Educating Your Gifted Child

Signs that your school might be failing don't suddenly appear all at once like a flashing neon sign. Instead, they appear gradually over weeks, months, and years. I am targeting small private schools with these remarks and suggestions with the hope that you will see telltale signs of concern long before they become major troubles.

As you and your board of trustees review the list which I have set out below, I would suggest scoring each item on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the low end, and 10 the top. So, for example, as you look at your enrolment data for the past 5 years, if the trend shows a deterioration in enrolment, you would score that item 5 or less. And so on. Then tackle the items on the list which need the most attention.

The following video discusses signs that a business is in trouble. Many of these will apply to a private school which is, after all, a business.

Low enrollment

Let's start with enrollment. Filling your school's seats is essential for balancing your budget. If you are having trouble doing that, then you need to find out why you are not able to fill all your seats. If you are a seasoned enrolment professional or have one on your board, then seek his advice and follow it. Enrollment professionals will look at a host of things that

According to Wikipedia.org, "School choice is a term for K–12 public education options in the United States, describing a wide array of programs offering students and their families alternatives to publicly provided schools, to which the location of their family residence generally assigns students." Vouchers have been in the headlines for almost thirty years. So, this is not a new issue, although the media attention sometimes implies that vouchers are a new idea. A timeline is helpful when dealing with a controversial issue such as school vouchers. But before we do that, what are vouchers?

EdChoice describes vouchers as:

"School vouchers give parents the freedom to choose a private school for their children, using all or part of the public funding set aside for their children’s education. Under such a program, funds typically spent by a school district would be allocated to a participating family in the form of a voucher to pay partial or full tuition for their child’s private school, including both religious and non-religious options."

You will hear vouchers called various names, such as parental choice, education grants, scholarships, and tuition grants, to list but a few of the names you will encounter for vouchers.15 states and the District of Columbia currently offer 26 voucher programs. School Voucher Laws State-by-State Comparison offers a useful table comparing the voucher programs offered in states that have them.

Why are vouchers controversial?

Now that you have access to

When you send your child to a private day or boarding school, you might well assume that bullying is a non-issue. You have read the school's discipline code. You understand the consequences for major infractions of that discipline code. In the McCallie Student Handbook, "Hazing or mistreating another person, whether it is mental, physical, or emotional" is a major infraction. Private schools take discipline code infractions such as bullying, intimidation, harassment and so on, very seriously. Perhaps you still have concerns about what might happen if your child is bullied and nobody in the school community notices. Let's review five ways to protect your child from bullying.

Be able to identify the types of bullying.

Start by reading an informative article such as Sherri Gordon's 6 Types of Bullying Every Parent Should Know About If you grew up before computers and the internet flourished, you probably think that bullying is threatening somebody physically. But it is now much more than that. Bullying lurks in the digital corners of your child's online life. Learn about those dark spaces. Understand them. Talk about them with your child. Your child's well-being, indeed, her life, is at stake.

Know the warning signs of bullying.

Read Warning Signs of Bullying on Violence Prevention Works! I can speak from my personal experience because I was bullied when I was in 6th grade. What made it rough for me was that my neighbor across the street was the bullier. He was bigger than

The SSAT is probably unlike any test your student has ever taken. That’s because it’s designed to find the best students in a large pool of excellent students. The SSAT’s questions are significantly different—in their difficulty and their content—from questions on other standardized tests, to the point that your student isn’t even expected to know everything that’s on the test! This means that, in order for your student to have the best chance at getting a score that’ll help them get admitted to their school of choice, they’ll need to prepare for the test.

There are a lot of test prep options out there, from tutoring, to books, to online services. We’ve compiled a list of 5 of the best test prep options we’ve found. But first, here are some things to consider before choosing a prep solution:

• How does your student learn best? Some students learn best in a self-paced program where they are in control, while others may benefit from the more rigid prep plan that a tutor or a class can provide.
• Where are you now, and where do you want to go? It’s important to have an idea of your student’s score goals, and to know where they stand at the beginning of the preparation process. That means taking a full-length test that provides scores and quality feedback, and comparing that performance to where they need to be. If you don’t know what score your student needs to aim for, check out the