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Silicon Valley's Brightest Parents Broke Their Own School

19 points by sanj

by ro_bit

2 subcomments

> He fueled the nonprofit’s growth partly through unorthodox fundraising. Tessellations offered parents a deal: pay half their tuition as a donation for a tax write-off. “Lawyers say, ‘Please don’t do that,’” Stanat recalled, “I’m like, ‘But is it illegal?’ ‘No, not illegal.’ ‘OK, great, we’ll do it.’”
How?

by roncesvalles

2 subcomments

Usually pre-high-school gifted programs are humbug. For one, very few kids who test high-IQ at a young age remain high-IQ when they grow up (remember IQ measures where you stand relative to peers your age; often precocious intelligence is just a growth spurt).
The end of Grade 8 is the perfect point to start streaming children into specialized/magnet high schools.

by andsoitis

0 subcomment

by JumpCrisscross

0 subcomment

I went to public high school in Cupertino decades ago and still have friends and family there. Tesselations was a well-known ego trip of a shitshow from the start.
The parent body was dominated by those more concerned with networking prospects than their kids’ education. (Lots of cocktail parties while the kids were on iPads in a separate room.)
The tragedy is despite that person dominating the parent body, they aren’t it exclusively. Well-meaning parents get sucked in. Their kids then pay the consequences. (Probably get a solid book of stories, though.)

by andsoitis

2 subcomments

”all of them share some characteristics of being really brilliant and really fragile”
Those characteristics permeate the rank and file too.