Gifted school :O lucky lucky. In elementary we went to the gifted center once a week and did different classes about like odd topics (photography, chemistry, fairy tales, bugs, dr suess, world culture).... In MS we had the gifted program one hour every other day... And it was in place of study hall. And in HS the closest you can get to being challenged/with other gifted kids is AP/Honors courses... Which have no requirements and anyone can sign up for. SO frustrating. Gifted program was awesome and then as soon as you graduate 5th grade it's pretty much nothing.
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(Stiiiilllll hijacking...:oops: )
Just wanted to reply to this. It is
really nice to have the gifted school option. It's a whole school of just gifted education, and the kids really get a lot out of it. The program my daughter is in is set up that she will be done with all middle school classes at the end of this year (6th grade) and will start taking high school classes next fall. She finishes her
French I high school credit this year, so all 3 of her foreign language credit requirements will be done before she sets foot in a high school.
But don't get
too jealous. The (huge) trade-off is that:
1. Less than 1% of kids that apply for this school get accepted. It's the only full gifted school in Chicago, and they have 250 students in grades k-8. There are 450,000 students in the city. That's great for my kid...but what about the other 99.9%? They're back at their non-air-conditioned, old books from the 1970's having, short staffed, building from the 1920's or before (some are from the 1800's :eek: ), bad, gang-infested neighborhood schools. I'd really like to see a little less separation in the quality of education for my kids vs. the rest of Chicago. Just because she's freakishly smart, I don't think that makes her any more deserving of an education than anyone else. Yes, it's lovely that they get these extras, and I'm sure there's some study that shows that these super smart kids appreciate this stuff more blah blah blah. But really, there are kids without books in this city. Literally, no text books; they share with like 8 books for a classroom. I think my daughter could live without an ipad in her classroom for another kid to have a book.
2. Great building = no playground and no driveway/drop off area. This probably sounds petty, but not if you're a mom who has to get your kid to this school 180 days a year with no drop off area. Remember, no school buses, and kids come from all over Chicago to go to this school. So that's a couple hundred cars trying to drop kids off on a side street every morning. :banghead: It's exceptionally stressful and I know people think I'm ridiculous complaining about it, but it really is a headache. No playground means recess is on the concrete sidewalk in front of the building. I'm not a fan of this arrangement at all.
So it sounds great on paper, but it's really only great for 250 kids. The other 449,750 kids are screwed.
High school is a little different story. It's very similar to college - you have to apply and get accepted to the one you want. There are actually quite a few decent schools to apply to for high school. And I
do think that by then it's fair to say you should earn your spot at a good school - they look at grades for 6-8th grade, attendance, and score on a test you take. My daughter will only apply to 4 high schools. Her #1 choice is a college prep school with a really incredible "pre-engineering" program that if she gets into I'll die of happiness. :cloud9: The 2nd 2 are just really good college prep high schools. The last is the Disney school (also :cloud9: for me), which is a charter school owned and run by Disney (this one is done by lottery, not grades).
So, high school in Chicago is great
if you do what you're supposed to in k-8. If you don't get accepted at one of the "choice" schools, then you're stuck with the high school version of the yucky schools described above.
There's a reason Chicago is on the national news almost every night because of our horrible schools. And it's not because of my daughter's little good school. :( They're reeeeeally bad.