>I disagree with much of what you say here. In fact, I see the increased diagnosis of ADD as a symptom of our increased expectations for children. It's only in the last 40-50 years that we expect every kid to complete high school. There used to be a significant portion of the population who was happy to make it through 8th grade and then left school to go to work.

Wow, what a burden to expect our children to commplete 12 years of school or at least until we consider them to be "adults" at age 18.

>We've also raised the stakes on what we're teaching at what age. To give one example, when my parents went to school, some kids took algebra in high school, others had it in college, and many had no algebra at all. When I went to school, algebra was a high school course, with a few kids getting started in 8th grade. Today, most good students get some algebra in middle school. The same applies in many other subjects as well.

Geesh, 35 years ago, I started learning multiplication in the 3rd grade. Now they don't start until 4th grade. Our algebra started in 8th grade if you were advanced, otherwise 9th grade. No algebra in High School is just plain shameful. Not everyone can perform at the same levels, agreed, but ever school does have high achievers who should not be penalized by a lack of proper advanced subjects or advanced track. We actually had to submit a petition with enough students to make a second year Biology class. The school's lame excuse was it would have competed with the Band class. Say what? The Biology teacher was definitely not the Band instructor.

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>Your experiences with schools probably have a lot to do with where you're located. There is an unfortunate history in this country of schools in the south overall being inferior to schools in the north. (Before anybody batters me about this, I'm not saying every school, everywhere, just a trend.) There are many, many great schools around, both public and private, that are turning out educated, productive citizens.
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>There are some schools that aren't having that result. The reasons vary. One big source (I'd guess, the biggest) is trying to educate kids who come to school without the necessary tools and who go home to families where education isn't valued. In addition, schools are being asked to do more and more and teachers' time is being eaten up by administrative nonsense, including testing. But there doesn't describe every school.
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>As for your daughter being a full year ahead, my suspicion is that that would be true if she were in a good school, as well. Bright kids with involved parents usually achieve.

The school she was in is an excellent school as far as the teachers and curricula are concerned. The problem is the schools and the administration are too afraid of lawsuits so when something goes wrong, the injured child gets "shunned", most communication with the parents is immediately cut off or severely "filtered". After another kid ran into my daughter and fractured her leg, Kate went through hell the final 4 months of school last year.

She had physical therapy 3 times a week, got about half the school instruction, still completed all her work (mostly at home) while maintaining an A average. The final straw was the humiliation she had to sit through on the last day of school during an "awards" ceromony. She got ZERO recognition while the underachieving kid who broke her leg was lavished with praise for finally (barely) passing the State mandated assessment test (Kate missed 1 question while still in a cast). There was some other crap from the boy's teacher as well. She had the gall to ask my wife, in front of the Principal, how she thought the boy felt having to see my daughter in her hip cast everyday. The Principal did nothing.