Manhattan mom sues $19K/yr. preschool for damaging daughter's Ivy League chances

Parents Forum
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<p>Agenda- you might want to read the earthquake threads, many people have had such poor experience with the Red Cross, that is is the last place they would send their money.</p>

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<p>I know it was a long time ago and you made your choice, but I just want to clarify how Montessori works.</p>

<p>I knew how Montessori worked, but I registered her for the 5’s class, I had spoken to the teacher & it was already decided that she would be fine in a class of only 5 year olds. * That class* was not a typical Montessori class - it was very different in fact- & the teacher understood she was attending because the public school wasn’t a good fit. ( she had taught herself to read chapter books & the K classroom was too large for independent work)</p>

<p>Unfortunately we were pressed for time, the public school year had already started & it was Sept- so my choices were to either keep her at home ( yes I know Mini, ;), but she liked her preschool co-op & I needed the structure myself- my H worked swingshift & I was in school during the day) or to find a class.</p>

<p>If I had known she was going to be placed into the 3-6 yr old class, I wouldn’t have registered her & paid that fee as well as first & last months tuition.</p>

<p>Luckily, in the interim, someone had dropped out of a co-op 5’s program that we had been very interested in & she began the next day. Fantastic 1/2 day ( they had a morning & afternoon session program run by a long time educator who has founded several( still existing) schools in Seattle, as well as a botanist & former Peace Corps worker.</p>

<p>That gave me another year to find a school for when she turned 6, since it was apparent public schools might not work ( as they didn’t- the alternative public school we liked was so popular that only siblings got in :frowning: & despite hitting the Stanford-Binet ceiling, she didn’t qualify for the school district gifted program)</p>

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This occurred to me also–if you are paying 19 grand, you want to get what you payed for.</p>

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<p>ccmom33409 - </p>

<p>At my relative’s evaluation, the children were all put together in a large room and told to play and make friends. Each child had a large number sign on his/her back, much like an athlete would wear in competition, indicated the child’s age in years and months, so he was for example, “Billy 4.8.” Very much like a cattle call and rather dehumanizing. I know there are very few public options on the upper east side, which fuels this hysteria, but wow. “Billy” ended up going to a special needs private for almost twice the cost of a typical pre-K, but he’s doing well.</p>

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<p>Next thing you know people will start suing their spouses because his/her genes may have jeopardized the child’s chances at an Ivy League school.</p>

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<p>This is what is wrong with this country, blaming schools for raising a kid that failed to get into Ivy. Where are the parents? In addition to bring the kids to this world, the other responsibility for a parent is to educate them and make sure that your kids are grown up to be productive and responsible citizens.</p>

<p>By the way, If I were the judge, I would ask the Mom to come back 14-15 year from now and claim for the money, when it is proven that the kid did not get into the Ivies…</p>

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<p>I looked again at the article, and though the thing about Ivy chances is the headline, it appears that the real complaint is that the mom claims that the school said it would prep the kid for a specific test (the admission test for selective private schools), and that instead it was just playtime. She may have a valid complaint, although Harvard really has nothing to do with it.</p>

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<p>19K a year! Are you kidding me?</p>

<p>Send the child to a free public school for a few years and give me the money!</p>

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<p>It is a shame that NY- Manhattan rich people won’t spend their money to improve their public schools. Sounds like a horrible place to be a kid.</p>

<p>Back when we needed child care the options were limited for daycare/preschool. The single Montessori school had a head who led a Christian based school which had several Hindus et al- and the religion didn’t stick. Definitely not perfect although my son had a great teacher who had her college degree in art. Felt good about son when teacher reported how he and a girl made freeform buildings with the pink staircase and brown tower blocks- these blocks were designed to be put in increasing size as a teaching tool. Kudos to his teacher who let the kids be creative. btw- Montessori invented her methods as a way to enrich slum kids- now it is a rich kid experience…</p>

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<p>Do you extend that reasoning to all the parents here who opt to pay more for a child’s college education than they would pay in one of their state universities? </p>

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<p>Unfortunately, the child’s name is included in the news reports, thanks to quotes from the woman’s attorney. So this lawsuit will be part of her online self pretty much forever. (Guess she could opt to marry early and take her spouse’s name … hey, mom, I just eloped with the plumber’s apprentice.)</p>

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<p>Exactly. The headline and thread title are both misleading. If the school purported to prepare the kids for the ERB and, in fact, didn’t do that, then she certainly has a complaint. The Ivy League issue was possibly something added into the statement of claim by the lawyer, who knows, but the crux of the matter is the ERB issue. </p>

<p>I have to admit that when my Ds were 4, I probably wouldn’t have been happy if they were in with 2 year olds all day either, and it has nothing to do with what would happen 14 years down the road when they were off to college. As for the cost, that really isn’t all that unusual. Good daycare/preschools here routinely cost $1300-1500/month. I’m not surprised at all that it costs a bit more in Manhattan.</p>

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<p>Wis75- you should take a look at the NYC budget for public schools before making a statement such as the one you did. And coming from Wisconsin- talk about the irony.</p>

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<p>There are some serious messages here. </p>

<p>Republican lawmakers and Bill Gates continually pooh-pooh the benefits of quality preschool for at-risk kids, but rich, ambitious people know that quality preschool is worth a lot. In terms of a child’s intellectual capacity and learning personality, a lot more happens from birth to five than from 9th grade to 12th. Preschool shouldn’t be classtime and test prep, but it shouldn’t be all unstructured recess, either. How a child is “taught” at that age (through play and otherwise) deserves just as much attention as how she is taught in middle school or high school. The mom in this case sounds nuts, but I’m happy if people are paying attention to their preschools and being demanding of them.</p>

<p>As for the cost: What do you think a private school would cost if class sizes were limited to 10, the school day was 10 hours long, and parents demanded the same level of teacher training/qualification and capital investment that they do now? Lots more than $19,000/year in most places. The fact that $19,000/year for private preschool strikes people as outrageously expensive illustrates what low expectations people have for it.</p>

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<p>LOL, mini. We did the same thing. And yes, both got in. It didn’t cost a cent, either. (Well, except for books.) </p>

<p>Amazing!!</p>

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<p>As far as costs:

according to USAToday. That’s New York state–it may be more in the city.</p>

<p>That puts the private school cost in a bit of perspective for me.</p>

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<p>Wis75 – Residents of NYC pay an additional income tax on top of NYS tax. The schools are well supported financially.</p>

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<p>“I just want to clarify how Montessori works.”
Maybe the school worked that way, but it did not identify itself as a Montessori school.
But parents need to visit to see what goes on there.</p>

<p>The notion that it will hurt a kid’s chance for college are untestable and probably bogus, but it’s not impossible that the wrong pre-school experience could negatively impact admissions prospects for Dalton et al. I am not qualified to judge that. The elite NYC private schools do have a lofty record for college admissions, but the extent to which that is appropriately attributed to the schools themselves can be debated and cannot be proved. But in any event, the way it is perceived by many Manhattan residents of a certain strata is either get into one of those schools, or move out of the city. And they don’t want to move out.</p>

<p>Part of the product my kids got, when my kids were in private school in Brooklyn Heights, was an exceptionally high level of tracking. Kids were divided into small groups based on their ability and allowed to proceed at the rates they were capable of. D1s math subgroup of about 5 kids was doing algebra in 3rd grade. While other 3rd grade subgroups were doing whatever math that was appropriate to them, based on their own abilities. The work my kids did in preschool and kindergarten was imaginative and truly wonderful. It was worth every penny we paid.</p>

<p>Sounds like this person’s $$ did not buy them the same product that our $$ bought us.
Whether this is grounds for a lawsuit, probably not unless they were actually misled about what was really going to go on there. I suspect they did not do proper due diligence before enrolling their kid.</p>

<p>BTW, the ERB is actually the lesser test people worry about. The real lottery ticket, for those not making Wall street bucks, is succeeding on a totally different test, the Stanford-Binet IQ test to make it into Hunter college pre-school/ nursery. (ERB is based, in part, off of Weschler).Because Hunter is deemed to be of comparable quality, and it is free. D1 actually “passed” the Hunter test, but didn’t make it through the call-back series of tasks. D2 didn’t “pass” the test. The cutoffs were at or above the 99th %ile.</p>

<p>Since we left, they have instituted a series of “magnet schools” of different types, I’ve a friend who fortunately lives near one of these and is using it. But the problem a lot of people perceive is sending their high-achieving kid into an untracked classroom, with large class sizes, where the vast majority of students are very far from the kid’s academic level. If they have reasonable access to a satisfactory public option many people take it, but many find themselves in the position of either going private or leaving the city.</p>

<p>As for the price, if you are working in Manhattan, you have a choice, either huge tuition bills or huge property tax payments in the suburbs, pick your poison. There is a different $$ translation between NYC area and much of the rest of the country. When I moved back here from the midwest I paid 3x more to live in a smaller, older house.</p>

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<p>I can understand if they were completely misrepresenting what they were having the kids do at the preschool, but I think the mom is crazy to say it ruined her daughters chances at the Ivy League. I went to a free preschool and I turned out fine, and could have potentially went to an Ivy League school.</p>

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<p>But, come to think of it, my D1s experience does not seem to support part of the claim. She started at a preschool near our apartment on the lower east side where most of the students didn’t even speak English, and she was still subsequently accepted to a good private school. Though that was earlier, for the subsequent year of pre-school.</p>

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<p>I would like to start a new reality show “Real Mothers of Manhattan” where the best and worst of Manhattan motherhood can be displayed for the whole world to see. This mother would be invited to participate, Any backers? </p>

<p>Ridiculous lawsuit.</p>

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<p>or on second thoughts, maybe I should call the show “Unreal Mothers of Manhattan”.</p>