[quote=bearishgurl][quote=sdrealtor]BG
Do you really beleive that all kids arrive at 10th grade or even 7th grade evenly prepared? Only an idiot would think the elementary scores are used for college admissions and we are not idiots here. What they are is an indicator of the quality of students your child will be surrounded by. The competitive landscape so to speak. A student surrounded by top performers is more likely to be motivated and the teachers are less likely to have to dumb down the curriculumn to the lower performers. That is the biggest reason for searching out top performing schools. If you want to play in the big leagues of life you need to be prepared to compete at every level.[/quote]
sdr, curriculumns (sic) aren’t “dumbed down” in elem schools scoring below 900. Children are placed in classes according to their abilities in EVERY school. Many parents don’t wish their kids to be surrounded by multitudes of “helicopter parents” (mostly “soccer moms” with nothing better to do) constantly attempting to disrupt the teaching going on in there with their own personal agendas, as in many “900+ scoring” elem schools.
Social and economic class has nothing to do with the “quality” of a child … either as a student or a friend/human being.
You seem to be getting worked up here about your “perceived social class level” of the classmates of your children. When all is said and done, these “classmates” will not have had any part in how well your child performed in elem school.
Even when newly-minted HS graduates move their tassels from one side of their mortar boards to the other, they all say goodbye to each other and each goes their separate ways.
TEACHERS can make a HUGE difference in a student’s performance but their classmates are just a distraction to a kid during school hours. Too many “other student-friends” in your child’s life will simply end up as another notch on their Facebook walls.
You would be surprised how many of the girls with the highest grades and/or whose families have the most $ end up marrying a sailor right out of HS due to pregnancy …. yes, even today. And how many of the upper MC or “rich” boys join the military right out of HS or decide to travel cross-country for a couple of years in a 1968 VW Van before enrolling in college.
I sincerely hope your kids never disappoint you and only “mingle” with what you consider to be “quality” children along their respective paths in life, sdr.[/quote]
Although I think BG is correct about elementary school, once you get up to middle and high school I lean toward sdr’s perspective. That is where the peer group begins to have a huge effect. I see my sister’s kid (just as bright as my kid) just coasting along because he is a smart fish in a small pond in a rural school. Whereas my kid is so much much more motivated because he is running full-speed (academically speaking) to keep up with his peers.
