FCPS Appeals decision are out

[Anonymous]

To the 22:32 PP:
How can you justify the teachers’ and committee members decisions when so many kids who were accepted to AAP aren’t getting pass advanced (sometimes aren’t even passing) SOLs and are massively bombing the IAAT. Most of the kids in AAP are pretty mediocre and unremarkable in every way.

[Anonymous]

Also, there was only info in my son’ GBRS from his second grade teacher. Nothing from first. And his second grade teacher just thought he didn’t focus regardless of his grades, scores etc because he’s a social kid and loved talking to kids around him. She never bothered to really understand him at all while teachers who worked with him outside of his homeroom teacher highly referred him. So it’s all dependent on his grade 2 teacher ?

[Anonymous]

I can't understand comments like "kids are preparing for the tests". How do you prepare a kid for WISC? Also, I'm searching for COGAT2 books and I found one on Amazon which has ~250 pages. If a 7 year old kid can focus to go over 250 pages of problems and "prepare" for the test, that kid shows that he/she is extremely determined, extremely well focused and intelligent, and if that helps them do well then they should be in an advanced program because they're not likely to have a problem with any curriculum or test. I know many 7-years old children, and I am not sure that they would have the patience to sit through one half of that book. Actually, I know many university students who struggle with learning 250-page books.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To the 22:32 PP:
How can you justify the teachers’ and committee members decisions when so many kids who were accepted to AAP aren’t getting pass advanced (sometimes aren’t even passing) SOLs and are massively bombing the IAAT. Most of the kids in AAP are pretty mediocre and unremarkable in every way.

What is your basis to say "Most of the kids in AAP are pretty mediocre and unremarkable" . Do you have hard data to prove it?
Your are definitely exaggerating when saying AAP students bomb the IAAT. The IAAT is not a hard test by any means and majority of students who take Algebra 1 are from AAP which means they scores above 90. Also saying

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't understand comments like "kids are preparing for the tests". How do you prepare a kid for WISC? Also, I'm searching for COGAT2 books and I found one on Amazon which has ~250 pages. If a 7 year old kid can focus to go over 250 pages of problems and "prepare" for the test, that kid shows that he/she is extremely determined, extremely well focused and intelligent, and if that helps them do well then they should be in an advanced program because they're not likely to have a problem with any curriculum or test. I know many 7-years old children, and I am not sure that they would have the patience to sit through one half of that book. Actually, I know many university students who struggle with learning 250-page books.

Truth! My child’s WISC took 2.5 hours and he did the whole thing with a mask on. I didn’t realize they would have them wear masks at the testing center, and he had to wear a very uncomfortable surgical mask the entire time. And he scored in the 99th percentile. If they can focus on that for SO long and do that well, I am pretty sure he can manage AAP.

And yes, you really can’t prep for the WISC. You can somewhat for the Cogats. But again, why is studying and preparing a BAD thing? Shouldn’t they do that when in school? So why is this a problem anyways? There are books and courses left, right, and center for that test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To the 22:32 PP:
How can you justify the teachers’ and committee members decisions when so many kids who were accepted to AAP aren’t getting pass advanced (sometimes aren’t even passing) SOLs and are massively bombing the IAAT. Most of the kids in AAP are pretty mediocre and unremarkable in every way.

Different poster:

My kids have always pass advanced SOLs and both got 98% on the iaat. I can see, however, a kid who doesn’t get pass advanced on the Sol or who does poorly on the iaat, still being an out of the box thinker. One is more rote memorization and the other is creatively applying your synthesized information. One kid can grow up to be a great doctor and one can grow to be the innovator of new medical procedures. Elon Musk was a middle of the road student. Einstein did poorly in math. I don’t see these tests necessarily capturing a kid’s intellect. They more capture his ability to regurgitate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child is at an AAP center and I was told by two teachers they heard that the county is trying to reduce the number in AAP because it has become watered down. And the reason for a larger pool to consider was to identify those in minority groups whose parents might not apply on their own. Both make sense to me. But many parents are upset because they assumed if they were in the pool that acceptance would be a breeze.

Yeah. The program has become too watered down, so the way to fix it is to get rid of all of those pesky 99th percentile kids. Sounds legit.

To make room for AA.

Well, here's my cynical view after reading the entire AAP equity report. Asians are highly over-represented, Whites are over-represented, and URMs are under-represented, despite the efforts to get more URMs into AAP. They can't lower the standards more than they already have, since they would end up with kids being unsuccessful in AAP. Therefore, the way to close the representation gap is to get rid of some white and Asian kids. The AAP equity report also showed that the average test scores for the URMs who are admitted to AAP are significantly lower than the test scores for the white and Asian kids. If they got rid of the bottom white and Asian kids, that gap in test scores would become even more pronounced. By not admitting the white and Asian kids with the highest test scores, the average test scores for the kids in those groups admitted to AAP will decrease. On paper, it will look like FCPS has solved the achievement gap!

I don't think FCPS cares at all about how well their programs actually serve kids. They care about looking good on paper. For years now, they've pressured URM kids who are not qualified to take AP classes to do so. Most of the agencies that rate high schools care about URM participation in AP classes. They don't care about whether the URM kids actually pass the AP exam. This is the same. It doesn't matter if AAP is truly AAP. What matters is that they can create graphs and tables that show equal representation among all races and relatively equal qualifying scores.

This explains a lot to me. I didn't pay much attention to the AAP equity report but saw it referenced a few times on this board. Now that we have the results from this year's AAP admissions, it kind of fits. If this is true, it seems to me that Asian-American kids may be held to a different standard here. GBRS will be more important than test scores. Also, unless you have high GBRS, really high test scores may actually count against the kid (falling back on the narrative that kids are being prepped). The rest of the qualitative submissions don't really matter. Cynical but makes a lot of sense if FCPS' goal is to make the numbers work and hit their metrics.

[Anonymous]

Another high test scores, all 4s, mediocre GBRS who got rejected. I do not understand putting so much weight on the GBRS. My youngest has higher scores than older sibs who are in AAP and who are all easily handling the work in AAP. If AAP has become "watered down" and the teachers complain that the children cannot manage the demands, why is the AAP committee putting so much emphasis on the most subjective part of the application??

My kid is a bit messy, a bit disorganized, extremely social--and still manages to score 98th or 99th percentile, unprepped on everything, work above grade level, receive highest possible grades. Why keep this kid out of AAP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another high test scores, all 4s, mediocre GBRS who got rejected. I do not understand putting so much weight on the GBRS. My youngest has higher scores than older sibs who are in AAP and who are all easily handling the work in AAP. If AAP has become "watered down" and the teachers complain that the children cannot manage the demands, why is the AAP committee putting so much emphasis on the most subjective part of the application??

My kid is a bit messy, a bit disorganized, extremely social--and still manages to score 98th or 99th percentile, unprepped on everything, work above grade level, receive highest possible grades. Why keep this kid out of AAP?

Are you at a large center school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another high test scores, all 4s, mediocre GBRS who got rejected. I do not understand putting so much weight on the GBRS. My youngest has higher scores than older sibs who are in AAP and who are all easily handling the work in AAP. If AAP has become "watered down" and the teachers complain that the children cannot manage the demands, why is the AAP committee putting so much emphasis on the most subjective part of the application??

My kid is a bit messy, a bit disorganized, extremely social--and still manages to score 98th or 99th percentile, unprepped on everything, work above grade level, receive highest possible grades. Why keep this kid out of AAP?

"The AAP equity report also showed that the average test scores for the URMs who are admitted to AAP are significantly lower than the test scores for the white and Asian kids. If they got rid of the bottom white and Asian kids, that gap in test scores would become even more pronounced. By not admitting the white and Asian kids with the highest test scores, the average test scores for the kids in those groups admitted to AAP will decrease. On paper, it will look like FCPS has solved the achievement gap!"

[Anonymous]

My son also with high WISC, great referrals etc. His GBRSreport doesn’t have any score. His aART head said they stopped supplying scores to the board this past year and only send the report. His teacher, however, only gave him “frequently observes”and even 2 “occasionally observes.” I mentioned this before. She always called him unfocused because he’s a very social kid and would often talk to those around him. However, he has mostly 4s and scored in the 99th percentile on his WISC with very strong referrals from his piano teacher, music instructor, and his tutor who is a professor. Also as I mentioned before, he is an inventor on a patent pending on a game at age 8. He’s also an athlete. So one teacher can make or break him?

[Anonymous]

I wrote the post above and my son IS at a center school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the 22:32 PP:
How can you justify the teachers’ and committee members decisions when so many kids who were accepted to AAP aren’t getting pass advanced (sometimes aren’t even passing) SOLs and are massively bombing the IAAT. Most of the kids in AAP are pretty mediocre and unremarkable in every way.

What is your basis to say "Most of the kids in AAP are pretty mediocre and unremarkable" . Do you have hard data to prove it?
Your are definitely exaggerating when saying AAP students bomb the IAAT. The IAAT is not a hard test by any means and majority of students who take Algebra 1 are from AAP which means they scores above 90. Also saying

I've worked extensively with AAP students. For the most part, they're generically bright, privileged kids with educated parents who have received a lot of enrichment. I agree that IAAT is not a hard test by any means. At my AAP center, only about half of the kids meet the benchmark for the IAAT. Many have scores below 70%, and some are even as low as 30%. The parents of these kids think that their kids are still gifted in math, but just didn't "study enough" for the IAAT. The AAP equity report showed that the average CogAT and NNAT scores for the kids who were accepted were pretty low, and some kids got in with scores as low as 70 (not percentile. Just a raw score way below average). I wish I could find this FCPS report, but another one showed that around 1/4 of the kids in AAP got pass advanced on neither math nor reading in any given year.

From the parental end, my oldest child is a typical AAP kid. She had a stellar GBRS, CogAT in the high 120s, and is a great student. When we had her IQ tested, it was 121. She is above average in her AAP classes and is a very bright, knowledgeable child. Kids like her and most of the kids in AAP will do well in school, go to decent colleges, and be able to do almost anything with their lives. If she were my only child or my smartest child, I would probably think she's gifted and "needs AAP," just like all of the posters who had kids get in with lower scores and high GBRS. I also have a kid with an IQ above 140. The differences are painfully obvious. My high IQ kid did not receive a stellar GBRS, despite reading things like Percy Jackson in 2nd grade and having an off-the charts iready score in math. He has been the top kid in his AAP classes. The teachers have said that they don't quite know what to do with him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the 22:32 PP:
How can you justify the teachers’ and committee members decisions when so many kids who were accepted to AAP aren’t getting pass advanced (sometimes aren’t even passing) SOLs and are massively bombing the IAAT. Most of the kids in AAP are pretty mediocre and unremarkable in every way.

Different poster:

My kids have always pass advanced SOLs and both got 98% on the iaat. I can see, however, a kid who doesn’t get pass advanced on the Sol or who does poorly on the iaat, still being an out of the box thinker. One is more rote memorization and the other is creatively applying your synthesized information. One kid can grow up to be a great doctor and one can grow to be the innovator of new medical procedures. Elon Musk was a middle of the road student. Einstein did poorly in math. I don’t see these tests necessarily capturing a kid’s intellect. They more capture his ability to regurgitate.

PP here. I agree with you, but you're missing the point. 22:32 PP suggested that it's proper for kids with high WISC scores but lower GBRS to get rejected, because AAP is for good students. My question then is that is AAP is filled with bright, good students, why are they struggling to perform at tasks that should be trivial for bright, good students.
Elon Musk and Einstein are the kids with the 140+ WISC scores and low GBRS who got rejected. 22:32 would support their rejection. I think it's ludicrous.

[Anonymous]

This is the thing I find perplexing about all of it. Kids take a beginning of year math reasoning test. They also take iready. DRA is capped at one year above grade level, but it shouldn't be. As flawed as iready is, it pretty readily identifies kids who are far above grade level.

I'm the 11:21 PP, and my highly gifted child scored a 580 on iready math and a 610 on reading in 2nd grade, which are both well above grade level. He also had over 140 on both CogAT and WISC FSIQ. The teacher still gave a low GBRS. My high GBRS, more normal AAP kid has always scored at the high end of on-grade-level.

If your kid was rejected with a high FSIQ and/or CogAT, how advanced is your child? Does your child have maxed out DRA? High iready scores? Is your child doing things well above grade level? I can kind of understand rejecting kids with high test scores who are not advanced, but it's mindboggling to me to reject kids who are both very advanced and have high IQs.