How would you change the FCPS boundary maps?
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Anonymous
You may know families in Greenway Downs who attend McLean, but they are zoned to Falls Church. You can verify this on any boundary map. |
Anonymous
Very true. The one Teacher who responded saying that in class differentiation was possible then posted an example of higher level readers being given more independent reading to do, while the Teacher works with the struggling kids, because they are capable of it. Well, yes but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t have equal time to discuss what they are reading with the Teacher. If anything came out of last year it is how true the idea that differentiation doesn’t happen is. We watched as our kid twiddled his thumbs while other kids were pulled into small groups with the Teacher and other specialists. We saw that he finished his work and the bonus work and then read independently while the Teacher worked with other kids. If you think that parents are not aware that this is happening in the regular classroom then you are crazy. I have no problem with getting rid of the Centers and having Local Level IV programs. The number of kids being accepted into AAP who are ahead but not advanced is pretty high. The Principal Place kids in local level IV are not that different then the above average kid who is able to be selected into AAP by the committee. The real difference between the Centers and LLIV is probably that the parents who are sending their kids to the Centers are more involved then the parents who are keeping their kids at the base school. The AAP class gives kids who are ahead a place to go and learn at a faster pace. A kid who is a genius is going to be bored at the Center or at a Local Level IV. Most of the people I know who were desperate to send their kids to a Center school where at a Title 1 or near Title 1 school and wanted to move away from kids whose parents were not as involved and who started further behind. I doubt that the people clamoring to keep Centers are our of McLean or any of the higher SES areas in the County. |
Anonymous
I'm the teacher who posted that. What do you think they do when you bring the group together to discuss and question. They get face to face time. I am pretty sure I also mentioned that we would work on the more advanced skills. You think I'd just assign and leave it at that? Sure, the struggling kids might get more time face to face--that doesn't mean your brighter kid is getting shortchanged. You think there are not struggling kids in an AAP class? Also, do you really think every child in an AAP class gets the same amount of time every day in small group instruction? |
Anonymous
NP. Agree with all of this except the last sentence. I've said it before on this board but there are two main groups of people who want to keep AAP Centers. The first group has a base school that's not quite Title 1 and offers no advanced math until 5th grade. They know the teachers are stretched too thin and won't give their kid much differentiation. The second group has a base school with very low FRM and wants the distinction of their kid qualifying for a center. We are in the first group and sent our kid who qualified to the center. Our younger two had CogAt/ Naglieri scores in the low 120s and missed the cutoff. It's not the teachers' fault but they've really gotten shortchanged and we've had to supplement a lot. I'm glad we saved all the material from our older kid because we used practically every bit of it. When your 4th grader who is no genius tells you there are kids--multiple-- in her class who can't add two digit numbers and are reading books she read in kindergarten, you either leave for private, do what you can to make sure advanced math happens in 5th grade, or you seriously consider a parent referral to the center for the following year. I don't mind doing away with centers and actually think that makes the most sense, but they need to bring back more ability grouping in ES. Otherwise you end up with really unbalanced classes, frustrated teachers, and parents who decide to leave for private. FCPS does high school really well because they aren't pretending a student who is two grade levels behind should be in the same class with a student who is two grade levels ahead. |
Anonymous
OK. I guess I don't know what you're talking about, either. Sounds like you just want to revisit the Freedom Hill/Lemon Road adjustments from a few years ago (and swap some Freedom Hill and Lemon Road kids who are going to Marshall in any case), and think the McLean parents at Lemon Road would have an issue with it. Lemon Road is mostly a Marshall feeder and the Lemon Road families in Pimmit Hills are at least as likely to weigh in on the Lemon Road boundaries as any other parents. And I don't see any logic in moving Freedom Hill kids to Shrevewood as long as Shrevewood is overcrowded. Maybe that will get revisited if/when the Dunn Loring site reopens. |
Anonymous
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Agree that grouping by skill level would alleviate the need for AAP.
My kid (now a senior) got 15 minutes of small group reading time with her teacher PER WEEK in first grade. I know this b/c I volunteered in the class to help the slow readers and I asked my kid how often she got to go to the teachers table. ONCE A WEEK for 15 min. Other than that it was "entertain yourself time" at the "stations." How is that any kind of learning? At least back in the 1970s when I was a kid, we got group time (10 kids in a group) where we read aloud as a group through the Dick and Judy reader series. We were actually READING aloud in a group. Now in the 2000's, my kid was left to her own devices for about 8 hours per week, and she got 15 min. of direct small group instruction. I can't say that things improved! And my kid, the next year, tested in the 99th percentile for verbal on the CogAT. 15 min. per week is not an adequate education. There are FCPS elementary schools that do group kids and have them switching classes in the early grades. Sangster did this for the non-AAP kids. Essentially, they made a whole room of top reading kids, a middle group and a lower group. At least in that situation EVERYONE gets an equal level of instruction. That's the kind of EQUITY we never hear about. |
Anonymous
Sounds like your DD"s teacher is at fault. Of course, I still think the "Dick and Jane" program has value. And, don't think it did not include phonics--it did. Some teachers may skip that part, but it was part of the program. Of course, we need updated readers, but the programs were solid. They were not "see say." |
Anonymous
I say this as a teacher with my own child in AAP. I hate AAP. The program should go, but principals and vice principals and Gatehouse/admin instruct teachers to not meet with children who are above grade level. I know many/most above grade level kids meet rarely in small groups. Completely crappy. Those kids should be able to learn too. If they changed that policy, it would go far to keeping AAP numbers down. |
Anonymous
+100 This is exactly it. And please PP who says this one particular teacher is just not doing a good job. WAY too many of us have had the exact same experience of the faster kids being left to fend for themselves mostly. This is the prevailing practices and best practices like the Sangster example above are the exception. THAT is why people feel so strongly about keeping the AAP program |
Anonymous
| We love the AAP program. We would probably be in private school if FCPS didn’t have AAP. My kids have a solid peer group. When my kids were in K-2, they were mostly ignored by the teacher because they were well behaved and always did well in school. The teacher often focused on the kids with behavioral problems or struggling kids. My kids have said the biggest difference between AAP and their old classes are the kids are better behaved. I like the center model because the peer group is larger and there are better academic extracurriculars. |
Anonymous
| Eliminating centers and pushing Level IV for all comes next |
Anonymous
I wouldn't mind that IF there was a provision that students who couldn't or wouldn't keep up got removed from the class. They should have done this all along in centers and certainly in honors/ AP classes at the secondary level. |
Anonymous
Programs like AAP where there are completely different classes and schools for "advanced" kids but not for the kids who are below grade level are very, very rare in this country. Nice experiment, FCPS, but it's time to go back to what everyone else is doing far more successfully than we are. FCPS has declined significantly since moving to the AAP system. You may not see it because YOUR kid is in AAP, but the rest of us have noticed how different the education is now compared to when we were in FCPS. |
Anonymous
So long as the shift is to whole class grouping and ability targeting and NOT mixed classes then I think the fight against this would dwindle down to just those at bad ESs. But it is highly unlikely FCPS will implement class level ability grouping all across the system which is the problem. |
Anonymous
A lot of people are comparing the past FCPS to now. The largest differences is SPED and ESOL. How many newcomers were in these GenEd classes in the past? How many kids with severe behavior problems or Sped needs? We cannot compare classes from the past when the population looks drastically different |