Thousands of parents trying to get their children into private schools are now busy mailing thank-you cards to admissions offices and biting their nails while waiting for word back.
But for a small number of parents who prevailed through this gantlet in the past, this time of year brings another kind of notice — that their child is on thin ice — as an even more painful process begins: the “counseling out” of students who are not succeeding.
Not discussed on schools’ tours or in their glossy pamphlets, counseling out is nonetheless a matter of practice at many private schools. Unlike the public school system, private schools are not obligated, and often not set up, to handle children having trouble keeping up.
“There are some kids that we’re not going to renew,” said Pamela J. Clarke, the head of the Trevor Day School in Manhattan, “either because they can’t do the work and we’re not serving them, or generally, that might be combined with behavior issues we can’t win.”
“That means he or she needs a different school,” Ms. Clarke said.
(snip)
When Sandra Klihr’s son William started to slip at the Collegiate School, the standard-bearer of all-boys education on the Upper West Side, the school plied him with extra help. But the fast-paced classes nonetheless became frustrating and demoralizing. He was removed in the fourth grade.
“The school just sat down with us and said, ‘You know, he seems really miserable, and we feel like we’d already given him one-on-one,’ ” Ms. Klihr said. He ended up at the Summit School in Queens and is now in high school, getting good grades at the Smith School on the Upper West Side, two of a small number of alternative schools that cater to children with learning or emotional troubles who have not succeeded at other schools.
To keep their children in the schools,
some parents pile on tutors or turn to intensive programs like the one at Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes, whose five-week, four-hours-a-day afterschool reading course costs $11,500. Parents “know that the child is struggling,” said Jennifer Egan, the director of the Lindamood-Bell center in New York City, but do all they can to stay in their chosen schools. “It feels like a defeat to some people.”
Though sometimes effective,
the litany of tutors can overwhelm an already stressed child. “There’s a point where it’s destructive,” said Carla Howard Horowitz, an educational evaluator, who helps guide students in this betwixt state. By the time she is called in, Ms. Horowitz said, schools have often already made up their minds about the student.
Jesse Statman won a high school math award while in eighth grade at Bay Ridge Preparatory School in Brooklyn. But in other subjects he lagged behind. To keep him focused, he needed an aide beside him in class. He also had trouble getting along with his classmates.
Eventually the school suggested that Jesse leave, said his father, Mark, who resisted at first. Parents “don’t always see what’s best; we see what looks like it would be best,” Mr. Statman said.
“I can tell people that my kid’s in an Ivy League school, or goes to Andover, or goes to Choate — that doesn’t always translate into a good experience for the kid.”Jesse pinballed around several programs for students who have troubles in school before landing at Smith. His father said he was doing much better there and had been accepted at Eugene Lang College, part of the New School, where Mr. Statman is a professor.
Full story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/nyregion/06private.htmlMy comments: Education is a good thing, but too much of it can be harmful, as this article reports. Also, do you find that these families who obsessively want to keep their kids in private schools narcissistic or what? Maybe they should participate in
Wife Swap or one of those reality shows with middle class public school families struggling to pay their mortgages!
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