<p>Calmom, I suspect the lawsuit-mom signed a K obligating her for the full year’s tuition (that is not at all uncommon) - - and the school won’t consider even a partial refund until it has filled that seat.</p>
<p>I remember I had a very strong preference for where my S would go to pre-school - One school had really good hours and a great location! ;)</p>
<p>This girl can go to an Ivy. She just needs to move, change her name, and graduate from the top of her class at Nebraska or South Dakota high school.
LOL</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Onceburnt, you beat me to it. I’ve watched this (I think it’s on Showtime) about 10 times and I’m always absolutely fascinated by it. The hoops that these people jumped through for 2 year olds! One or two families seemed “normal” but a couple of them were just horrible!
And, btw - I’m not anti- private school; both my kids have gone to private school. But I think I’m pretty realistic about what they can and can’t do for a child.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The other option is to have full time help, which many people in NYC (tri-state area) have.</p>
<p>If you think that it’s worth spending 19k/year on a factor that affects college admissions as little as pre-schooling does, then you should just make a large donation to your Ivy League of choice when the time comes. It’ll help your odds more per dollar.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There is a world of difference between attending schools for high ability kids in high school or junior high and attending elite pre-schools. </p>
<p>There’s some debate within psychology and educational fields as to whether one can truly predict whether someone is “high ability” at the pre-school stage. In articles questioning this, they argued that one cannot really tell whether someone is high ability or not until late elementary school at the earliest…around the time Hunter College High school applicants start thinking about/prepping for their admissions exams. </p>
<p>Personally, I took the specialized high school exam mainly because my zoned high school was well-known in my area for widespread violent fights and criminal/drug activity. It was much more for personal safety reasons than academic ones. However, if I had grown up in neighborhoods like Forest Hills or Midwood, I’d would not have had an issue attending those neighborhood schools. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That wasn’t true during the time I attended in the early-mid-1990’s. The vast majority of my classmates came from their local zoned intermediate schools. Not too surprising considering around 60-80% of us were eligible for free school lunches and were from working-class/poor immigrant families. Vast majority of my incoming freshman class were graduates of their local “no good option” intermediate schools.</p>
<p>For 19K, I would not expect my 4 year old daughter to be put in a class with 2 year olds and taught shapes and colors. '</p>
<p>The writer of the article is the one that used the term “slum”, it was also the writer that stated the law suit “implied” that the mother felt her daughter’s chances at an Ivy League were hurt. I would like the real story. </p>
<p>That said, I am not so sure a person can get their money’s worth from a pre-school that cost 19K. Maybe the mom figured that out and wants her money back.</p>
<p>Glad to see that her lawyer has a crystal ball and can predict with certainty that the child is very bright and will gain admission to an Ivy League school.</p>
<p>This really takes the cake.</p>
<p>Hmmm…the mother doesn’t do math (mathematics) very well: Any attorney that this woman would hire (I’m assuming Dalton/Harvard/Yale sequence) is charging at least $1,000 per hour (probably more). The initial consult: at least two hours. Billing for the complaint: at least 10 hours.</p>
<p>Leaving that sphere for a moment: The damage done to the child’s image (not the child, we’ll get to that soon enough) in the private school admissions: can’t even compute that high. What school would touch that kid (with less than a million dollar donation?) with that mom? Zip.</p>
<p>The mother could have picked up the pieces of this travesty of an education and moved on. Alas and alack no. Instead, the kid is a social and educational pariah.</p>
<p>(Oh, and my husband who is Ivy league and an attorney…went to GASP public schools. His parents, EXTREMELY successful and non high school grads, never went to a teacher’s meeting/counseling appointment/or engaged anyone to write an essay)</p>
<p>Poor kid.</p>
<p>…didn’t read through this whole thing, but has any realized that the pre-k may be practicing fraud and that the mother simply wants her money back?</p>
<p>Wanting your money back? Debatable. (but probably not happening.)</p>
<p>Alleging that a kid’s life is ruined by a lack of ERB prep at age four? Ridiculous.</p>
<p>Nah, the mom likely found an attorney on a contingency basis, meaning she won’t pay a dime unless he prevails and recovers (tho I don’t know many attorneys hungry enough to take her case). Cases like this give attorneys a very bad name.</p>
<p>A month of having kids that are 2 years old & 4 years old won’t cause irreparable harm, but may not be the most stimulating environment for the older kids if the teachers aren’t properly trained and don’t have sufficient resources.</p>
<p>We did have various options for preschools when our kids were young. Location and price were minor considerations compared to “fit,” “feel” and environment. We were very happy with our choice and our kids thrived there.</p>
<p>oh my god snobby manhattan parents. when I become successful I’m never living on Lexington Ave</p>
<p>Oldfort, this was not NYC, and my point was that this was a community where full time help was not the norm, but where it was expected that mom would drop off the child at 9:30 am. That’s another form of elitism- we don’t want the children of working mom’s in our school.</p>
<p>It’s always easy to laugh at the shenanigans that go on in other neighborhoods or other parts of the country, but it’s harder to see how ridiculous they are in our own communities or social networks. I have cousins who think that anyone who pays for private K-12 education is a dope or an elitist; they refuse to concede that the lengths they go to to get their kids into “gifted” programs which are virtually all white… well, if you’re such a friend of the common man, why not live in an integrated city instead of a lily white suburb?</p>
<p>There are lots of pre-schools which sell a dubious message to gullible parents. It will be interesting to see if this gets schools to modify their pitch.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Unless one lives such a sheltered existence that your entire social circle consists of at least the upper-middle class or above…Oldfort’s description is mainly applicable to a tiny proportion of poshy-type NYC residents.</p>
<p>“There’s some debate within psychology and educational fields …”</p>
<p>All I can say is, many parents with the means don’t want to gamble on being on the wrong side of that debate, don’t want their kids bored or
socially ostracized, dont want them in schools as bad as the local schools you tried to avoid, and send their kids to the best match they can afford. Whether or not other people can afford them. And whether or not others with the means choose otherwise.</p>
<p>If you have the means but choose to send your bright kid, who is several grade levels ahead, to Seward Park High school feeders et al, go right ahead. Many people with the means don’t want to do that. Some people without the means cry “sour grapes” and criticize those people when, bottom line, if they had the money they would do the same thing. But they don’t, or didn’t. But when they do have the option they themselves go to elite schools. </p>
<p>But nobody should accuse anyone of being a hypocrite.Because they only had, and of course took, the option of going to those better schools later. So it’s a completely different thing. So they justify.</p>
<p>My wife didnt have the choice, growing up. She attended those Seward Park feeders (which were arguably better schools then) but took the Hunter test and went there. But when she had the money to afford a choice for her own kids, she didn’t choose to put them back in the Seward park feeders, she chose schools that she considered better for her kids. Because she could, at that time she could afford it. And, despite or because of her experiences at those very same public schools, she thought the privates were better for her kids than those local public schools. YMMV.</p>
<p>It’s not about being private, if they could have got into Hunter elementary, or if we lived near PS6, she would have gladly sent them there instead. Those choices weren’t available to them.</p>
<p>Isn’t pre-K mandatory in NYC? Pre-K has become, in effect, the new kindergarten and kindergarten is the new first grade. If this school did lead the parents to believe that the D would be prepared for the ERBs and kindergarten admissions in their particular market, then she probably did have a legitimate complaint, as ridiculous as the whole thing may sound on the surface. Claiming a threat to an Ivy league outcome probably does not help their case, though.</p>
<p>Thank goodness this woman is not an Asian mom, otherwise this thread will never end.:rolleyes:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Fair point. However, whenever well-off NYC folks…especially the upper-east side set talk about how one needs to get into an elite pre-school for future academic and life success, especially when many psychologists and education scholars considers this notion to be of questionable validity…I cannot help but be reminded of a remark attributed to PT Barnum: “There’s one sucker born every minute.”</p>
<p>Moreover I find the alarm among well-off Manhattanites like the OP and many upper-east siders and their ilk I’ve met IRL to be at the point that even attending good neighborhood schools if they happen to live in neighborhoods like Forest Hills or Midwood would consign their kids to “ruination”. </p>
<p>I feel this level of alarm would have a point if they were living in my relatives’ area of Mississippi where the local public school system is so abysmal* due to decades of politically motivated underfunding that every upper/upper-middle class parent and most middle class parents send their kids to private schools. Moreover, one has to choose very carefully as many of the local private schools aren’t necessarily much of an improvement.<br>
The latter was a reason why one cousin was sent off to a well-known NE boarding school from 10-12th grade. </p>
<ul>
<li>From what my cousin, his parents, and some colleagues who knew that region…their public school system makes NYC’s look like a paragon of academic excellence.</li>
</ul>
<p>Ironic choice of neighborhoods, it so happens my wife has a friend who left Forest Hills, and a former law school classmate who left Midwood, both for Westchester, in both cases because they concluded that the elementrary and middle schools available to them were not actually so good, in their opinion. YMMV.</p>