Dumbing down Flint Hill AAP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dumb and proud of it is their motto. If you want a challenge for your DC, go to the center school.

You know we just toured Louise Archer and there weren't any better projects on the walls compared to Wolftrap. Not sure about Flint Hill, but I didn't notice a huge difference.

[Anonymous]

All the 3rd grade teachers at Flint Hill are incredibly strong.

[Anonymous]

OP here.

When I volunteered for class activities, I did notice a significant difference between kids in the same classroom - both in reading and writing. Some kids finish the task in about half the allotted time and then they just chit chat or get into trouble. So I can see why grouping these kids into a class would be helpful both to them and to the teacher.

Teacher can go at a faster pace and set up tasks that require the entire session for most of the kids, instead of teaching to the lowest common denominator.

This is what I am worried about with the Flint Hill program. To me, this is where AAP with classes made up of kids with similar abilities would be a big help.

What Flint Hill seems to be doing is pretty much dismantling FCPS AAP. Why go through the tests and all the evaluation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Dumb and proud of it is their motto. If you want a challenge for your DC, go to the center school.

You know we just toured Louise Archer and there weren't any better projects on the walls compared to Wolftrap. Not sure about Flint Hill, but I didn't notice a huge difference.

It is not about the projects. If given a lot of time and with parent help, it would be very surprising if you did see a difference.

It is about some kids who can grasp things faster being provided the opportunity to fully utilize their time at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:All the 3rd grade teachers at Flint Hill are incredibly strong.

That is good to know.

But even good teachers would find it very tough to differentiate between AAP and Gen Ed students. When you have a class made up of say 6 AAP and 20 Gen Ed students, guess what they would target?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the 3rd grade teachers at Flint Hill are incredibly strong.

That is good to know.

But even good teachers would find it very tough to differentiate between AAP and Gen Ed students. When you have a class made up of say 6 AAP and 20 Gen Ed students, guess what they would target?

Why would there be only 6 though? If there are 25 per class and each class has 10 AAP students and then another 5 students who are level 2 and level 3 students, that's half the class working above grade level. They can give out projects that are open ended and teach up or at least in the middle of both of these groups with concepts. My understanding is that the science and social studies wasn't very advanced to begin with in AAP.

[Anonymous]

Flint Hill has LLIV, not AAP. Center and LLIV are not comparable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Flint Hill has LLIV, not AAP. Center and LLIV are not comparable.

?

? The students are identified as AAP whether they go to the center or stay at Flint Hill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Flint Hill has LLIV, not AAP. Center and LLIV are not comparable.

'

Level IV AAP services - yes they are comparable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the 3rd grade teachers at Flint Hill are incredibly strong.

That is good to know.

But even good teachers would find it very tough to differentiate between AAP and Gen Ed students. When you have a class made up of say 6 AAP and 20 Gen Ed students, guess what they would target?

Why would there be only 6 though? If there are 25 per class and each class has 10 AAP students and then another 5 students who are level 2 and level 3 students, that's half the class working above grade level. They can give out projects that are open ended and teach up or at least in the middle of both of these groups with concepts. My understanding is that the science and social studies wasn't very advanced to begin with in AAP.

My guess, based on number of parents who have shown up for orientation and on the number of parents that an email was sent to from school, leads me to believe that there are about 20 to 25 kids across the 4 sections of 2nd grade (110 students) who are found eligible for AAP. So we are roughly talking about 6 kids per section.

Also, if we go with your assumption of 10 AAP kids per section, 40 kids out of 110 seems a rather high - fully 36% of all kids being in AAP.

Guesswork, but that is how I see it.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the 3rd grade teachers at Flint Hill are incredibly strong.

That is good to know.

But even good teachers would find it very tough to differentiate between AAP and Gen Ed students. When you have a class made up of say 6 AAP and 20 Gen Ed students, guess what they would target?

Why would there be only 6 though? If there are 25 per class and each class has 10 AAP students and then another 5 students who are level 2 and level 3 students, that's half the class working above grade level. They can give out projects that are open ended and teach up or at least in the middle of both of these groups with concepts. My understanding is that the science and social studies wasn't very advanced to begin with in AAP.

My guess, based on number of parents who have shown up for orientation and on the number of parents that an email was sent to from school, leads me to believe that there are about 20 to 25 kids across the 4 sections of 2nd grade (110 students) who are found eligible for AAP. So we are roughly talking about 6 kids per section.

Also, if we go with your assumption of 10 AAP kids per section, 40 kids out of 110 seems a rather high - fully 36% of all kids being in AAP.

Guesswork, but that is how I see it.

Thanks

Did you ask them how the teaching in science and social studies would be different? What did Louise Archer say about those subjects? That's really the only difference, so I guess I'd focus on those two subjects and find out more between the two schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I personally would avoid any program that does abrupt changes like this - your child is the guinea pig to see whether it works. yes, I am aware of other schools that do this model but there are always kinks to any new program.

I totally agree. It could work really well, or not. How many other schools do this?

Many schools in McLean have been doing this for years. It works very well. Flint Hill is a similar school- one where there are many smart kids in Gen-Ed and the line between AAP and Gen-ED is blurred. They use the AAP curriculum for science and social studies for all students.

Which Mclean schools do this?

[Anonymous]

We have attended the meeting as well at FH. We decided not to send DD to FH to a watered down program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Flint Hill has LLIV, not AAP. Center and LLIV are not comparable.

'

Level IV AAP services - yes they are comparable.

Mope. They are very different. Center is all AAP only. LLIV is not AAP only.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I personally would avoid any program that does abrupt changes like this - your child is the guinea pig to see whether it works. yes, I am aware of other schools that do this model but there are always kinks to any new program.

I totally agree. It could work really well, or not. How many other schools do this?

Many schools in McLean have been doing this for years. It works very well. Flint Hill is a similar school- one where there are many smart kids in Gen-Ed and the line between AAP and Gen-ED is blurred. They use the AAP curriculum for science and social studies for all students.

Which Mclean schools do this?

I believe it's Chesterbrook, Spring Hill, Franklin Sherman, and Kent Gardens. Not sure about Spring Hill. They have a lot of AAP students.