What is the point of AAP? I am getting to the conclusion the only real benefit is to have my child

[Anonymous]

Book clubs are voluntary and held at lunch time, at least at my son's school.

I love the educational extras but kids have to be in a place where they can successfully complete them. If the kids are at a school were many of the kids in the class are reading below grade level or not at grade level for math, you cannot spend the extra time on special projects. And you cannot let one group of kids do the fun extras when the other kids don't get to do them because it reinforces that one group is smarter or better or ahead. And while one class, the AAP class is ahead, rubbing the Gen Ed classes nose in that by letting the AAP kids do extra programs like the cool sounding Dig program is not going to be appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Book clubs are voluntary and held at lunch time, at least at my son's school.

I love the educational extras but kids have to be in a place where they can successfully complete them. If the kids are at a school were many of the kids in the class are reading below grade level or not at grade level for math, you cannot spend the extra time on special projects. And you cannot let one group of kids do the fun extras when the other kids don't get to do them because it reinforces that one group is smarter or better or ahead. And while one class, the AAP class is ahead, rubbing the Gen Ed classes nose in that by letting the AAP kids do extra programs like the cool sounding Dig program is not going to be appreciated.

This is why I kept hearing, "oh, we're not doing that anymore" whenever I asked about the demise of a fun program at our Title 1 school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Book clubs are voluntary and held at lunch time, at least at my son's school.

I love the educational extras but kids have to be in a place where they can successfully complete them. If the kids are at a school were many of the kids in the class are reading below grade level or not at grade level for math, you cannot spend the extra time on special projects. And you cannot let one group of kids do the fun extras when the other kids don't get to do them because it reinforces that one group is smarter or better or ahead. And while one class, the AAP class is ahead, rubbing the Gen Ed classes nose in that by letting the AAP kids do extra programs like the cool sounding Dig program is not going to be appreciated.

This is why I kept hearing, "oh, we're not doing that anymore" whenever I asked about the demise of a fun program at our Title 1 school.

We're at a regular middle class center school and hear the same thing. Lots of things have gone away. Because not all the students were doing it. So no students can do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Book clubs are voluntary and held at lunch time, at least at my son's school.

I love the educational extras but kids have to be in a place where they can successfully complete them. If the kids are at a school were many of the kids in the class are reading below grade level or not at grade level for math, you cannot spend the extra time on special projects. And you cannot let one group of kids do the fun extras when the other kids don't get to do them because it reinforces that one group is smarter or better or ahead. And while one class, the AAP class is ahead, rubbing the Gen Ed classes nose in that by letting the AAP kids do extra programs like the cool sounding Dig program is not going to be appreciated.

This is why I kept hearing, "oh, we're not doing that anymore" whenever I asked about the demise of a fun program at our Title 1 school.

We're at a regular middle class center school and hear the same thing. Lots of things have gone away. Because not all the students were doing it. So no students can do it.

We have after school clubs for anything interesting, but even those are hard to get. I’m at an AAP center and it’s pretty lifeless.

[Anonymous]

So because some kids can't, even the kids who can, can't either? This is getting out of hand

[Anonymous]

Not at a center school but we have a good selection of after school activities the kids can choose. I believe the PTA has scholarships to help kids out, we are not a Title I school or even close but there are some families who are not well off. I see the SACC Workers picking up kids who are in SACC when I pick up my son. The book club is something that is done once a month. Kids can choose to read the book and then attend the lunch session. They ask for a parent volunteer to provide a treat for the kids attending. It sounds like about 15 kids participated in my sons second grade class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My dd was in AAP at Haycock and Longfellow and is in college now. Honestly, if I could go back, I wouldn’t have done it. They were pushed ahead for what? So they could take the same exact classes in high school as the kids who weren’t in AAP (with the exception of some math classes)? So they can feel smarter/superior/more capable than the general public and struggle with the idea that some things are still difficult, even when your ES teachers always told you that you guys were smarter than the gen ed kids? (Two actually did this on a regular basis) It all seemed great at the time to be getting something others were not, and she was honestly very bright and scored extremely high on everything...but the outcome was no different than it would have been in a regular classroom.

This 100%!!!!!! My daughter tells me she wishes we had never put her in AAP. It was too much pressure to be "smarter" and turned her into a perfectionist (she may have been anyway, but she links it all back to AAP). Her whole identity is being smart and it shatters her confidence when she cannot get things. That whole study about praising kids who work hard, not telling kids they are smart totally played out with her.

If I had it to do over again, I would not have put her in AAP and I probably would have moved out of FCPS so the craziness was not even around. She eventually transferred to private for high school, which was a much better experience.

Your kid not getting in may be a gift.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our AAP center doesn’t have any of these things

Mine doesn't either. The school also would never have any special days or activities for AAP only. If gen ed could handle it, they would do it for everyone. If gen ed can't handle it, then no one would get it.

OMG! The arrogance! I had an AAP and a Gen Ed kid. The Gen Ed kid could "handle" all kinds of special days and activities and I would say would have responded well to the AAP techniques, but they were withheld for the "special" AAP class. The Gen Ed kids are not holding your precious hothouse flower back. That's an excuse the school is feeding you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our AAP center doesn’t have any of these things

Mine doesn't either. The school also would never have any special days or activities for AAP only. If gen ed could handle it, they would do it for everyone. If gen ed can't handle it, then no one would get it.

OMG! The arrogance! I had an AAP and a Gen Ed kid. The Gen Ed kid could "handle" all kinds of special days and activities and I would say would have responded well to the AAP techniques, but they were withheld for the "special" AAP class. The Gen Ed kids are not holding your precious hothouse flower back. That's an excuse the school is feeding you.

At our school, it is true that some kids, who do happen to be gen ed, are the reason there's no homework, very few projects, no fun special activities. Because they don't do any of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Honestly, this is clearly a school issue then. I have two kids. One AAP and the other gen ed. They BOTH did vocab, book clubs and fun projects. They both also had critical and creative thinking lessons. You clearly need to address these concerns with your principal.

Of course it's a school issue. Schools with low FARMS and low ESOL populations can actually teach in gen ed. Schools with higher ones can't. Unfortunately, thanks to No Child Left Behind, schools are rated based on whether the bottom kids can meet a fairly low benchmark. So they focus all of their efforts on helping the bottom kids pass the SOL rather than doing much of anything for the kids who were already going to pass the SOL.

Well this is what you get with open borders. We have such a large population of illegal immigrants who can't read or write in any language settling here it is inevitable that our schools would tank.

OK, racist. That is actually not true. At my kids' school, there are lots of ESOL kids and they are from all over the world and I don't know of any that are undocumented (I'm sure there are some, but it's not the majority).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Man, I'm so glad to be in LCPS. How do you put up with all of this AAP BS? It sounds stressful and dysfunctional.

People chill out as their kids get older. LCPS has always seemed kind of basic and cookie-cutter, so I'm happy to have the additional differentiation and options offered in FCPS.

LCPS has a real gifted program, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. They also have Academics of Loudoun. Plus, AP courses in the higher grades.

I'll happily take that over all of the crap you people put up with.

The SEARCH and FUTURA programs in LCPS is similar to what the gifted and talented programs in FCPS elementary schools used to look like 25-30 years ago. More enrichment, project-based pull-out time for gifted children. It was great! Not sure why FCPS abandoned that for AAP.

I have friends in loudon in the futura program and it doesn’t sound appealing to me at all. My friend’s child gets bused to another school one day per week and has to make up work that was missed. Sounds really disruptive to me.

My two kids are at an AAP center where all their classes are full of AAP kids. They have an excellent peer group. Our center school also has strong academic programs like science Olympiad, math counts, National lit, chess club, theater, etc. our old base schools had none of that.

[Anonymous]

Man, I’m getting the impression my center really sucks. This was supposed to be our first year. I wonder what next year will bring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Honestly, this is clearly a school issue then. I have two kids. One AAP and the other gen ed. They BOTH did vocab, book clubs and fun projects. They both also had critical and creative thinking lessons. You clearly need to address these concerns with your principal.

Of course it's a school issue. Schools with low FARMS and low ESOL populations can actually teach in gen ed. Schools with higher ones can't. Unfortunately, thanks to No Child Left Behind, schools are rated based on whether the bottom kids can meet a fairly low benchmark. So they focus all of their efforts on helping the bottom kids pass the SOL rather than doing much of anything for the kids who were already going to pass the SOL.

Well this is what you get with open borders. We have such a large population of illegal immigrants who can't read or write in any language settling here it is inevitable that our schools would tank.

OK, racist. That is actually not true. At my kids' school, there are lots of ESOL kids and they are from all over the world and I don't know of any that are undocumented (I'm sure there are some, but it's not the majority).

Yay, ESOL is full of diplomats’ kids and World Bank employee kids and international law firm partners totally have partner’s kids in ESOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our AAP center doesn’t have any of these things

Mine doesn't either. The school also would never have any special days or activities for AAP only. If gen ed could handle it, they would do it for everyone. If gen ed can't handle it, then no one would get it.

OMG! The arrogance! I had an AAP and a Gen Ed kid. The Gen Ed kid could "handle" all kinds of special days and activities and I would say would have responded well to the AAP techniques, but they were withheld for the "special" AAP class. The Gen Ed kids are not holding your precious hothouse flower back. That's an excuse the school is feeding you.

At our school, it is true that some kids, who do happen to be gen ed, are the reason there's no homework, very few projects, no fun special activities. Because they don't do any of it.

So the other gen ed kids are suffering the same as the aap kids, but somehow we’re supposed to feel bad for the aap kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our AAP center doesn’t have any of these things

Mine doesn't either. The school also would never have any special days or activities for AAP only. If gen ed could handle it, they would do it for everyone. If gen ed can't handle it, then no one would get it.

OMG! The arrogance! I had an AAP and a Gen Ed kid. The Gen Ed kid could "handle" all kinds of special days and activities and I would say would have responded well to the AAP techniques, but they were withheld for the "special" AAP class. The Gen Ed kids are not holding your precious hothouse flower back. That's an excuse the school is feeding you.

At our school, it is true that some kids, who do happen to be gen ed, are the reason there's no homework, very few projects, no fun special activities. Because they don't do any of it.

So the other gen ed kids are suffering the same as the aap kids, but somehow we’re supposed to feel bad for the aap kids?

I feel bad for all the kids. You do you.