Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments How did you choose your child's school?

I live in a city of almost one million people, and we have no school for gifted students. I don't know if I would choose that option for my daughter, but it sure would be nice to have the option!

For those of you that do not homeschool, how did you choose your child's school?

What do you think of:

Montessori?
Non-graded school (i.e. no letter grades)?
All-girls education?
Public School?
Private school with small classes?
French immersion?
Sign language school?
...

What kind of schools did you consider?

Well, we went with our local neighborhood public school. It's a 5 minute walk and having DS there has really connected us to our neighbors and community. That was our first choice and we wanted to give it a fair chance, even though they have minimal gifted programs. If that had failed, we would have probably looked elsewhere, but we were lucky and have never needed to.

We can't afford the private schools around here. Our kids attend the local public school. There is no choice of schools since our district is overcrowded.

We chose French immersion initially. Immersion programs can be excellent choices for gifted kids, especially if they don't speak the language to begin with (it helps if one parent can at least get by in the language).

The French schools are good choices because they follow the national curriculum of France. It's all very organized, and the kids really learn how to read, write, and think in the language. The ability of these schools to achieve this in a short period is just outstanding.

The French part was great for our DS8 for about ~3 years, though there were always problems with the English side. After that, the only subject that was any kind challenge was French grammar. We kept him there for 4 years and he is now able to attend after-school grade-level classes for native speakers (the standards are slightly higher, given that almost everyone speaks French as a native language).

Our DS6 didn't thrive in the French school and given the situation of both kids, we moved to a school that's more suited to gifted kids. It's a very small private school.

The public schools would have been a disaster. I called a few local ones last year when we had decided to pull out of the French one, and they were all very, very down on grade skips or even subject acceleration. We're very fortunate that we can send our kids to a private school, and are very, very aware that the precarious economy might mean it isn't an option next year.

Hope this helps. What are you considering?

Val

You know, one, I'm not sure how helpful this will be to you in the decision-making process. I say that because any given school can work for *some* GT child somewhere, depending upon personality and the specifics of teacher and child. But what works spectacularly for one child is going to be intellectual and social death for another.

Not to mention the fact that school philosophies are not always translated into practice consistently from building to building, so even if we all agreed that X philosophy is ideal, it might not play out that way in the actual school your child would attend.

I suspect you'd have better luck if you take a close look at the schools in your area instead of looking for generalizations here. This forum is great for giving you ideas about questions to ask and things to look for as you go. But since there's no specifically wrong school for GT kids, nor any "best" school for them, any info you get here is more conversation than practical help, I'm afraid.

I don't mean to sound negative, and I always love to hear about what others are doing for their kids. But I don't think it will/should really have much affect on your specific school decisions.

I am doing the school search/application now. Being in NYC, there are gifted options. You do have to do the test thing to qualify, but there are differences in the options. We are not looking at private options, except a Jesuit school because the privates have a DOB cut-off of 9/1 while public is 12/31.

I tour the schools, I ask questions. What I like most of the gifted schools is that your child will be with other kids that stimulate thought. And she will find friends there. This past summer at the beach, I noticed a change in DD when she played with another child, 6 months older and very smart. Before she didn't care for her, just a personality mismatch, but this summer, she sort of overlooked the personality in order to have the interactive play at her level. It was a slow, push/pull process over the summer, but by mid-summer it was noticeable how she wanted to play with the other girl and how she wanted to play. Which made me think about my playmates. My closest buddy throughout my childhood, despite very different personalities, did physics and a doctorate in nuclear engineering. She got offered classified jobs before she was 2 years into her PhD.

In my opinion, having the peer group is important.

Ren

Don't forget speaking skills.

The French intellectuals and business leaders I have met have very impressive extemporaneous speaking and verbal reasoning skills.

The best schools I went to tested me and then put me in with my skill-peers. I suppose you could read some of the horror stories on here and then know what the "No WAY" list will look like.

Yes, that's true. Both my kids have excellent French accents, and it's also true that the curriculum goes much deeper than the US one, in general. They read lots of books (no short passages followed by multiple choice questions in France), write more essays, and give more presentations. In short, the French system does a good job of teaching people how to form ideas and draw conclusions.

My husband has made the same observations (he worked with a lot of French people for a while). France seems to be quite open to grade skips compared to the US, too.

We discovered that the after-school program goes a long way toward providing these skills at a much lower cost. When combined with an ability-grouped school, the choice was easy.

Val

Where we are there are essentially Private (religious) schools and public schools.

We chose the Catholic School because we were members of the church and it appeared that the school was able to produce excellent scores on testing and were warm and friendly.

Plenty had been said about the local public schools that scared us away from even considering them.

We regret that we did not have the insight to know what to ask. Clearly, we "judged the book by it's cover.". What we discovered was that they offered no differentiation, no ability to assess or address gifted or LD children and no desire to do so. Instead, they made it a nightmare for my family.

My dds are in a public school now. It is not fancy or high on the list of wonderful schools, but they are so pleased to have my dds that when we ask, they respond (not always timely, but it is taken seriously and accomadations are made within the mandated structure). At this point, we are most frustrated with the time line.

So, is the situation perfect? no. Better than the Catholic School? hands down.

Homeschool is not an option, but I do supplement at home.

pardon the spelling errors!