Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:He is in 3rd currently. For math he goes to the 4th grade AAP class for math. Next year he'll go to a 5th grade AAP class for 6th grade math and so on. In 5th grade he'll be taking 7th grade math and all the testing to go with it.
Are you sure you are understanding this correctly?
You can be "on track" because that's just how AAP goes but the child has to qualify for further differentiation
I have a 5th grader and I thought:
3rd grade AAP takes a combination of 3rd and 4th grade Math, takes 3rd grade SOL
4th grade AAP takes 4th grade and 5th grade math and takes 4th grade SOL.
5th grade AAP takes 6th grade math and takes 6th grade SOL. (But now I see a PP here say that the IAAT can be taken summer before 6th grade? Which would make sense since there are some 6th graders who take Algebra in the middle school.
6th grade takes 7th grade SOL. During 6th grade, they take the IAAT. Must score 91 and pass advanced on SOL to qualify for Algebra 1 in 7th grade.
It sounds like PP is not doing the normal AAP math track.
Yes, there's a stupid push in some AAP grade schools to bus some of their math students to middle school for Algebra 1 in 6th grade. Many teachers are against it because even math whizzes often aren't ready for the rigor of a middle school honors class, but that crazy horse has left the barn so some teachers are recommending their kids take the Iowa Test after 5th grade as opposed to 6th.
My kids' math teachers at a center middle school hated this practice -- which sometimes saw 8th graders being sent to high schools for Algebra II Trig. Too many parents with kids at the margin are starting to push for this with the result that more kids are showing up in higher level maths without a grounding in the basics. The brilliant ones can usually get by if they do the work, others struggle unnecessarily.
My child did this, and it was no big deal at all, nothing like you're describing in fact. He excelled in his math classes even though he was two years ahead rather than one and I suspect that wasn't always the case for many of the students in his class--the reason I'm saying this is that he'd come back and say something like "
math was boring today because we got the tests back and the teacher gave us a long lecture about studying harder for the test", and then I'd ask what he got, thinking he'd bombed and he'd say something like 46/44 (including the bonus questions).
There simply is a subset of kids in the system who are fully ready for that level of challenge, and in fact, there are far more who are ready than FCPS is willing to admit and instruct at that level. There are some kids who are even far more advanced--ready for calculus by middle school type of thing, but at that level the parents know there's nothing the school system can do for them and they pursue other avenues for substantial math instruction.
In addition, the implementation is virtually entirely left to the discretion of individual schools. Some will happily identify the kids and push them into those classes, while others won't hear of it.