Interesting sounding curriculum — sounds like Reggio-Emilia for elementary school. The classrooms you snapped are too cluttered for my tastes, because I work with the SPED kids who don’t do well with a lot of overload, and I’ve noticed many typical kids don’t either. Especially boys. What looks like “cozy” can read “claustrophobic” or “confining.” However, the quality of the teaching is more important than anything else and if you loved that then good luck. I’m sure it will work out just great if she gets a spot.

I am delighted for your family, but frankly appalled at the thought of an “honors” program for Kindergarteners. I am not opposed to some tracking in the upper grades, but starting in Kindergarten? I’m speechless.

This post brings back fond memories from a year ago of my husband and I anxiously awaiting to hear if our daughter got into our first choice, a public bilingual immersion charter school with a lottery. We did not get in initially, but kept a spot on the waiting list, and I called every couple of weeks until the week before school started, when we found out that we had gotten a spot. It was one of the happiest days of my life, when the hopes and dreams you have for your child feel like they are one step closer to being fulfilled. Best of luck to you guys and C.

I also agree with Jenn. A magnet school is one thing; an honors kindergarten program is ridiculous. That shouldn’t start until 3rd grade at least.

Count me as someone is saddened by the thought of kindergarten entrance exams and honors classes, as well.

They have test to see if you can get into kindergarten? Even our private schools do not have test. I was wondering why she is not going to a private school, didn’t her older siblings go to private school?

How does it work in terms of actually getting accepted to the school? Is it purely lottery? Are other factors taken into consideration? What factors are considered? How many candidates and how many acceptances overall and in the honors programs?

Charter schools are often wonderful. They are often more like private schools than public ones since they have a selection process and most all of the children who go there have proactive parents. Pair that with testing to cherry pick the more able children, and yes, you get a better school. The social issue is that it often leaves the public schools from where these kids are might otherwise be going even more impoverished since the better families and kids are taken out. All this on tax payer money that could be used to improve schools that serve everyone in a district. Those who don’t like the state of the public schools can then use their own money to send their children to a better setting–private schools

I’m pretty sure after reading this post that Katie’s talking about the school my daughter went to for kindergarten through second grade. It’s a magnet school because, as Katie mentions in her article, the school backs up to a housing project. It’s a dual-track school — they have the “honors” track that’s open to any child from the local neighborhood (who automatically get into the school without testing) or to out-of-zone kids who qualify. It benefits the school by giving them the ability to acquire resources an inner-city school would otherwise not ordinarily have, and ALL the students at the school get to use those resources, magnet student or not.

We took our daughter across town because not only was it the only elementary school offering daily arts education as part of the curriculum (i.e. orchestra and band, dance classes, drama, actual painting and sculpture, etc. etc.), they were also willing and able to individually track the kids in the magnet program so that our daughter was able to take reading and math classes at her level rather than being asked to work at the same level as her agemates. In some ways it was like getting private school for free, except with a more ethnically and socioeconomically diverse group of kids. Kindergarten and first grade were AMAZING. Second grade… let’s not go there. I hope the administration has gotten it together since that time several years ago. We moved out of town so I haven’t kept up with them.