AAP or remain in private?

[Anonymous]

My 2nd grader was just admitted to FCPS AAP from private school. We are assigned to Mosaic ES.

If you have a child attending Mosaic AAP, could you share your experiences please?

Also, if you chose to remain in private in 3rd grade and then rejoined the AAP curriculum later, I would love to hear your experiences... If your private was a foreign language immersion school, even more so.

Thanks so much!

[Anonymous]

Following. My DC was at Mosaic for K and 1, and we liked it very much (but moved to private for covid and we're still there through 4th). I have no experience with AAP to share, sorry OP.

[Anonymous]

Definitely stay in private. It'll keep you much happier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Definitely stay in private. It'll keep you much happier.

Could you extrapolate please? It is a cost benefit analysis.

[Anonymous]

My oldest was in an immersion ES and stayed there until middle school where she took AAP classes. The immersion was important to us, and she was totally prepared for the AAP classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely stay in private. It'll keep you much happier.

Could you extrapolate please? It is a cost benefit analysis.

I'm not PP, but people drop into threads and say this without any knowledge of your zoned school, your private, or anything else. IMO you should repost with a title specific to Mosaic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Definitely stay in private. It'll keep you much happier.

Could you extrapolate please? It is a cost benefit analysis.

Because every time you write a tuition check, you will tell yourself how happy you are that your DC is at X school rather than public.

The cost benefit analysis clearly points to private school. From a maximizing happiness perspective.

[Anonymous]

We are at a LI program and choose to keep DS in LI instead of sending him to the Center.

Pros:

He loves his classmates
He really enjoys the language and is doing well in it, at least his Teacher tells he is doing well in it we don't speak it so we have no real clue.
He is in Advanced Math (Not sure what your Private School does for math)
He likes Level III pullouts when they do them (Not an option at Private School I am guessing)
Writing has never been a strength and this year they have spent a lot of time on writing. You can see the improvement in his writing, it is more complex and kind of impressive.

Cons:

Math is moving too slow. He is in fourth and doing work that is found in fifth grade, we have seen the packets, but it is boring for him.
Other classes are fine but not challenging. He isn't bored, according to him, but the are just right. Just right is ok but I would prefer a bit of a challenge.

Solutions:

Math supplementing: He goes to RSM for math competition and regular math. He is starting to work in a grade level up at RSM. RSM says that the honors class is a year advanced, like Advanced Math, but DS found it easy. We talked to them and he is moving into the next grade level and giving it a go.
Other classes, we encourage him to read at home and we go to museums, watch TV shows about science and history, and participate in STEM type extras.

The reality is that while the AAP classes are more in-depth, I am not sure the extra research and writing in the other classes is worth giving up the language. If he stays in the language program, he can knock out 2 years of high school language in MS and either complete his college language requirements in high school or have extra room for electives that he is interested in. Also, the language presents a different type of challenge. He is not going to be fluent at the end of ES, that is not the way the program works. He is mainly learning math and science in the language and we understand that. But he knows the alphabets (his program is not a romance language) and is learning to read and write in a totally different system with different sounds. I think there is value to being introduced to a different language and I think this exposure helps develop different intellectual skills that are pretty important. So while I would love him to be doing more research in Social Studies and Science, I think the cognitive development from the language is more beneficial.

He asked about moving to the Center this year. We spoke with his Teachers and tried to understand his reasons for wanting to move. It was mainly because math is boring. His school starts to separate the Advanced Math kids in fifth grade so we are hoping that will help with math but are mainly counting on the RSM supplementation to handle his math needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 2nd grader was just admitted to FCPS AAP from private school. We are assigned to Mosaic ES.

If you have a child attending Mosaic AAP, could you share your experiences please?

Also, if you chose to remain in private in 3rd grade and then rejoined the AAP curriculum later, I would love to hear your experiences... If your private was a foreign language immersion school, even more so.

Thanks so much!

It depends on private school.

[Anonymous]

My DS attended Mosaic and hated it. He was bored out of his mind. Classes were generally quite large and often crammed into trailers. The teachers largely focused on the kids who didn't belong in AAP, so math involved constant review and remediation, and language arts meant that his reading group almost never saw the teacher. They didn't do any of the fun extensions that are normally given at other AAP centers. The entire month before the SOL was spent on SOL review bootcamp, which is torture for the AAP kids. They didn't have any of the fun academic extracurriculars that are common at almost every other AAP center. Most of the teachers weren't very good. The homework they had was entirely absurd busywork. Like to prepare for Wordmasters, they had to write out their vocab words like 5-10 times, but in rainbow letters or spooky letters or things like that. Maybe things have changed, but in math, they made them do way too much Dreambox.

Anyway, STAY AT PRIVATE!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DS attended Mosaic and hated it. He was bored out of his mind. Classes were generally quite large and often crammed into trailers. The teachers largely focused on the kids who didn't belong in AAP, so math involved constant review and remediation, and language arts meant that his reading group almost never saw the teacher. They didn't do any of the fun extensions that are normally given at other AAP centers. The entire month before the SOL was spent on SOL review bootcamp, which is torture for the AAP kids. They didn't have any of the fun academic extracurriculars that are common at almost every other AAP center. Most of the teachers weren't very good. The homework they had was entirely absurd busywork. Like to prepare for Wordmasters, they had to write out their vocab words like 5-10 times, but in rainbow letters or spooky letters or things like that. Maybe things have changed, but in math, they made them do way too much Dreambox.

Anyway, STAY AT PRIVATE!

The centers aren’t always better than LL4. My kid is LL4 and his experience isn’t anything like above. It just humors me that people think LL4 is less than the centers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 2nd grader was just admitted to FCPS AAP from private school. We are assigned to Mosaic ES.

If you have a child attending Mosaic AAP, could you share your experiences please?

Also, if you chose to remain in private in 3rd grade and then rejoined the AAP curriculum later, I would love to hear your experiences... If your private was a foreign language immersion school, even more so.

Thanks so much!

Can you please share how much does it cost to send a kid to Private School in your area? In McLean, the private school are very expensive 35K per year? Not sure if we can afford that and even if we hardly afford it, does it make a lot of difference how my kid is progressing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My 2nd grader was just admitted to FCPS AAP from private school. We are assigned to Mosaic ES.

If you have a child attending Mosaic AAP, could you share your experiences please?

Also, if you chose to remain in private in 3rd grade and then rejoined the AAP curriculum later, I would love to hear your experiences... If your private was a foreign language immersion school, even more so.

Thanks so much!

Can you please share how much does it cost to send a kid to Private School in your area? In McLean, the private school are very expensive 35K per year? Not sure if we can afford that and even if we hardly afford it, does it make a lot of difference how my kid is progressing?

Mine attends Metaphor International School. It costs well under 15k per year, 8am-6pm, all activities and food included. It is immersion Russian, grade level English, and French as a foreign language.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My oldest was in an immersion ES and stayed there until middle school where she took AAP classes. The immersion was important to us, and she was totally prepared for the AAP classes.

Wonderful! Did you find that your child was ablw to excel in AAP English? That is one of my concerns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My oldest was in an immersion ES and stayed there until middle school where she took AAP classes. The immersion was important to us, and she was totally prepared for the AAP classes.

Wonderful! Did you find that your child was ablw to excel in AAP English? That is one of my concerns.

Well, that's the tradeoff.