<p>I suppose my oldest benefited from the “secret math track”. I knew of one student a few years older than him who’d been allowed to accelerate in math. My son had been so bored with math in elementary school we’d invested in a couple of quarters of CTY math and he zoomed ahead. He also did a lot of fun math on his own. We went and talked to the middle school about having him accelerated. They were very reluctant to do anything, but we finally persuade them to test him using a past final exam. He did fine and was allowed to accelerate. A few other students joined him. One came from a private school and had already been in a more advanced math program. The other just happened to talk to me at a party. It never occured to her that skipping 6th grade math was possible. It really crabs me that the school doesn’t look for the kids who are ready for more than their standard acceleration (Algebra in 8th grade.) Becuase I know they don’t all have parents who know to ask. And even my son’s year, one of his friends did not get switched because his father was too shy to ask. (They were recent immigrants.)</p>
<p>Thankfully while the middle school is awful about acceleration, the high school’s attitude is much more accommodating. They seem to be able to let the whiz kids whiz without upping the ante too much for the normal smart ones.</p>
<p>Columbia_Student - I’m not first-generation. My father (who was) has a Ph.D. from a Canadian university, and both of my parents hold bachelor’s degrees from Chinese universities. But even many American-born parents are unaware or unwilling to engage in advocacy for their child; why should the child have less opportunity because of that?</p>
<p>calmom - So because the world is unfair, public schools should be as well? I’d rather that no one be given these extra opportunities in-school–because some of those will inevitably receive extra opportunities outside school–than for some kids to get a better *public school<a href=“funded%20by%20public%20taxes”>/i</a> education than others who “need” it just as much, solely due to a difference in advocacy. Then, at least, there’s fairness in unfairness.</p>
<p>
Ideally, this is what would happen–one requested exception to a rule is considered and seen as reasonable, so it is implemented for all qualifying students. IMO, granting a one-time exception and actively NOT pursuing full implementation is simply unethical favoritism.</p>
<p>There are many things that are unfair, but a public school that allows a student who *asks for a privilege to have it that is not “unfairness”. If there is an ice cream bar in the refrigerator, and there are 5 kids playing in my house – and one kid comes up and asks me if he can have the ice cream bar – my saying yes to that kid is not “unfair”. When the 2nd kid asks and I say, “sorry, that was the only one” – that is not “unfair”. I never was obligated to feed all the kids ice cream and that one kid is more curious or audacious than the others is not a case of “unfairness”.</p>
<p>In a sense – the kid who has the ice cream was rewarded for showing initiative. I could have said “no” on the grounds that I didn’t have enough ice cream to go around – but I don’t think that “nobody gets ice cream” makes the kids as a group any better off than “the first kid who asks gets ice cream”.</p>
<p>I don’t know about actively pursuing implementation. The school acted because it saw a few more advanced students coming down the pike. Otherwise, it might have remained a once-in a blue moon exception. And it was fairly easy to implement this policy. As other posters have observed, not every school is near a college; and while, some schools are more receptive to distance programs such as EPGY than our school was (probably because of the proximity to college), not every student is comfortable with distance learning.</p>
<p>calmom: The ice cream analogy assumes 5 well-fed kids. Public education is not in surplus. </p>
<p>We have 5 kids in different degrees of malnutrition. It would be cruel and unfair to give the last banana to the well-fed curious and audacious kid when there is another less assertive starving kid and 3 others with deficient diets.</p>
<p>But that is what is going on, and seriously, I’m okay with it. Idealistic teenagers like Keilexandra might want fairness, I accept that this is an unfair world. </p>
<p>Compared to the kids in the Sudan all our kids are in great shape.</p>
The proper analogy would be if you had 5 ice cream bars but only offered one to the kid who asked, when there might be another (shy) kid who also wanted ice cream but didn’t ask. If I were a hostess, I would offer ice cream to everyone if one person asked for it; if there wasn’t enough ice cream to go around, I would apologize and offer an alternative like chocolate chip cookies.</p>
<p>I understand perfectly that the world, including public schools, are unfair. However, I don’t see why this fact justifies the implicit argument that maintaining the status quo of inequality is an just or right action.</p>
<p>I don’t think it has anything to do with being immigrant. I think key for parent is too first understand the child aptitude and then learn and use the system of education to provide enough resources to flourish that aptitude.</p>
<p>I did not like calmom’s analogy, but neither do I like this one. In most cases, accelerating a kid does not take anything away from the others. For instance, the advanced math kids in my S class sat by themselves, reading from their own textbooks while the math teacher taught the rest of the class. One could argue that instead of taking anything away from the rest of the class, they were giving it something very valuable: more of the teacher’s time, energy and attention. Ditto when some of the kids went to the high school to join already existing classes. They were not kicking anyone out, nor did they have classes taught exclusively for them.</p>
<p>I don’t see the diversion of resources here. In our district, there are zero dollars budgeted for gifted education.</p>
<p>POIH: Your idea of immigrants is clearly not shared by many. There are many immigrant parents who cannot speak English: they need their children, however young, to translate for them. Even if they were fairly well educated in their home country, they don’t know what to expect of the very unfamiliar school system in this country, whom to ask, how to go about finding out information. </p>
<p>I was at an important information meeting about colleges several years ago. One set of parents were Krewol speakers who did not speak a word of English. They’d gone to the meeting hoping that an interpreter would be available. They were very frustrated there was none. But something like 27 different languages are spoken by the students in the school.</p>
<p>^^ However, many immigrant parents cannot achieve the second part–learning how to “use” the system of education for best benefit. My parents hate just asking salespeople for help, perhaps in part due to embarrassment over language; the thought of “pushing” for an exception from school admin has never crossed their mind, I can safely guess.</p>
<p>Vicariousparent – when we talk about kids getting an ADVANCED curriculum like an advanced math track or earlier access to AP’s, we are not talking about educational malnutrition. Those extras are the icing on the cake, and the kids who need them are the LEAST needy in the school system. If you want to talk about what public schools ought to do, then they ought to devote more resources to the kids who are failing. It’s not reasonable to expect a school to find a way to offer AP Calculus to a sophomore if there are seniors who aren’t going to graduate because they can’t pass the math portion of the state’s high school exit exam.</p>
<p>marite, I was talking about ALL accommodations for students of all abilities, made only when someone assertively self-advocates for them but not offered to students that don’t push for them. The reality is closer to the malnutrition analogy than the ice-cream analogy. </p>
<p>calmom: what you are saying is that the school should go ahead and give out ice-cream but only to the self-advocating assertive kids, even though other kids are suffering malnutrition? I’m going to stop with the food analogies now, because they’re making me hungry ;)</p>
<p>Keliexandra, the schools only have a certain amount of teachers and classrooms. I couldn’t have expected my son’s K-8 school to hire a new teacher to teach him algebra, and even when I was in the process of arranging algebra for my son at the high school, I was told that it would be on a space-available basis. It was good news when it turned out that the teacher had room for another student in her class – but we could have been told no. There are specific school policies as well as teacher contracts as to the maximum number of students per class – and in any case its not fair to other students to overburden the teacher.</p>
<p>Certainly being an immigrant I don’t share idea about immigrants. I have not gone through US education system at any level, still I know a lot about the system.</p>
<p>I think the key is learning and I learned a lot during DD’s K-12 education.</p>
<p>Considering their disadvantages, many 1st gen immigrants sure seem to do well. Note that I am a member of this group (altho at the tender age of 10 which is atypical).</p>
<p>In my extended first gen immigrant relatives, there are a wide variety of assertiveness and advocacy for themselves and their family members. Related to individual personalities, not language fluency.</p>
<p>DH, a WASP to the core, would never think to make special requests of the school district.</p>
<p>I am an immigrant myself, but I came here to go to college, and though my English was by no means perfect, it was way better than the non-existent English of a lot of parents at my kids’ school. I do not set myself up as the exemplar of all immigrants, and neither should you.</p>
<p>VP: your analogy suggested that accommodating some kids meant taking something away from other kids. I tried to suggest that accommodating advanced kids takes nothing away from the rest. Special education for LDs and other disabilities do take up a significant chunk of the school budget. Sending an 8th grader to take more advanced classes takes zero dollar- except perhaps the cost of the letter on which the permission is recorded.</p>
<p>POIH: The paragraph you quoted in #215 was, I believe, made by an immigrant. Nevertheless, it did say “many immigrants”, not all immigrants. </p>
<p>I agree though, that being an immigrant doesn’t excuse the parents from the need to inform themselves about their children’s education. </p>
<p>The greater point is that as far as possible a child should not be penalized by the school for having parents who do not advocate, push, assert, strategize, or in some other way seek to get ‘special treatment’ for their child. The system needs to focus on what a child needs, not what the child and her parents are demanding.</p>