Despite warning from critics,
parents and schools-- push younger students
By Yoo Mi Chin
PASADENA - Annette Lee, a student at the Learning Castle & La Cañada Preparatory, looks at two problems on the blackboard:
3,196 + 2,637 = ...
1,096 + 7,579 = ...
Then, she scribbles the sum on the top corner of her math notebook. She starts adding from ones, then tens, hundreds and finally thousands. She frowns. She doesn’t think the answer is correct. Her handwriting is legible, yet it looks more like a thread of strings. That’s because she only learned how to write numbers two years ago. Annette just turned six this summer.
Annette is an example of Pasadena’s younger students assuming more rigorous academics in private schools. The popularity of private schools is not a new trend, but the demanding amount and level of work that parents and teachers expect from their young students is. And the drive for more performance in the classroom has spread across the country as private schools and tutorial programs are experiencing significant enrollment gains nationwide. More than 90 percent of parents said that they believe the key to academic success is starting their childrens’ education at an earlier age, according to a 2006 study conducted by the National Parent and Teachers Association. One result of parental attitudes has been the push by private schools to begin offering ambitious academic programs to the youngest of students.
“Our program is specifically designed to assist students at and above their grade levels to learn at an accelerated pace,” said Terry Villanueva, founder and director of the Learning Castle & La Cañada Preparatory, in her welcome message on the school’s website.
Too much, too soon?
Pushing young kids harder, however, is not a good idea. “Parents need to be very careful about how they pick their priorities in attempting to raise successful kids,” said Michael J. Bradley, a clinical psychologist in Feasterville, Pa., and author of Yes, Your Teen is Crazy! Loving Your Kid without Losing Your Mind. “Our goal is not to raise an Ivy League student. Our goal is to raise the future parents of our grandchildren.” Bradley added that more important than activities and grades are the child’s heart, character, relationships and his or her sense of identity.
Much of the drive to offer more rigorous lessons also reflects the demands of the federal No Child Left Behind. The legislation mandates high-stakes testing in public schools as early as the third grade, with consequences for schools that fail to achieve minimum test results; the pressure to perform on standardized tests has spilled over into private schools and that, combined with the tightening of admissions at the nation’s select colleges and universities. The testing pressure has driven the more challenging lessons to the earliest grades, prompting parents to enroll their children in high-priced private schools that offer high-bar academics most public schools cannot.
Reaching for more
When first grader Annette started achieving perfect scores on adding and subtracting two-digit numbers, the teacher gave her three-digit number sums. When the six-year-old girl passed three-digit calculations, she was given four-digit numbers to work on. This time, Annette didn’t score 100 percent. She missed five questions out of 36 questions on her math worksheet, and the teacher wrote on the top, next to Annette’s score, “needs more reinforcement.”
“I was stunned when I saw the teacher’s comment,” said Sun-Hee Lee, Annette’s mother. “My daughter is working with her tutor on adding and subtracting bigger numbers so that she can do well in her class.”
Annette’s parents chose the Learning Castle last year when they heard about the individualized program. They thought that such a program would not only improve their daughter’s learning skills, but also build a tight relationship with her teachers, the type of relationship that is difficult to achieve in public schools and even in some private schools because of larger enrollments. Until then, they were not aware that such an accelerated program would create so much stress for their young daughter.
When Annette said, “I hate math,” and crawled under the desk during her private math lesson, Amy Hwang, Annette’s math tutor, did not know how to soothe the girl’s level of stress. “[Annette] used to love everything, even math,” Hwang said. “She is the type of girl who is eager to win gold medals for everything. Lately, I’ve been having a hard time. She wouldn’t even sit at her desk. I am, literally, begging her to sit down and work with me.”
A fourth grade student at the Learning Castle & La Cañada Preparatory, Annette already knows how to solve a quadratic equation, according to Lee. In order to get Annette ready for a seventh-grade math level in three years, her mother had no other choice but to hire a costly private tutor.
"The Learning Castle has a strong academic focus," said Amanda Barnhart, a former teacher’s assistant at the Learning Castle. "Students are expected to show mastery of a concept before moving onto more challenging or abstract concepts. And the teachers have very high expectations for their students."
The school tries to include at least one assistant teacher in every classroom as a way to provide additional support for students who may need extra scaffolding, according to Barnhart. Students are also given the opportunity to correct errors that are made on previous assignments. It is meant to be a way for students to view what they are completing successfully and what could be worked on. The students get feedback on their assignments and progress this way.
Due to intensive education curriculum, the children at the Learning Castle & La Cañada Preparatory lose their summers. They spend their afternoons with their reading, math, art, tennis and piano tutors. At the Learning Castle, where students’ levels are assessed and lesson plans are tailored to meet individual requirements, individual learning styles, productivity, time management are crucial. To keep up with their work, students attend summer classes, which include review, reinforcement and advancement. The school’s summer program offers language arts, mathematics, science, history, geography and test-taking skills.
Choosing private schools
One element that encourages the parents to choose private schools is the smaller class size. In a private school that has only 15 to 20 people in a class, children are likely to get more individual attention than they would in a public school, where there are 30 to 40 students per class. “With smaller class sizes and attention to different academic areas, a student may have the potential to learn more because they are getting that special attention,” said Julie Sanchez, director principal of the First Lutheran School, a private K-8 school in Glendale. “And get maybe to do more critical thinking, they get to talk about subjects more in depth than they might get to in a bigger setting.”
It is not just the families who get to choose private education; private schools also choose which students to accept. Private schools in the greater Los Angeles accepted only 37 percent of applicants in 2006, according to the National Association of Independent Schools, compared with a national acceptance rate of 52 percent. As classroom space is limited, the admissions process has become more demanding. Students submit transcripts and recommendation letters from their kindergarten teachers. They are also required to take entrance exams. “We do have entrance tests that our kindergarten teacher does administer to these students prior to coming to the class,” said First Lutheran’s Sanchez. “We do this so that we are sure that they can be successful.”
The Learning Castle’s admissions process is also similar. After the parents have completed their children’s application form with $75 non-refundable application fee, young applicants are scheduled for a “Buddy Day,” which is part of the evaluation process. Instead of taking entrance tests like some schools do, students attend a day of school, and the teachers evaluate whether the children are capable of the individualized program. Once the admissions decision is made, the school asks potential students to attend three weeks of its summer school program. During summer school, students are expected to become better acquainted with the school’s teaching style, and teachers are expected to become more familiar with each student. The tuition for private elementary schools in the greater Los Angeles ranges from $8,000 to $18,000 a year. Despite the high cost and demanding admissions process, it doesn’t look like that the number of 5-year-old applicants is going to decrease anytime soon.