AAP Jackson or Local Leval IV at Thoreau, anyone know if there is a difference?
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Anonymous
| We are trying to decide between Jackson MS and Thoreau MS for our child who has been at Louise Archer since 3rd grade in the AAP. Any opinions on how they differ? Neighborhood school is a great advantage with Thoreau but I have heard great things about the Jackson center. |
Anonymous
| From what I can tell, there is a lot more homework at LJ than Thoreau. That is based on my DD's (and her LJ friends) compared to the Thoreau friends. I have also heard, from Madison teachers, that the LJ students are better prepared than the Thoreau kids, but that may be because 100% of the LJ kids at Madison are AAP whereas about 1/4th of the Thoreau kids at madison (at most) are AAP. |
Anonymous
| Academically or socially? |
Anonymous
|
We had the decision last year. My DD chose LJ and has been very happy, we let her choose on her own. There isn't too much homework and the block schedule at LJ makes the week a bit more balanced because there is a day in-between to do home work (she also has a fantastic schedule English and Math 1 day, Science and Social Studies the other).
During the presentations and conversations last year I also found the teachers at LJ much more able to explain the differences between the AAP vs. Honors coursework. That being said if you talk to a Thoreau parent they will rave about the school and the same for LJ. |
Anonymous
| More homework at LJ from what I hear. Maybe better preparation academically from what I hear. The biggest deciding factor socially is if you want your child to know more Madison kids going into HighSchool or is it enough just to know the LJ kids who go to many different high schools. |
Anonymous
+1 We also had an Archer AAP student who went to Jackson AAP center (DS is now a freshman). Ditto to what the PP says. The block schedule (not used at Thoreau then or now) made homework manageable and also got our student ready for the fact that high schools all use block scheduling, so there really wasn't any trouble adjusting to it when our kid went to high school. The level of academics and homework load at the Jackson center was excellent preparation for high school expectations--yes, I do mean that it was a consistently busy homework load, I can only speak to what our kid experienced, since I don't know much about Thoreau as it is today. I did like the fact that Jackson continued the AAP structure in the sense that the classes were all AAP, all the time, and the teachers had a lot of experience teaching AAP curriculum and mostly making it engaging. ' PP is also right about teachers at LJ being much more able to explain how AAP specifically differs from honors coursework at the middle school level. OP, has the Jackson curriculum night (for families considering sending kids there) already taken place? If not, be sure to go. There was a very good presentation actually laying out how a sample topic would be handled for general ed students, honors students and AAP students. It made things much clearer and showed the differences in expectations, assignments and depth for each program. Be sure to check it out. We also went to Thoreau's information night for the rising 7th grade families and were much less impressed. Other parents asked questions about the difference between honors and general ed classes and were only told, "Everyone takes honors" in certain subjects and nothing more was said. Bear in mind that this was a couple of years ago, though, and maybe that has changed since I think Thoreau now offers some level of AAP in some subjects. |