What is going on in TX is very different than what happens in NC. There are some good things about the 7% rule. But it disadvantages some very high achieving students.
Ha, ha, you don’t have to be first cello! Of course you don’t! And if you start playing cello in 5th grade (around here), you are extremely unlikely to ever be better than about 10th cello. Choosing cello over the viola, where those who start in 5th grade might be first chair eventually, is just one of many choices (in this case, QMP’s, based on the sound of the instrument, and little interest in being first chair, even if it were in range). All of the students in the first four cello chairs (at least) practiced multiple hours per day. One of them was written up in a mid-size newspaper (not just the community news) for going to an exclusive summer program with true master teachers. Others also went to good strings intensives during the summer.
I apparently haven’t made my particular point very well. The challenge that I saw for QMP was not about getting into a “tippy-top” school, though QMP did that, and did well there. Going back to my comment that the military academies treat homework assignments as “an order,” I feel that a student should take homework assignments seriously. It was very hard for me to give up on this idea, in advising QMP. Reciprocally, I feel that the teachers should make the homework assignments reasonable, in terms of the time they take. Teachers who had children who had already gone through high school tended on the whole to do that better than the newer, younger teachers. My PhD advisor once remarked to me that the ratio between the time a project takes and the time you think it will take is pi. This seemed to be true of the younger teachers especially–they underestimated the time their assignments would take by quite a lot–although it was not really limited to them.
Perfectionism is in the eye of the beholder. Just speaking in terms of my own work and not QMP’s, people with higher standards than I have are perfectionists. People with appreciably lower standards are just “slopping it out.” 
In case you have not read the entire thread (!), one of my colleagues actually encouraged another to avoid working so hard on his publications, and just “slop them out.”
At the root of QMP’s particular challenge was the “AND,” a time-demanding EC of her choice–and actual passion. Although I saw some benefits in it, really, I didn’t even like it. And I also did not like the demands on parental time (read maternal time) that came with it, plus the mandatory volunteering. But I wasn’t going to tell her to cut it out, as long as she was managing.
The only way to know that, @TheGFG, would be to know what goes on in other high schools. Perhaps our high school would get more kids into the Ivies if the coursework were more demanding and the environment more competitive. Out of a class of 100, there is one who gets into Cornell (they seem to only want to take one a year) and maybe one who gets into another Ivy. In my daughter’s class, plenty of kids got into very good schools (Rochester, Brandeis, Richmond, RPI, Lehigh). I’m sure there were some disappointed applicants who didn’t get into Penn and Brown.
It would not have been worth it to my daughter, who is not suited to a hyper-competitve environment. But, that’s just her.
I don’t know what the solution to this is. As I have said, at least in math we were lucky. My son did maybe 10 minutes of homework a night for AP Calc.
But I do know that perceptions of homework can be very different. I was at a meeting one night where some parents were complaining that there was too much homework, and I knew for a fact that my kid did most of the homework for that class in the free time in the classroom. He read fast, did a lot of multi-tasking and preserved as much of his time at home for the stuff he was interested in, which wasn’t homework!
But if I discovered I was in one of these systems, I might well consider homeschooling or moving. We are lucky to live in a county with a lot of different districts cheek by jowl with each other. Lots of choices and you don’t have to live in Scarsdale to get a good education and get into a selective college.
Yes some people are luckier than others in what schools, and other educational options, are available to them. I believe that. If we have control over changing those options for our kids, we are really privileged.
removed
Isn’t this thread about helicoptering? If so, how is homeschooling to avoid a stressful school better than advocating for your kid at the stressful school? How is moving to another district at great inconvenience to everyone involved better than advocating at the school your zoned for? To me, those are actions I would take after I tried everything else within reason.
Don’t underestimate the value of showing balance and grounding, when you apply. In hs, the hierarchy (how top performers are viewed) can be “more this and more that, better this and better that.” With holistic at elites, it’s a different spin. Your choices can be representative of your thinking.
Plus, remember that you have an app to get through. For elites, today, all the resume in the world can’t replace the thinking and judgment you show- or not. There are kids out there who take the 15 AP, score 5’s, and blow it.
I know most of the parents here are savvy. And like some threads, this one needed a lot of time to get some perspective out for others to see. There are some situations that are tough.
I was an Apache Helicopter. It doesn’t seem to have damaged my kids’ long term prospects. They don’t even need me for anything at the present time. However, if I go help out with the hypothetical grandchildren, will that make me a helicopter grandmother? If I move in so both parents can continue to work schedules that make 8 hours sleep impossible, will I be an Apache Helicopter grandmother? or maybe it just makes me an Apache Helicopter mother once again?
What does post #187 mean in the context of this thread? What judgment are you referring to? Do you think a student could actually exercise his judgment that he needs more sleep and therefore will only do 50 out of the 100 math problems, and then simply slip that excuse for a lower grade into a brilliant essay on his college application?
@TheGFG Actually some of them are doing their own laundry and cleaning. Probably only a few. I have four kids and my youngest is one of those exceptional kids who will apply to Ivies. He has the credentials plus the “and”. He is completely self-driven and is fueled by learning. He self-studied the week before his ACT using a book he asked me to buy him on Amazon and got a 35. That’s just him. My others kids, good students, are at state schools well-matched for them where they will be successful. None of them even looked at top schools, those would not have been a good match. I am trying to support my one crazy-smart high-achiever the same way. Since this is unfamiliar territory for me, I joined this site to better support him in selecting a school that is appropriately challenging for him. For parents who think every exceptional child was “made” not “born”, you just might not have one. I think students who are “made” may end up at a school that is not the best match. fyi: he would play his flute for hours but left his clothes in the dryer. He wore wrinkly clothes for middle and high school.
My examples were unethical, highly so, but the parents were so blinded by their desire to help their kids (who only get to grow up once) that they didn’t see it that way. I’m sure the referee believed his child was talented enough to deserve more playing time (or at least deserved a fairer share of playing time to get the needed experience to improve). So it more than justified in his mind trying to use his status as a key volunteer to get the child that fair shake. The theater parent raised arguably legitimate (if ordinarily inconsequential) complaints about the producer and surely felt justified in using their influence to get the board to act. The result (in their view) was a fairer opportunity for their child to gain valuable performance experience. The parents who combined to get the school to let their kids drop the AP class surely believed their children had been wronged by the teacher and that the progress report grade did not properly reflect their student’s performance.
I can’t tell you how many times I have seen people act in ways totally contrary to their normal selves when it involves protecting their kids in some way. In the soccer context, yelling at refs is most common. But I’ve even had opposing parents actually taunt U11 players during a game. Sometimes they don’t even realize what they are doing. Those are the types of parents that need to ask themselves what their exact purpose is in attending the game. People who perform unethically typically either don’t see their actions as unethical or believe the current context (e.g., protecting their kid) justifies an exception.
Well I see the parents banding together to allow the floundering students to drop out as a good thing. It allowed the rest of the class to have a better experience presumably. What the GFG and others are saying is that in their schools the problem is busywork. There’s better busywork in the AP classes, but there’s still too much of it. I’m not saying I like the idea of pulling out a kid and homeschooling them, but I considered it when my oldest was unhappy with the pace of things in elementary school. I know how much it work it takes to try to change a school system. Mostly it can’t be done. If you are lucky you get tiny incremental changes. That’s if you can get a large enough group of parents to agree there is an issue.
As far as I know my son was the first ever in the time of our principal to be allowed to grade skip in math. His first teacher and I advocated for months before the move was finally okayed. And the next year it was as if nothing had ever happened. That year’s teacher insisted on making him do individualized (and pretty inappropriate) worksheets on his own in the classroom. Middle school where moving ahead in math should have been easy, put roadblocks in our way again. I’ll say one thing for our high school - accelerating math was a total non-issue with them. Believe me, moving, private school or home school is the easier choice.
But we often get locked into our houses when the kids are babies and we don’t know the right questions to ask about a school system. I’m sure GFG’s school system is highly rated. Amusingly our high school got a Blue Ribbon award shortly before we moved to town. Part of the reason we chose the town - after that it regularly made the mid to bottom half of the county lists. Hmmm. By the time our kids were in high school we figured out that our kids would be all right there, but many parents make other decisions. I’ve known parents who sent at least one of their kids to private schools or even moved.
One data point: at our NYC suburban, highly ranked HS the average GPA accepted to CMU (based on not always reliable Naviance) and BC is just over a 4.0, for Vandy over a 4.2 and for Emory at 4. All SATs average 1400 to just under 1500 (on the 1600 scale). Within the band of acceptances, there were plenty of rejections, some WL, some WL with rejection. There are rare kids that got in with lower SATs and GPAs. BC appears to have fewer rejections for high stats kids than the others.
By the way, our HS limits the honors and APs available (no APs until sophomore year and then only AP Euro and for GT kids AP bio) and only 2 courses can be honors level freshman year. APs in science require the regular course be taken first (unlike other districts which allow AP physics without taking any other physics class). Thus, the highest possible GPA is probably around a 4.3 or a little higher. Thus, the kids getting into to these colleges had mostly As with an occasional B or B+ in an AP class. And these kids are competing with each other and with those from the other 100 or so most competitive high schools in the NE for these highly desirable but not quite Ivy colleges.
Again, plenty of good colleges out there, but for a kid that is aiming really high and is driven, it usually requires a lot of effort as well as a lot of ability. There are those rare kids that can do very little work and still get As, but those are very rare indeed at competitive high schools.
I was primarily reacting to your claim that since you were writing the check, the school was contracting with you and not your child/student. The inference I got was that since you believed you were a party to the contract, you had the rights that went along with that status.
So a child is in a tough spot, eg. an overly-demanding high school. The parent decides to sell the house they’ve lived in for 30 years, thereby uprooting herself and other family members, and move to a new school district to enable said child to escape a difficult and uncomfortable situation and experience a more relaxed academic life. But that’s somehow NOT helicoptering? And what will the parent do when the child has an overly demanding professor or boss? Help the student to transfer to another university, tell him to quit the job? Those are always the next questions the anti-helicoptering group asks.
@mathmom LOL! I have a lot of reasons for homeschooling and have been doing so since 1994, but easier choice has never been a factor. Homeschooling well is a tremendous amt of work as well as a tremendous responsibility. (When you create that transcript and know the buck stops with you, the knowledge that their future academic success reflects on your having prepared them for all the coursework they will face, it is not for the faint of heart.) I personally can’t imagine dealing with the bureaucracy of a school system, but it does not mean that what we are doing at home is the easier path. It is a different category completely. But, I am not one who believes homeschooling is for everyone or that everyone can do it well.
(And fwiw, in terms of the topic in general, homeschooling does not mean that my kids’ workloads are lighter and less demanding than the local schools. They are not really comparable bc our approach to education is different both philosophically and methodologically. But my kids work loads are intense and demanding bc I am a demanding teacher with high expectations.)
There are parents who–for cultural reasons, often–believe that kids should have three or four hours of homework and studying every night. I think it could very well happen that if you are in a school with a lot of families like that, you might see pushback if you make complaints about excessive homework. That’s a tough situation to be in. (What’s more, there might be a few fast-working kids who can do all that work in a reasonable amount of time–kids who mess up the curve.)
I’m still waiting for evidence that in states other than California and Texas, there are high grade/high stats kids (for the sake of argument, let’s say with no EC’s except for a part time job as a waitress or folding sweaters at Old Navy) who can’t get into their state U’s- flagship or otherwise (since the point was made that it’s not just the flagships- it trickling down to the directionals as well.)
And don’t tell me your area is so depressed that kids can’t get jobs as waitresses. I get that. So fill in the blank- a high stats kid whose only EC is raking leaves or painting fences.
Which state won’t admit that kid? It ain’t Maine, NH, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, or CT (for in-state).
your turn.
Blossom, I’ll add that it’s not NC. We have two great publics (NCSU UNC), that a kid can get into one or the other or both. I would throw out the same for VA (VT UVA), but I am sure someone will flame me for putting those two schools in the same sentence.