<p>My daughter attended a public high school with academics that were dismal by comparison to the prep schools discussed in the article-- and only reasonably good for public high school standards. She finds academics at Barnard/Columbia to be challenging, but something that she can reasonably handle. She has a decent foundation for college work and she finds the time management issues easier in college than in high school, simply because there is not as much time wasted sitting in class on a daily basis – that is, at least she doesn’t have to attend classes from 8 am to 3 pm daily, nor sit around wasting time in a classroom while nothing is being learned – so the use of class & study time at college is far more efficient. And she is <em>emotionally</em> well prepared for college – that is, she spent her high school years being a normal teenager, with a good balance between school, EC’s, & healthy social life. </p>
<p>So all-in-all, I would have liked to see academics at my daughter’s high school strengthened somewhat, but given the choice between her “B” level high school and the academic powerhouses described in the article, I’m glad my kid spent her teen years faced with age-appropriate expectations. I am seeing her intellectually stretched at college, but it seems like a good stretch at the right time.</p>