Comments on: Rejected

By: Preschool survivor at Joanne Jacobs

Preschool survivor at Joanne Jacobs — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 15:13:00 +0000

[...] freak-out time for well-off urban parents hoping to get their child into the perfect preschool, writes Emily [...]

By: Deirdre Mundy

Deirdre Mundy — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 03:26:29 +0000

John Forester (A folk singer) has a greatsong about this called “Bye-Bye Future”

Classic lines include “I’m fine in a sandbox, but I choke in an interview”

and

“His epitaph will be, “he reached his peak at three” and then took eighty years to die…….”

By: triticale

triticale — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 04:39:50 +0000

“The one thing I would say that teaching kids early makes an actual difference later in life, is to teach them what careers are available and what you have to do to get into those careers.”

If I had admitted in my 7th grade (1963) “what I want to be when I grow up” essay that my ambition was to optimize the RF interface of cellular telephone networks using a laptop computer and the Global Positioning Satellite system they would have thought me even nuttier than they already did.

By: greifer

greifer — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:36:55 +0000

Apparently the elite preschool’s admission criteria are somewhat reasonable after all.

By: Pam

Pam — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 12:39:41 +0000

Some people seem to have lost faith in the American mantra of hard work begets success. Some now want success to be a commodity that can be bought and sold.

Anyway, studies consistently show that children can be taught more, earlier, but that the gap in knowledge between the youngsters who’ve been stuffed with knowledge early on evens out long before they even finish grade school. And it has no bearing on how much money they earn as adults. Expectations and opportunity make the difference. The one thing I would say that teaching kids early makes an actual difference later in life, is to teach them what careers are available and what you have to do to get into those careers.

By: Scott

Scott — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 21:05:33 +0000

There is an old saying to the effect that it is morally wrong to let stupid people keep their money. I think that applies here.

By: allen

allen — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 18:46:00 +0000

Since there isn’t any objective measure of the quality of the preschool, any more then there’s an objective standard for any other slice of the education spectrum, the only clear measurable which might be useful as a proxy for quality is price.

Of course there are also going to be some parents who are motivated primarily by price since they’d see the exclusivity of the preschool as just another display of their personal success.

By: charles R. Williams

charles R. Williams — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 16:46:27 +0000

This is a joke, right?

By: Prof210

Prof210 — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 12:17:53 +0000

Perhaps those who did not “just make” selection to an elite school actually “won” the admissions lottery. Here’s a link to a study:

http://ksghome.harvard.edu/~bjacob/mag_final.pdf

The conclusion was that students who were randomly selected to attend schools with higher-achieving student bodies did no better than similar students who were not selected. It may be that, for many/most students, the extra attention they get from being relatively high achievers in a low-performing class is more valuable than being a relatively low-achiever in a high-achieving class.

Of course, there are some students who will rise to the level of whatever competitors their classroom contains. But for many others, the “reverse halo effect” may be that being considered among the less bright leads to performance matching that lower expectation.