<p>Melin: Many people I know base their house purchase on the quality of the school district that is available with that house. In fact, they often pay a premium price for a house if the school district has a good reputation. That is what we did. However, the best in this town still isn’t very good. We would have to move out of our rather large state to get anything significantly better.</p>
<p>We have often considered whether we should move to get a chance at a better education for our children, but have decided that the overall quality of life here is too good to leave. And as I said, when I see what some students have to do to be in the ‘most rigorous class,’ I’m not unhappy that we stayed here.</p>
<p>Definitely. I’d note that my daughter’s request was turned down, with the following conversation with the teacher:</p>
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<p>The teacher never did “get it” – and the teacher would not allow my d. to go to the other class for reading because she said (correctly) that my d. would be bored there as well, because my d. was already reading at well beyond a 1st grade level. We did arrange for some specific in-class accommodations – but the teacher’s big objections were based on the “everybody” rationale. For example, it wasn’t o.k. for my d. to be excused from the reading lessons and allowed to do something else quietly on her own… because then “everybody” would want to be excused. </p>
<p>But part of the “lesson” was in asking, asserting, and negotiating. </p>
<p>Based on my own experience as a parent, I have a hard time believing that a kid in a classroom who truly feels out of place would not try to express their needs in some way.</p>
<p>It’s a matter of degree – and I think that’s what a lot of the wannabe’s are missing. By “wannabe” I mean the parents or kids who look at what some other kid got and wonder, “why wasn’t I told about that?”. The reason that those families weren’t moved to press for their particular accommodation is that they weren’t as motivated, and they weren’t as motivated because they didn’t feel the need as acutely.</p>
<p>The reality is that there are often a lot of hoops to jump through to get the extra opportunity. At the elementary school level, some parents have been told 10 times over why they can’t have whatever they are seeking before they finally get to the “yes we can” part. </p>
<p>I really do feel that at the high school level the kids need to be developing those self-advocacy skills. I think qualities such as independence, initiative, confidence, or emotional maturity are all part of the same package as intellectual development – if I had a kid who was way ahead of the curve in some area of academics but too shy or self-conscious to express their needs at their school, then my priority would be to help them develop those interpersonal skills. (But in my case, I was doing exactly that starting from a much younger age – which is why I asked my 6 year old to write a letter. I didn’t need my 6 year old to tell me what to say to the teacher – but I did want the situation to be lesson #1 in self-advocacy.)</p>
<p>If he’s over 12, it is HIS responsibility too! I took my own responsibility to get the hell out of the Jackass High School that I was zoned to go and took the initiative to try to get out of the inadequacy of the situation I was gonna be in. Like many have said, not everyone succeeds, but the most important part is taking the initiative to do it. If you don’t do it then you got nothing to say.</p>
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<p>< Why are you so angry about all this?>
Because people keep blaming on the argument that parents determine where they live so the kids got nothing to do with it, and therefore, it’s not the student’s fault that his high school sucks compared to others, and so the colleges use the “in context of your high school.”
And I’m saying that that’s completely bullcrap. I took the initiative to change and move to a better school. Forget that I succeeded. It’s that a lot of kids don’t even think of doing it, and then tell others that it’s not their fault their high school sucks. It’s basically like not studying for a test and then blaming on the teacher for how hard the test was. See, if he studied and failed, that’s a whole different story. Not doing anything to better the situation and then blaming on parents or the school or where you live is not the same as actually trying your best and failing.</p>
<p>No, but you did need her to 1.) see another kid going to the 1st grade classroom; 2.) ask you if she could do the same. </p>
<p>It sounds as though it hadn’t occurred to you to ask whether she could move to another class for a subject… until your D saw another kid doing it and asked you about it.</p>
<p>You and your D learned from someone else what was possible.</p>
<p>You are a data point of exactly one when it comes to arguing that children can decide where they live and which school to attend. Don’t try to make it into evidence that every other child can do the same.</p>
<p>Intellectual development and emotional/social development don’t always go hand in hand. A child who is very advanced in math or music or something else may be socially immature, shy, reticent and unable to advocate for himself or herself or even express the fact that s/he is advanced. I would not make the ability to self-advocate the criterion for accommodation.
Our nephew who is borderline Asperger’s, could read on his own in kindergarten. He did not want to be read to at circle time, but he did not think to ask permission to choose a book and sit quietly in a corner to read it on his own. And because he failed to heed calls for him to come back to circle and sit down and listen, the teacher labelled him as “possibly ■■■■■■■■.” Luckily, his parents had him tested. And once the results were in, the school put him in the gifted program. Still, the Asperger’s and ADD continued to be a factor, requiring his parents’ constant advocacy in school and vigilance at home.</p>
<p>Our S did not complain to the teacher (he would have thought it was rude), but he complained to us. We did not know how seriously to take his complaints, though we knew he loved to learn more math outside school. He did write once in response to the question: “What did you learn in this unit?” “I did not learn anything I did not know already, nor did I learn anything new in the previous three units.” When we were shown that letter at a parent-teacher conference, tears came to my eyes. That was when we determined to make a serious effort to get him accelerated.</p>
Did you read my previous post(s) at all, regarding the multitude of reasons that a family might not “press” for accomodation? Certainly, some parents (e.g. mine) are not as motivated as you. Does that mean the kid with those parents are similarly unmotivated because they have been raised to NOT ask for special treatment? Does that change the unmet need in any way?</p>
<p>It’s great that you taught your D self-advocacy from such a young age. However, IMO students who do not have the benefit of such savvy parents should not be penalized and offered less opportunity. I learned self-advocacy the hard way, from seeing what other students whose parents were more pushy managed to achieve–if anything, my parents taught me the opposite of self-advocacy.</p>
<p>The person who takes responsibility ultimately ends up with control.</p>
<p>If the school takes all the responsibility, then the parents and students must work with whatever the school chooses to offer.</p>
<p>If the parents take all the responsibility, then the student must accept whatever the parent decides.</p>
<p>When the student learns to take responsibility, the student is able to advocate for things that the parents might not feel comfortable asking for, or the school may not have thought of. </p>
<p>Of course a very young child cannot take that responsibility – but to me, part of parenting is guiding the child to develop those abilities. My personal opinion is that the transition years in terms of school should coincide with middle school – and that by high school the kid should be able to handle 95% of the curriculum planning stuff on their own, with parental involvement reserved for extreme situations. Maybe some other parents have a different view of the schedule – that’s fine, they can raise their kids as they see fit – but they need to realize that their kids are sitting in classrooms with students who WILL be able to advocate for themselves or take advantages of opportunities when they crop up. Sometimes in high school, access and information is something that is communicated to students and not directly to parents. Sometimes it is an opportunity that arises on an ad hoc basis-- such as when a teacher needs a couple of volunteers with a task or there are a handful of free tickets available to a museum exhibit or concert.</p>
<p>melin, if a kid look into moving and it isn’t feasible, it’s still not his fault he goes to a crappy high school. He’s got to make do with what’s available to him where he is. </p>
<p>You don’t like that a college will take that into consideration. Doesn’t matter whether you like it or not; that’s the way it is. You can be angry about it all you want, and post all you want about other kids moving, as your family did, but that doesn’t change anything at all. </p>
<p>You sound very unhappy about your schooling, that you worked hard to get into a better school, and now think you’d have been better off – for college admissions – in your zoned school. Do I have that right? </p>
<p>If so, may I point out to you that you are going to high school to get an education. THAT is the point of high school.</p>
<p>I reiterate that calmom is a model American parent. That doesn’t mean her kid, however special, should be treated as more special than other equally bright kids with less perfect parents.</p>
It worked for my son. He didn’t get into his first choice MIT, but he did get into Harvard and is very happy at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science. He took all the big three AP science courses, AP Calc BC as a junior, and APUSH and AP Econ. He refused to take AP English or AP Euro as many of his friends did and had a much more enjoyable senior year. (CMU did not in fact seem to mind that he skipped both AP English offerings.) And of course it surely didn’t hurt him that he used the time that he didn’t spend writing English essays to do some pretty interesting things with computers. S2 is also skipping the AP English boat - and is loving his English class for the first time ever. It really makes me happy to see that. He is taking AP Euro because he loves history and loves the teacher.</p>
<p>Our high school offers two dozen or so APs, but happily we don’t seem to have gone AP crazy yet. It’s almost unheard of for freshman to take an AP. (Though my son did because he was following his passion - he took AP Computer Science when it was determined he’d taught himself everything and more that is the normal prerequisite.) A fair number of sophomores take AP Physics B or AP World, there might be a handful who take both. Most top juniors will take two APs, some take three APs - AP US, AP Eng Lang, an AP science are the usual offerings. A small number of students will take AP Calc as juniors. For Seniors it is my impression is the usual number of APs is 3 or 4. The top 25 kids in the class do very well. (i.e. they go to schools on CC’s top universities and LAC list and some get into the Ivy’s.) Our school profile lists the APs offered, and how many AP scholars they have, but they never actually say in the profile how many APs students take on average. So I’m not sure what colleges glean from close reading of the profile - except that there are a very small number of AP National Scholars. The only district I know that’s managed successfully to jump off the AP train is Scarsdale, and they have a long, long history of being anti-testing. They fought the Regent’s Tests too.</p>
<p>I’ve never asked the counselor directly whether the “hardest curriculum” is being checked off, because I don’t really care. I think my kids are taking courses that are appropriate for their interests and their abilities.</p>
<p>Melin: It is true that I decided where we would live. DS, as a 6 month old, had no say whatsoever when we moved here. And staying here is also my choice. It is the only hometown he has known. It is not his fault that he has limited educational options compared to all the fancier schools. However, he does not use this as an excuse for anything, and when he has to bust his tush next year, he won’t blame that on anyone or anything else either. He is not using his inferior educational experience as an excuse for poor scores, and in fact his scores make him competitive everywhere (except Caltech where his 750 in math puts him <25%, but maybe they’ll cut him a break since he comes from such an unexceptional HS :)). </p>
<p>Sounds like you may have run into some students for whom this is a crutch, but please understand that that is not the norm throughout this large country.</p>
<p>Keilexandra – you weren’t penalized – you were given the same as every other student, which is exactly what you advocate.</p>
<p>MY kids sometimes got things that weren’t available to “every” other student simply because sometimes we asked nicely and sometimes we pushed. Sometimes we didn’t – it seemed like too much of a hassle or not worth our energy – so we went along with whatever we were told.</p>
<p>That, in my philosophical opinion, is unethical, unfair, and wrong. Advocacy should not result in different levels of opportunity–if initiative creates new opportunities, great, but those new opportunities should then be offered to everyone.</p>
<p>Keilexandra, this is why first generation kids are often giving a small boost in college admissions. I also didn’t know the secret tracks either, I only heard from another parent who complained to me that her child was not selected in the gifted program back in second grade and that is how I knew.</p>
<p>And calmom seems to keep saying that it is a prerequisite for accommodation. I disagree.</p>
<p>The wheel should not have to squeak in order to get the grease, and not every squeaky wheel needs the grease.</p>
<p>Not in education. Not in the hospital emergency room. Not at the departure gate of a delayed flight. Not in most situations. Especially not when tax dollars are involved and resources are scarce.</p>
<p>How about a joint venture. We never made an academic decision without discussing it with our son. We had him meet with a kid who had grade skipped to get a kids point of view before we started down the road. If the kid doesn’t buy in, no point in going there. Also, if the school doesn’t buy in, it ain’t gonna happen. </p>
<p>It has been our experience that it’s a three way street. The kid often, but not always, gets the wheels moving but they’re too young to drive. </p>
<p>Right now the whole city only offers Calc AB. We are thinking about having him do BC as an ind study with his teacher. He had no idea that calc comes in two flavors, and would never have ‘asked’ for it. He doesn’t do CC. I doubt the teacher would have offered it up altho I understand couple of kids do BC test every year on their own. I knew about it from having taken it 30+ years ago and brought it up. </p>
<p>Yes, he will go and discuss it with his teacher himself, but again, I see this as a joint venture.</p>
That is ALWAYS the first thing school administrators point to when DENYING a request for some accommodations – “If we make an exception for you, we’d have to make it for everyone.” So what you are actually advocating is not that everyone GETS opportunities, but that everyone is DENIED them.</p>
<p>But there STILL would be people who would get the extras … because that is the way the WORLD WORKS. People who have original ideas and take initiative and drive end up getting things that others haven’t thought to ask for, even if they have to invent those things themselves.</p>
<p>I’m sure that our k-8 school would not dream of denying anyone the opportunity to take AP-Calc and AP-Physics. It’s just that no one had ever asked for it until S came along. The school made an exception because he was an exception. In high school, he and a few others blazed a trail for other students to follow. It led the school to implement new policies about college classes. What was an exception for S has become an opportunity for students who qualify for the accommodation.</p>