<p>Answered my own question:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bostonpic.org/youth/hsgradandropoutrates.pdf[/url]”>http://www.bostonpic.org/youth/hsgradandropoutrates.pdf</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.boston.k12.ma.us/bps/news/news-2-1-07.asp[/url]”>http://www.boston.k12.ma.us/bps/news/news-2-1-07.asp</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://boston.k12.ma.us/bps/bpsglance.asp#students[/url]”>http://boston.k12.ma.us/bps/bpsglance.asp#students</a></p>
<p>The OP asked about schools in the Greater Boston area; that could include many excellent public schools in towns such as Newton and Brookline as well others perhaps better be described as suburban schools located in Weston, Lexington, etc.</p>
<p>Also, BB&N = Buckingham, Browne & Nichols</p>
<p>We moved to Brookline so our kids could go to the public schools there. It was so gratifying to have both of them thank us thirteen years later for making the move. BHS is big (1930+), so parents need to be engaged to make sure their kids get the most out of the school. But there are so many opportunities there that smaller schools cannot provide: <a href=“http://bhs.brookline.k12.ma.us/--in[/url]”>http://bhs.brookline.k12.ma.us/--in</a> all areas including the arts, athletics, industrial arts, etc. And it’s right on the subway line, with busing available from South Brookline, so kids can get to and fro independently. (And it’s an easy commute to work for me!)</p>
<p>As for the Boston public schools (which I attended for high school), the best ones academically are Boston Latin School and Boston Latin Academy. Students can enter in either seventh or ninth grade, but they need to take an entrance exam. Depending on the score cut-off, students are then accepted. And you need to be living in the city of Boston.</p>
<p>Son #1 transferred to BB&N after a couple of years in a well thought of public HS not too far from BB&N…it was the best move we ever made. He learned better study habits, had more challenge. The teaching was superb–he really benefited from the small class size and individual attention.</p>
<p>He is now a freshman at a top LAC and is doing well thus far. He called recently to proclaim to me how well BB&N prepared him for the rigors of college and that he would not been ready out of his public HS.</p>
<p>That is what worked for our son. Parents need to look at their child’s needs individually and what each school has to offer. Kids can succeed pretty much anywhere I believe as long as it is a good fit</p>
<p>EPGY: epgy.stanford.edu - Cd-based courses and summer camps/programs run by Stanford
CTY: cty.jhu.edu - Cd-based courses and summer camps/programs run by Johns Hopkins
CTD: <a href=“http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu:%5B/url%5D”>www.ctd.northwestern.edu:</a> online courses and summer programs run by Northwestern</p>
<p>Greenwoodmom - to answer your original question, I’d second the BU Academy suggestion. It’s affiliated with Boston University, and as the kids move into their junior and senior years they basically end up taking most of the classes at the University. I think a lot of very bright, math and science oriented kids end up there precisely for this reason. The idea that at 17 they could be using BU’s new multimillion photonics lab, or taking an advanced math class is just what these kids are looking for. If this describes your son, you definitely should look at BUA.</p>
<p>BTW - I have no affiliation with BUA. My son applied there last year, got in and really liked it - but decided he wanted to go to boarding school instead. If he had decided on a day school instead he definitely would have gone to BUA, rather than some of the other schools he got into.</p>
<p>One of the things that makes education in the Boston area wonderful is the opportunities kids have at the local universities. And the better public school districts are aware of this, so they don’t put stumbling blocks in the way of students. </p>
<p>For example, my D had a love of Latin in HS, but no love for the school’s only latin teacher. So she took several latin classes through the Harvard Extension school. She was the lone HS kid in a class of a bunch of adults including several HS latin teachers! Lest you think the Harvard Extension courses are second, rate, one of the courses was taught by Richard Thomas, the then chair of the classics department at Harvard College.</p>
<p>FWIW, part of the reason she left BBN was that they did not encourage such flexibility.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but I’m interested in hearing about BU Academy from anyone with knowledge.</p>
<p>The daughter of a friend of mine graduated from BUA. Because she was an elite oarswoman (crew) but not at BUA, she was recruited by Harvard, Princeton, and the University of California, Berkeley. She graduated from Cal a year early because she had taken college courses at BU her senior year and entered Cal with sophomore status. From what I can tell, she and her parents were very pleased with her HS experience.</p>
<p>NYmom:</p>
<p>BUA is excellent. As others have posted, it is affiliated with BU and juniors and seniors are encouraged to take classes at BU. But it is a day school. It is small (when we checked, it had 120 students) so I don’t know how many sports or other ECs it fields. Latin is required of all students (John Silber had a role in founding BUA and much of the curriculum reflects his philosophy).
It is on a par with Roxbury Latin in terms of the average SAT scores; these are higher than those of most of the other private schools in the area (in the 700s last time I checked a few years ago).
When we visited, the principal offered to arrangedto have a BU prof come and teach S so that he would not have to be in classes with 200 BU students.<br>
In the end, we decided to stay with our public school and send S to the Harvard Extension School for college classes (where he did have one that had 200 students in it). Part of it was the sheer convenience; part of it was cost. The Harvard Extension School is mostly free for Boston-area high schoolers.</p>
<p>Thank you, Little Mother and marite. The school sounds very good. From what I gathered on the website, the sports they offer are exactly the one my S likes - fencing, tennis, sailing.</p>
<p>We lived in Cambridge and moved to the Western burbs in large part because we couldn’t see middle and high school in Cambridge. Our kids have gone both to public and private schools. They each have their strengths. Quite a few of the private high schools and some of the larger suburban ones are intensely competitive and stressful.</p>
<p>We see the quality of teaching as excellent in both the public and private high schools my kids attend. There are several differences. The private high schools have better resources – a weekly meeting with an advisor who will call you if your kid is slipping rather than at the public school where the first you will hear of it is in the quarterly report card, smaller student-teacher ratios, much fancier art/dance programs, more creativity in science curricula, much better equipment for science labs, etc. On the other hand, the private schools that we’ve experienced don’t do well with exceptional kids. They are a pretty much a factory and if you give them the appropriate raw material, they produce a great product (which for most of them is placement to the next level although some really value education as well). But, we’ve found that they couldn’t handle either true giftedness or dyslexia, and we’ve found the public school better for that. I suspect that a few of the private schools could handle true giftedness but none except for LD schools could handled LDs. My sense is that the private high school classes are comparable to the top 10% to 20% of the affluent public HS classes. A little more wealth perhaps but with a little more diversity because they invest in that with financial aid.</p>
<p>I think that with respect to getting into college, being at the top of a high school class is likely to provide better odds than being a strong student at a good private school unless you are a URM (or possibly athlete) or from an area with poor schools. A minority kid from a town like Bridgeport, CT who performs decently at a good private school is going to open lots of doors in colleges because the colleges know the kid can manage the work load and work level whereas they might have considerable uncertainty about whether the same kid at the local high school could manage the work.</p>
<p>EPGY is Stanford’s Educational Program for Gifted Youth, CTY is John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (I think) and CTD must be something similar.</p>