Welcome to Evanston!

I'm not sure what's best to recommend for you.

The public schools have a pretty good curriculum.

www.d65.k12.il.us/

My impression is that it's slightly accelerated. However there are complaints from parents of gifted students that there is little accommodation for them. The district is wrestling with this question now. In general, they try to avoid tracking and handle learning differences with differentiated instruction within the classroom. In later elementary years, some kids are in advanced math or science programs. but very few. By middle school, they do start tracking kids into advanced math, sending some to the high school.

There are also 2 magnet schools and a Two-Way-Immersion Spanish program that is spread between several schools. Lots of families believe that this option offers more challenges for their bright kids. If you are African-American, there is also an Afro-Centric magnet program. This is kind of an experimental program and a lot of effort goes into it.

The Evanston school district is rife with political factions and and a controversial superintendent. So if you like to get involved in lots of school board meetings, this is the district for you!

There are lots of very bright kids in Evanston. Most of them do very VERY well. However I do know of some kids who were bored and transferred to private school.

The school of choice in these instances is usually Baker Demonstration School which is locate on the border of Evanston and Wilmette.

www.bakerdemschool.org/

There are also Saturday and summer camp classes for gifted kids offered at Northwestern U as well as National Lewis as mentioned by Healthy11.

www.ctd.northwestern.edu/

www.chicago.us.mensa.org/kids/programs.html

If you have any more questions or specific info about your child, I'd be happy to offer more advice.

Thanks for your responses. I should be more specific. My son is in preschool. He's almost 4, so will not be starting kindergarten for another year and a half. We have been house hunting and have seen a couple of houses we like, one in the Orrington School area and another in the Lincoln School area. So I'm interested in hearing about these schools in particular. We would prefer to have him in a public school. I don't want to sound like a pushy, ambitious parent - our main concern in that he is happy at whichever school he ends up in. I think what he needs is teachers who are experienced with teaching kids at different levels, who can give him something new to think about. Spanish immersion could be great, but I see it isn't offered at Orrington or Lincoln. I don't know that pushing him further ahead in math or science is necessarily the answer. A school with a great music or arts program could work well. He hasn't had any formal (or informal!) testing. But at this stage he reads chapter books (he loves geronimo stilton), and is comfortable with the math concepts listed in the evanston public schools curriculum for K and 1st grade. I'm not wild about the idea of sending him to school on saturday!

Either of those areas should be fine. Those are both very good areas of town. All of the schools follow the same curriculum, so it doesn't matter too much which school your son goes to, except that the schools in the less wealthy areas have lower aggregate achievement scores while still having some very high performers. The wealthier areas have more high achievers to bring up the school-wide scores. The further north in Evanston, the more expensive the housing is. You're looking at some nice areas.

The TWI program is a magnet program,so you can enroll your child in a lottery for open slots wherever you live, but he'd be bused or you'd need to drive him to whichever location had an open slot.

All the schools offer rotations of art, music & drama. All kids have gym and recess everyday. PTAs are very active in all schools and the schools are generally responsive to parents' ideas on extra PTA sponsored programs. So,for instance, our school offered an artist in residence program. Parents also went into the classrooms and did "picture person" presentations. Knock yourself out with creative ideas.

There are many fine pre-schools in the area. I sent my kids to School for Little Children. There is also a Montessori school that's popular for pre-school. Barbereaux is supposed to be good too.

I'm guessing your last comment, about not sending him to school on Saturday, is in reference to some of the Worlds of Wisdom classes? My logic was that when my son was younger and attended regular public school Mon-Fri., he really thrived on being with similarly-gifted kids for "enrichment." After he got into a gifted program Mon.-Fri, I didn't feel as much need to have him in the weekend programs. (They do offer summer programs, and he continued to participate in those.)

Thanks again both of you. This has been very reassuring and helpful. I should look into these enrichment programs of course. My initial reaction was protective of weekend family time, but I'm sure he'd love the programs. It's still a while until he starts school of course, but I'm happy to hear that there are some good options in the areas we're looking at moving to.

Since you're looking at preschools, I'd like to plug the Evanston Child Care Center, where kids get weekly visits from Roving Readers and Roving Musicians, visit the Art Institute, garden, bike, and celebrate a variety of religious and cultural holidays. There are several classrooms, and one is Montessori. THe CCC is housed in a lovely Victorian mansion and has a wonderfully homey feel. See www.childcarecenterofevanston.org/

We absolutely loved Cherry Preschool on Lake Street in Evanston. Great for our smart little guy. They have classes for 2- 3- and 4-year olds.

Good luck.