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> I would recommend that parents interested in good schooling in this area look into Redwood City over Menlo Park or Palo Alto, since it has a magnet program fo

> I would recommend that parents interested in good schooling in this area look into Redwood City over Menlo Park or Palo Alto, since it has a magnet program for 3-8 and is considerably less expensive. Menlo Park and Palo Alto school districts are overrun with parents who want to push their child into advanced classes from the moment they can put sentences together. Having talked to many friends over the years who work in tech with me who grew up in these school districts (I didn't, my experience was very different), their parents constantly applied pressure to school administrators and counselors to push their child into advanced instruction. I know parents that would spend hours a day trying to pressure school administration to push their child along. I can only imagine this form of sandbagging is just to put the brakes on you and every other parent who wants to push their child as much as possible. You're competing against every other wealthy, pushy parent trying to push their children into advanced classes as well.

gnicholas 5y ago
If the districts are overrun with parents looking for advanced learning, why don't they offer it? Palo Alto parents recently filed a lawsuit [1] claiming that PAUSD's system for offering advanced math unfairly discriminates against girls (who make up just 35 of the 162 students receiving advanced placement in middle school). Apparently the process involves an objective test and a subjective test, and you have to pass both in order to qualify. 1: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2021/11/04/lawsuit-claims-palo-alto-unified-denies-students-opportunities-to-advance-in-math-particularly-disadvantaging-girls https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2021/11/04/lawsuit-claim...
- gruez 5y ago
  > If the districts are overrun with parents looking for advanced learning, why don't they offer it? probably because a fair chunk of the kids aren't actually gifted, and if you cave to the parent's demands then you end up with a "if everyone is gifted, then no one is gifted" situation.
  - gnicholas 5y ago
    Our local school frequently mentions that their 50th percentile is at the level of the 75th percentile nationally, which indicates that a decent number of the students are in fact well above average. That doesn't mean that the dilemma you mention wouldn't arise, but presumably there are objective tests that could be used to make determinations. It wouldn't be a panacea, but it would be better than ignoring advanced students like they're doing now.
    - goldenchrome 5y ago
      75th percentile is pretty mediocre when you realize how low the bar for the 50th percentile really is.
      - barrkel 5y ago
        Thing is, when the mean is pushed out, the tail is pushed out too.
    - snowwrestler 5y ago
      Schools adjust their curriculums for the measured state of their student bodies. This is a major reason why they test and measure at the school level. So if the school’s student body as whole outperforms the national average, then that school’s curriculum is enriched to meet the students where they are. State standards are a floor, not a ceiling. This is good for the kids but not easily visible to the parents the way that placement in a gifted program is. Unfortunately, for families interested in markers of achievement, sometimes they will be unsatisfied with anything short of that letter that their child has been placed in the gifted program.
  - Mvandenbergh 5y ago
    Sure but then isn't the outcome that the kid clearly struggles in the class and then drops back down? There's nothing wrong with that either.
    - amluto 5y ago
fuber2018 5y ago
There's a dark side to this pressure to perform well in all aspects - high suicide rate amongst your adults in the Palo Alto area. see https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/03/cdc-report-youth-suicide-rates-in-county-highest-in-palo-alto-morgan-hill/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/03/cdc-report-youth-suic... https://nextshark.com/children-of-affluent-parents-in-palo-alto-are-commiting-suicide-at-an-alarming-rate/ https://nextshark.com/children-of-affluent-parents-in-palo-a... and https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-sil...

gnicholas 5y ago

If the districts are overrun with parents looking for advanced learning, why don't they offer it? Palo Alto parents recently filed a lawsuit [1] claiming that PAUSD's system for offering advanced math unfairly discriminates against girls (who make up just 35 of the 162 students receiving advanced placement in middle school). Apparently the process involves an objective test and a subjective test, and you have to pass both in order to qualify. 1: https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2021/11/04/lawsuit-claims-palo-alto-unified-denies-students-opportunities-to-advance-in-math-particularly-disadvantaging-girls https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2021/11/04/lawsuit-claim...

gruez 5y ago
> If the districts are overrun with parents looking for advanced learning, why don't they offer it? probably because a fair chunk of the kids aren't actually gifted, and if you cave to the parent's demands then you end up with a "if everyone is gifted, then no one is gifted" situation.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  Our local school frequently mentions that their 50th percentile is at the level of the 75th percentile nationally, which indicates that a decent number of the students are in fact well above average. That doesn't mean that the dilemma you mention wouldn't arise, but presumably there are objective tests that could be used to make determinations. It wouldn't be a panacea, but it would be better than ignoring advanced students like they're doing now.
  - goldenchrome 5y ago
    75th percentile is pretty mediocre when you realize how low the bar for the 50th percentile really is.
    - barrkel 5y ago
      Thing is, when the mean is pushed out, the tail is pushed out too.
  - snowwrestler 5y ago
    Schools adjust their curriculums for the measured state of their student bodies. This is a major reason why they test and measure at the school level. So if the school’s student body as whole outperforms the national average, then that school’s curriculum is enriched to meet the students where they are. State standards are a floor, not a ceiling. This is good for the kids but not easily visible to the parents the way that placement in a gifted program is. Unfortunately, for families interested in markers of achievement, sometimes they will be unsatisfied with anything short of that letter that their child has been placed in the gifted program.
- Mvandenbergh 5y ago
  Sure but then isn't the outcome that the kid clearly struggles in the class and then drops back down? There's nothing wrong with that either.
  - amluto 5y ago

fuber2018 5y ago

There's a dark side to this pressure to perform well in all aspects - high suicide rate amongst your adults in the Palo Alto area. see https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/03/cdc-report-youth-suicide-rates-in-county-highest-in-palo-alto-morgan-hill/ https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/03/cdc-report-youth-suic... https://nextshark.com/children-of-affluent-parents-in-palo-alto-are-commiting-suicide-at-an-alarming-rate/ https://nextshark.com/children-of-affluent-parents-in-palo-a... and https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-silicon-valley-suicides/413140/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/the-sil...