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Old October 5th 03, 11:19 AM
Kevin Karplus
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Default Gifted Programs in Seattle area public schools

In article , Beeswing wrote:
T Murphy wrote:

I would like to hear about other families' experiences with
districts in the greater Seattle area. Good experiences are
preferred, but not-so-good are ok as well. Please give me
the school/district/city names as I'm just learning the area
and still don't know my way around. I've found the
Washington State School website, but it's all based on
district and school names.


....
From what I can tell, the APP program at Lowell Elementary School is very good,

although the school itself is getting overcrowded. The quality of Spectrum at
the elementary level varies by location. If your kids end up testing into
Spectrum, you'll want to get more information specifically about the school
they would be attending. I don't know much about Advanced Learning for middle
school students and above.


Based on my experiences of 2 years ago, when I had a 2-month
sabbatical in Seattle, there is no chance of getting into any of the
accelerated programs if you come in the middle of the school year.
You'll even have a hard time getting into your neighborhood school if
it is any good---it'll be full and they'll want to bus your child half
way across the city to a school that is not full (because it has
terrible test scores, usually). The schools near UW are all going to
be full.

We lived near Lowell Elementary, and I can say that it has a nice
playground and is adjacent to a nice park that was extensively
upgraded about 1 1/2 years ago (it was closed for that upgrade the
whole time we were there). If you arrive in Seattle early enough (in
the Spring) for your child to be tested, then you have a better chance
of getting into one of the accelerated programs in the Fall.

If you are not looking for an accelerated program, but a solid
academic program for an average kid, any of the schools near the
University are probably good choices. The John Stanford school has
bilingual education, but again, it is usually impossible to get in
mid-year.

We investigated several choices for kindergarten, including 3 private
schools, and ended up in Madrona Elementary school, which was
temporarily housed in Lincoln High School (they use that building for
temporarily housing whichever campus they are fixing up). We ended up
with an excellent kindergarten teacher, a diverse student body, and a
good 2-month experience. I'm not sure I'd have wanted to keep my son
there for several years, as the upper grades had rather feeble math
and science programs, and even basic literacy started falling apart
after the first few years. (Things may be different now---the
principal and assistant principal were making a valiant effort to
increase the academic standards of the school and the lower grades
were in much better shape than the upper grades, so it may have
propagated a couple of years as the kids got older.)

I'm interested in details of Seattle schools again, as I'll be doing
another sabbatical there in Spring 2004.

--
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
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Professor of Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
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