online resources, plus we can hire a tutor or do Kumon. But they spend 6 hours at school daily being bored.

Will changes start in 6th grade, or 9th? When do public schools finally attend to academic rigor?

In our school district, my "grade accelerated" son got worksheets with 13+14 instead of 3+4! I heard from several neighborhood parents that the academics in middle schools in the local PS were "very easy with low workload" with very little homework (we live in the south bay) - so, it seems to me that the rigor and challenge is not much in middle school either. 9th grade is likely the point where the rigor picks up (lots of kids complaining about things getting "hard").
Speaking of elementary school only - in our area, parents ask teachers to include "creative thinking and problem solving" components to the math curriculum (parents are on "site committees" and the PTA pushes a lot - so they send MOEMs problems as homework 1 day of the week and do "MathLab" activity every month). But, there is not much that can be done for a child who desires to learn more than what is being offered during the school day. There are other things like hands on science experiments, learning to type, social studies, making various crafts and artwork, presenting topics to the class, class plays, PE, recess, "Project Cornerstone", music, Librarian story time, carnivals, parades, field trips etc that made the time that my son spent in PS worth his while. So, it was not a complete washout. And it did give him ample time and energy to after school!