AAP center for middle school?

[Anonymous]

My daughter has deferred Level IV for elementary school and has the option of attending a center school for middle school. Would you be willing to rock the boat socially for the potential academic benefits in 7/8? Our local MS is not the best and the center school is excellent - so drastically different MS options. Thank you!

[Anonymous]

Yes. Peer group is so important in middle school. You want her building the habits of a highly motivated academically curious child. While there will be some at the base school, there will be a critical mass at the center.

I taught at the middle school you describe as your local option. While they had "honors" courses on paper, they were super watered down and basic compared to the AAP options at my next school (still not a super strong school, but AAP isn't open enrollment).

[Anonymous]

It depends. Is the base school "not the best" because the admin sucks and discipline stuff is out of control or is it not the best because there's a subset of students who are academically behind and that's impacting test scores? If it's the first one, go to the center. If it's the second and your child doesn't want to leave her friends I'd consider the base school. Honors classes in most middle schools in FCPS are usually solid. The kids who can't hack it academically usually drop down to team taught pretty quickly. By that age they're old enough to know when they're struggling and don't like it and the parents understand that a C in a high school level course isn't good. The kids who are really behind or have a lot of behavior problems get put into small group. It's also worth considering how much time the center will add to the morning bus ride. DC goes to a center middle school and it's a lot further from our house. Finally, if TJ is on your radar your kid is going to have a much easier time getting in from a base school than one of the centers that has hundreds of applicants and can only send the top 1.5%.

[Anonymous]

I don't want my DC to go to the center AAP MS assigned to us. So can I request to go to the AAP MS of my choice, and also its nearer to where I live?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't want my DC to go to the center AAP MS assigned to us. So can I request to go to the AAP MS of my choice, and also its nearer to where I live?

No. You already get an extra choice. You aren’t getting another one from FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter has deferred Level IV for elementary school and has the option of attending a center school for middle school. Would you be willing to rock the boat socially for the potential academic benefits in 7/8? Our local MS is not the best and the center school is excellent - so drastically different MS options. Thank you![/quote
If you’re asking about Whitman, then attend the center. Otherwise, I’d have them stick with their ES cohort

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It depends. Is the base school "not the best" because the admin sucks and discipline stuff is out of control or is it not the best because there's a subset of students who are academically behind and that's impacting test scores? If it's the first one, go to the center. If it's the second and your child doesn't want to leave her friends I'd consider the base school. Honors classes in most middle schools in FCPS are usually solid. The kids who can't hack it academically usually drop down to team taught pretty quickly. By that age they're old enough to know when they're struggling and don't like it and the parents understand that a C in a high school level course isn't good. The kids who are really behind or have a lot of behavior problems get put into small group. It's also worth considering how much time the center will add to the morning bus ride. DC goes to a center middle school and it's a lot further from our house. Finally, if TJ is on your radar your kid is going to have a much easier time getting in from a base school than one of the centers that has hundreds of applicants and can only send the top 1.5%.

TJ is not on our radar rn but open to it if she wants it. And yes our issue is the former- admin is ok but discipline issues are out of control since Covid. She has a close group of friends at her base school and is generally against moving schools and leaving besties behind. Tough call especially with liberty looming and dynamics likely to change

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Peer group is so important in middle school. You want her building the habits of a highly motivated academically curious child. While there will be some at the base school, there will be a critical mass at the center.

I taught at the middle school you describe as your local option. While they had "honors" courses on paper, they were super watered down and basic compared to the AAP options at my next school (still not a super strong school, but AAP isn't open enrollment).

How do you know what OP's local option is? Also, were the standards/curriculum themselves watered down compared to AAP, or were they both the same on paper?

[Anonymous]

I would not unless I planned to move to the feeder high school for the center middle school. You didn’t move her in elementary school. Moving her for just 2 years makes no sense.

IMO, middle school AAP is much less advanced than elementary. Some teachers use different materials and some just use the same for Honors and AAP. I don’t care that much, but it would be disappointing to move for AAP and discover that to be the case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes. Peer group is so important in middle school. You want her building the habits of a highly motivated academically curious child. While there will be some at the base school, there will be a critical mass at the center.

I taught at the middle school you describe as your local option. While they had "honors" courses on paper, they were super watered down and basic compared to the AAP options at my next school (still not a super strong school, but AAP isn't open enrollment).

How do you know what OP's local option is? Also, were the standards/curriculum themselves watered down compared to AAP, or were they both the same on paper?

Sorry, I mean the kind of school she describes as her base. A non center with low achieving students, high discipline issues, a very small cohort of honors students. The kind of school where there were only a half dozen kids in geometry in 8th grade vs. 3 full classes. Where there weren't tons of elective options because half the school was taking "power math" or "read 180" to catch up.

It affects the advanced students in a lot of ways. There isn't a critical mass of kids to run things like science olympiad, math counts, model UN, etc. After school clubs are things like "math tutoring club" or "Open gym". There aren't a tons of elective options. Maybe band or chorus, not both. Maybe 1 semester tech exploration, but not the year long 8th grade version. A "general art" class, but not a second year specializing in something else. At the center school, the advisory block is often used for enrichment as well as intervention (so kids who don't need help can learn new things, meet with clubs, etc). At a struggling school, every staff member is remediating, the strong kids are just doing silent reading. Dances were limited to a very small number of students and run like an elementary PE class--only line dances basically, because anything with a bass line caused kids to dance in really inappropriate ways. You don't want to see 7th graders grinding on each other. My 3rd year they ended up canceling dances all together because the chaperoning became too hard. Staff had to volunteer for it because there were never parent volunteers, and the DJ cost too much money when they could only charge $3/ticket to make it affordable for the student body.

PTA is usually non existent at these schools. Our PTA had an annual operating budget of <$3000 in a school of 800+ kids. There were no assemblies (unless they were free or a grant was won), no after school programs, no staff treats to raise morale, no community events like a movie night or a staff vs. students game or anything. I didn't think it was a big deal when I was there, but when I switched schools and saw the community a strong PTA can create, it was night and day.

At a stronger school, the kids have more freedoms. Some may thing it's silly, but things like free choice of where to sit for lunch, the paths you are allowed to take from one class to the next, how many bathroom passes per quarter, etc are restricted at struggling schools. You can't let kids with behavior issues sit where they want, or there are food fights and bullying and vandalizing of property. It's too hard to restrict it for some kids, so it's restricted for everyone. You can't let kids wander the hallways socializing before school starts or some of them will end up vaping in bathrooms, so they are held in the cafeteria and then escorted by groups to 1st period classes. Fun traditions like waving all students off on buses on the last day of school don't happen, because fights break out if you release all the kids at once, so kids are released alphabetically 30-40 at a time on the last day, with dismissal taking 40 minutes to keep hallways clear.

A school with massive behavior issues is either run like a prison (out of necessity) or devolves into chaos.

Mostly though, kids coming out of those low performing schools are at a disadvantage academically because they haven't been adequately prepared for advanced AP/IB classes in high school. When half the school is doing math at a 4th grade level, a kid in 8th grade who can do 7th grade math looks like a genius and is recommended for honors algebra in 8th grade. There are very few truly advanced kids. I taught 8th grade algebra to kids who had failed every SOL they'd ever taken in math, but they were put into algebra because "the algebra SOL is easier than math 8 and we need higher pass rates, plus, they try really hard and they want it." It is absolutely impossible to teach the full curriculum when half the kids are performing below grade level. The few who are capable of doing it are held back by the masses who aren't. Even in honors. The school I was at said everyone needed to take at least 1 honors class in 8th grade, which means civics and science were a joke since that was the one they all chose. You can't do a real research paper in honors civics if the kids enrolled can't write a paragraph. The civics teachers used to lament that they had to turn just about everything into multiple choice to prevent half their rosters from failing.

Staff turnover is rampant. No one lasts more than 5 years in a school like that. My second year teaching (ever) I was team lead, my 3rd year I was department chair. By my 4th year I had been there longer than anyone else in my department. It is really hard not to have a voice of experience on the team. It is constantly new teachers trying to learn how to teach, how to handle behavior, how to pace lessons, without anyone helping them. The students suffer. Look at the instructional vacancies. How many does your base school have? How many does the AAP center have? It's probably not equal.

Maybe OP's school isn't that rough. Without the name, I don't know--but this was FCPS, and only a few years ago (right before Covid). From the stories I hear from remaining staff.

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much for this feedback! So much to consider and think about. Our base school is not suffering to the degree your former school was. However, you’ve still provided a lot of factors to consider overall. Thank you!!

[Anonymous]

I have a kid at an AAP middle school. I have had no issues. He has a very strong peer group. I have heard from other parents that the school basically divided into the smart good AAP kids and non AAP. I’m not saying all AAP kids are good but the non AAP kids seem to have more of the bad crowd.