ACPS kindergarten Placement

[Anonymous]

Anyone know what to expect for Kindergarten students in Alexandria being placed into classrooms? Are they screened by ability level?

[Anonymous]

I was wondering the same! Thanks for asking

[Anonymous]

What do you mean? Are you asking if all of the advanced kids are in one class in kindergarten. Not clear from your question. But no school system groups 5 year olds that way. In my ACPS school the registrar assigns kids to classes at random unless the student has an IEP.

[Anonymous]

The schools hold kindergarten orientation and it is likely to help teachers distribute students evenly by their strengths and weaknesses so that no one teacher is overburdened much as there are try-outs for baseball (to ensure that teams are competitive).

Students for whom English is a second language or those who have IEPs may be grouped together to allow for more efficiency in providing push-in support. To my knowledge, kindergartners are not tested en masse until later. In any case, students are not grouped by NNAT or CoGAT scores.

[Anonymous]

In K they are placed pretty randomly, though there may be an inclusion classroom for kids who are receiving additional services.

They don't have the data to screen them for ability at this point, and even if they did ability at age 5 doesn't necessarily correlate with intelligence or test results anyway (e.g both my kids tested high on the NNAT but were behind many kids on reading). Or a kid who has clicked for reading might struggle with math (or vice versa) so which class would they fit into? A kid who comes in to kindergarten with little preschool experience might take off in huge leaps and surpass kids who seemed more advanced because they had more exposure to reading previously.

Within the classroom, they will be assigned to reading and math groups based on ability once the teacher has had time to observe them a bit.

[Anonymous]

There is no placement. Everything else is all very school dependent (which I like, but do not say it too loudly as it is not equitable). Schools are even allowed to choose their own reading curriculum. There is no more orientation. It is a half day, and at some schools teachers are already assigned.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no placement. Everything else is all very school dependent (which I like, but do not say it too loudly as it is not equitable). Schools are even allowed to choose their own reading curriculum. There is no more orientation. It is a half day, and at some schools teachers are already assigned.

Our school assigns teachers before K orientation so you can "meet the teacher."

[Anonymous]

Depends on the school, actually.

[Anonymous]

School dependent. Our larger school had kids on IEP's concentrated into 2 classes so the SPED teachers can more easily push in. They used to put kids from the same preschools together to the extent the knew and could, but new principal stopped that. I think they try to balance gender and I'm not sure what else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:School dependent. Our larger school had kids on IEP's concentrated into 2 classes so the SPED teachers can more easily push in. They used to put kids from the same preschools together to the extent the knew and could, but new principal stopped that. I think they try to balance gender and I'm not sure what else.

What school is this!?? I’ve never heard this at any ACPS elementary and I have friends with kids in schools all over the city.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:School dependent. Our larger school had kids on IEP's concentrated into 2 classes so the SPED teachers can more easily push in. They used to put kids from the same preschools together to the extent the knew and could, but new principal stopped that. I think they try to balance gender and I'm not sure what else.

What school is this!?? I’ve never heard this at any ACPS elementary and I have friends with kids in schools all over the city.

Not the PP and can't speak to the balancing of gender & preschools but concentrating the IEPs goes on at GM.

Considering how poor ACPS communication is and the fact that kids notoriously don't talk about their days and parents can't go in the buildings to volunteer in classrooms etc, are you really that surprised that people don't know what is happening in classrooms?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:School dependent. Our larger school had kids on IEP's concentrated into 2 classes so the SPED teachers can more easily push in. They used to put kids from the same preschools together to the extent the knew and could, but new principal stopped that. I think they try to balance gender and I'm not sure what else.

What school is this!?? I’ve never heard this at any ACPS elementary and I have friends with kids in schools all over the city.

Not the PP and can't speak to the balancing of gender & preschools but concentrating the IEPs goes on at GM.

Considering how poor ACPS communication is and the fact that kids notoriously don't talk about their days and parents can't go in the buildings to volunteer in classrooms etc, are you really that surprised that people don't know what is happening in classrooms?

If this is true, the school is exposing the district to litigation as a violation of IDEA. How do you know this?

[Anonymous]

It definitely happens so that a SPED teacher can spend more time in the classroom and have a more co-teaching role that benefits all students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It definitely happens so that a SPED teacher can spend more time in the classroom and have a more co-teaching role that benefits all students.

I have a SN child in ACPS, and if I find out that DC is in a class for this purpose, ACPS will rue the day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:School dependent. Our larger school had kids on IEP's concentrated into 2 classes so the SPED teachers can more easily push in. They used to put kids from the same preschools together to the extent the knew and could, but new principal stopped that. I think they try to balance gender and I'm not sure what else.

What school is this!?? I’ve never heard this at any ACPS elementary and I have friends with kids in schools all over the city.

Not the PP and can't speak to the balancing of gender & preschools but concentrating the IEPs goes on at GM.

Considering how poor ACPS communication is and the fact that kids notoriously don't talk about their days and parents can't go in the buildings to volunteer in classrooms etc, are you really that surprised that people don't know what is happening in classrooms?

If this is true, the school is exposing the district to litigation as a violation of IDEA. How do you know this?

My (non IEP) kid was in the inclusion classroom in 1st grade at Brooks. It was about 50/50 kids who had pullouts for extra services. It was not remotely secret and any parent of a kid in the class knew about it. Inclusion classrooms are not a violation of IDEA, they came about because of IDEA.