The hunt is on

When I was a kid, my elementary school held an annual Kindergarten Round-Up. It was essentially the school's way of hunting out kids who were old enough for kindergarten and get their parents to register them. Now I'm an adult, a parent, and I'm the one trying to round-up schools for my daughter to attend.

For those not in Chicago or with school-aged kids in Chicago, let me tell you what the deal is. We have this thing called "school choice" and here are the choices:

A) Send child to neighborhood school (ours is currently over crowded)

B) Apply for & pray to get into one of the following:
.....1) Magnet school: Admission is by a lottery. You have a higher chance if you live near-by, but there's no guarantee
....2) Gifted school: Admission is by testing. Tests how much potential the child has. Do they think out of the box?
....3) Classical school: Admission is by testing. Tests how much the child knows now. Are they reading? They could get in!
....NOTE: Even if you test as gifted/Classical, there is no guarantee because there aren't enough seats each year. So it's not how well you test, but how well your peers test.

C) Apply for a non-CPS school (private, independent, religious)

D) Home school: And you know I'm not doing that! It's nothing against home schoolers, I know some awesome radical feminist mamas doing a great job. I just wouldn't have what it takes.


Thus we have decided to dive into all options under B (yes, our daughter will be tested TWICE) and one application to an independent school. No, I'm not saying! Are you crazy?

So stay tuned and watch how a mama with a master's degree & a papa with a college education get totally confused by the simple idea of signing up our daughter for pre-school.

Technorati tags: CPS, kindergarten, school, Chicago Public Schools, education