APS is failing my gifted child

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:APS is failing other parents' non-gifted kids, too. You're not special.

APS only job is to get kids to pass the SOLs. Period.

Thanks to NCLB.

APS is significantly underfunded so why are some parents expecting a highly personalized educational experience?

I agree with an earlier PP about letting the kids - even the “gifted” ones - have a more chill ES/MS experience. If you want all of the craziness of AAP and the race to nowhere then you’ll have to move to FCPS.

How is APS underfunded? Don’t we pay more per child than most jurisdictions?

https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/arlington/Board.nsf/files/D2WW4J839BAE/$file/FY%202025%20Superintendent's%20Presentation%20FINAL%20(331%20pm).pdf
"“Virginia school divisions receive less K-12 funding per student than the 50-state average,
the regional average, and three of Virginia’s five bordering states. School divisions in other
states receive 14 percent more per student than school divisions in Virginia, on average,
after normalizing for differences in cost of labor among states. This equates to about
$1,900 more per student than Virginia.” Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) estimates that annually APS is underfunded by approximately $51 million"


Plus the funding for capital projects is included in the operating budget.

If you move the special education kids and the not too bright kids to dedicated facilities you could concentrate resources instead of needing a hundred extra teachers and aids in every single building. What a complete waste of money every year.

[Anonymous]

Why would pullouts need to be connected to core instruction? According to the fall benchmark my elementary child is 4 grades ahead.
Find challenges or activities unrelated to core instruction that they wouldn’t get otherwise. I completely agree that tutoring should match core instruction, but I don’t understand why extension would need to.

How do you know? I guess if I just look at what's 50th percentile for the raw scores, then my kid would be two grades ahead in math and four in reading, but is that an accurate interpretation? (Incidentally, I don't feel like my kid is being "failed" by this system at all, but then again she's not truly gifted by y'all's standards.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Gifted” kids throughout history have grown up as orphans, or were charged with farming 70 hours a week, they lacked books to read, lived through smallpox or Spanish flu, were sometimes enslaved.

If your kid is the marvel you seem to think, he’ll be fine. Part of genius is the drive to pursue all the amazing things your mind is capable of.

If your gifted kid is brought to tears by the boredom of his third grade spelling test, he’s not Penske material. Deal with it.

This definition of "gifted" worked 100 years ago because back then schools were willing to exclude the bottom 10% of students who were disruptive and uninterested in learning. The result was a classroom capable of maintaining both high standards and discipline, and the need for any kind of differentiation disappeared for anyone but a genuine prodigy.

People don't want to admit it, but differentiation and inclusion go hand in hand. Otherwise you end up with what we have now, which is the worst of both worlds.

This is true and rediculous. How can we expect a teacher to provide individualized differentiated instruction to 26 children. Even with specialists coming in l, it's rediculous. Children need pullouts or leveled classrooms to adequately meet their needs. Inclusion for specials, lunch and recess that's fine, but the current system of not challenging academic oriented children is not working.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:“Gifted” kids throughout history have grown up as orphans, or were charged with farming 70 hours a week, they lacked books to read, lived through smallpox or Spanish flu, were sometimes enslaved.

If your kid is the marvel you seem to think, he’ll be fine. Part of genius is the drive to pursue all the amazing things your mind is capable of.

If your gifted kid is brought to tears by the boredom of his third grade spelling test, he’s not Penske material. Deal with it.

This definition of "gifted" worked 100 years ago because back then schools were willing to exclude the bottom 10% of students who were disruptive and uninterested in learning. The result was a classroom capable of maintaining both high standards and discipline, and the need for any kind of differentiation disappeared for anyone but a genuine prodigy.

People don't want to admit it, but differentiation and inclusion go hand in hand. Otherwise you end up with what we have now, which is the worst of both worlds.

This is true and rediculous. How can we expect a teacher to provide individualized differentiated instruction to 26 children. Even with specialists coming in l, it's rediculous. Children need pullouts or leveled classrooms to adequately meet their needs. Inclusion for specials, lunch and recess that's fine, but the current system of not challenging academic oriented children is not working.

Blame the parents with kids that can't keep up for whatever reason. They selfishly overwhelm the system by using catchphrases such as inclusion and equity when their kids are basically anchors weighing down the rest of classes. From what I've seen, many of the problems that a lot of these kids have were self-inflicted in the family with poor parental decisions as well, and they expect everyone else to deal with it. I don't feel sorry anymore. I've seen and also heard about too much violence, disruption, and chaos in the classroom. The collateral damage isn't worth it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meeting your profoundly gifted child is more than just challenging them in spelling or math. It's also socializing them, giving them the opportunity to find solutions to being bored, teaching them to exist with others who may be different from them. It's about PE, and recess, and music, and art class. Not just math and reading. It's all the things.

All those are dumbed down as well in elementary school. At least in our APS experience.

PE is about silly things such as coordination or stretching (juggling with silks anyone?) and not about competition games and improving skills: not to say that kids shouldn't learn those things but gym class is not for that, maybe some kind of physical therapy or something.

Most playgrounds in schools don't have actual playground equipment anymore (no swings, no tall slides, etc.) and just have that giant plastic behemoth that's mostly useless. Plus there's limited time to do anything meaningful.

Music is literally not taught at any level that would be considered enriching (except maybe at ATS??). Even the junior honors band level is not that great overall.

And art class is a complete joke that teaches no actual art technique except gluing and coloring.

They don't want to push the gifted and talented kids, or even the gen ed kids, because the county has a perverse mission to not exclude anyone in their one size fits all classrooms. Can't hurt anyone's feelings I guess.

These statements about PE, music, and art are so false that I wonder if you have a child in an APS school at all? If so, which one?

You're kidding, right? Our kids have been pretty successful in travel sports (all over the country), jr/ms bands, Reflections, etc. I guess your standards are really low, are just ignorant, or listen to what your kids say and believe them. We know kids from counties all over the DMV and beyond because of ECs. It's pretty evident that APS is terrible in supporting the arts and music. I mean just look at district band where I think fewer than a dozen kids make it from the entire county every year. It's a shame because I can honestly say the great majority of our kids' better teachers were K-5 art and music teachers who were not allowed to teach properly because of some or most of the kids in the class for various reasons of inclusion. The jr/ms honors band teachers were great, too, but they also had to deal with a handful of kids who shouldn't have been selected. And PE class well into ms is a joke.

WTF?!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is OP saying they are at Taylor, or is that someone else responding?

Someone else I think. We are from Taylor but I’m like 90% sure most of the parents aren’t from Harvard… maybe some UVA but all I’ve met are from UmD and Penn State etc

How do you even know where the other parents in your kid's elementary school went to college? This comes up in casual conversation?

Status-obsessed strivers love to bring this stuff up in conversations.

You're wrong. I went to a status school, and I promise you I never bring it up. I often deflect even when asked directly.

This is VERY typical behavior by the way with people who went to my college.

No you didn't.

I’m a NP but come on. You’ve never noticed that when asked where they went to college, Harvard grads say “in Boston”? A lot more people deflect than you might think.

Why do you hang out with losers who ask what school you went to when you were a teen/early 20s? Backwards-looking people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is OP saying they are at Taylor, or is that someone else responding?

Someone else I think. We are from Taylor but I’m like 90% sure most of the parents aren’t from Harvard… maybe some UVA but all I’ve met are from UmD and Penn State etc

How do you even know where the other parents in your kid's elementary school went to college? This comes up in casual conversation?

Status-obsessed strivers love to bring this stuff up in conversations.

You're wrong. I went to a status school, and I promise you I never bring it up. I often deflect even when asked directly.

This is VERY typical behavior by the way with people who went to my college.

No you didn't.

I’m a NP but come on. You’ve never noticed that when asked where they went to college, Harvard grads say “in Boston”? A lot more people deflect than you might think.

Why do you hang out with losers who ask what school you went to when you were a teen/early 20s? Backwards-looking people.

It comes up when we talk about where our kids are thinking of going “where did you, go was it a rural campus, did you like it” sort of thing. I also ask people where they grew up and last vacationed, all in the past!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Last year our APS elementary school paid for IXL accounts for kids who they considered at risk for failing the math SOL so they could get extra practice. Advanced and gifted kids didn't get an IXL account and were told to read quietly at their desk after finishing their work. It was really unfair and made many of the advanced kids upset that they didn't have access to IXL to work on new material.

APS has really decided that it doesn't need to meet the needs of advanced and gifted students. It's a remarkable turnaround from our experience pre-covid.

And this is one reason why voters need to think, and school board and county board candidates need to realize that Arlington County cannot be everything for everyone, all the time, and receive ever more and more students. Space is one huge issue, but the other paramount issue is getting the needs met of various learners. This is one of the richest counties in the U.S. with an ever increasing population with many needs. And yet, all we hear are 'cuts, cuts, cuts', and 'we have no money'. Something is out of balance here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Last year our APS elementary school paid for IXL accounts for kids who they considered at risk for failing the math SOL so they could get extra practice. Advanced and gifted kids didn't get an IXL account and were told to read quietly at their desk after finishing their work. It was really unfair and made many of the advanced kids upset that they didn't have access to IXL to work on new material.

APS has really decided that it doesn't need to meet the needs of advanced and gifted students. It's a remarkable turnaround from our experience pre-covid.

And this is one reason why voters need to think, and school board and county board candidates need to realize that Arlington County cannot be everything for everyone, all the time, and receive ever more and more students. Space is one huge issue, but the other paramount issue is getting the needs met of various learners. This is one of the richest counties in the U.S. with an ever increasing population with many needs. And yet, all we hear are 'cuts, cuts, cuts', and 'we have no money'. Something is out of balance here.

That choice was made a long time again Arlington. Used to be private school was a very unusual thing for Arlington kids; now it’s the norm in many of the wealthier neighborhoods. I understand that demographics have changed somewhat but it’s also true that those neighborhoods were always wealthier. What’s different is the: good riddance attitude. I think it’s a shame that liberals public school leaning folks (and generally these are those families) do not believe that APS is meeting the needs of their kids. It’s a system set up to help the kids who are failing, without structural/administrative/teacher incentive or benefit to meeting the kids at the top.

[Anonymous]

Not to put too fine a point on it, but APS has one goal with regards to its gifted students: to create a semblance of a program that appears to do something (so as not to lose too many of those students to private and other systems), while in fact doing as little as possible.

APS leadership, both the board and the superintendent, have made clear over and over again that their primary goal is closing the "achievement gap." That is the main metric by which they measure themselves these days. That is a noble goal. With the possible exception of adopting science-based literacy approaches, APS' efforts over the last five years have barely moved the needle.

In that environment, it's clear that putting significant effort into improving the performance of the top 10-20% of students would be totally self-defeating. Whatever meager gains have been made in closing the "gap" by improvements in the lowest-performers will be wiped out by improvements in the top performers.

If closing the achievement gap is your organization's top priority, then a successful gifted ed program is indistinguishable from failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not to put too fine a point on it, but APS has one goal with regards to its gifted students: to create a semblance of a program that appears to do something (so as not to lose too many of those students to private and other systems), while in fact doing as little as possible.

APS leadership, both the board and the superintendent, have made clear over and over again that their primary goal is closing the "achievement gap." That is the main metric by which they measure themselves these days. That is a noble goal. With the possible exception of adopting science-based literacy approaches, APS' efforts over the last five years have barely moved the needle.

In that environment, it's clear that putting significant effort into improving the performance of the top 10-20% of students would be totally self-defeating. Whatever meager gains have been made in closing the "gap" by improvements in the lowest-performers will be wiped out by improvements in the top performers.

If closing the achievement gap is your organization's top priority, then a successful gifted ed program is indistinguishable from failure.

You’re right. Many of the gifted are 99th percentile already, they don’t show much growth

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not to put too fine a point on it, but APS has one goal with regards to its gifted students: to create a semblance of a program that appears to do something (so as not to lose too many of those students to private and other systems), while in fact doing as little as possible.

APS leadership, both the board and the superintendent, have made clear over and over again that their primary goal is closing the "achievement gap." That is the main metric by which they measure themselves these days. That is a noble goal. With the possible exception of adopting science-based literacy approaches, APS' efforts over the last five years have barely moved the needle.

In that environment, it's clear that putting significant effort into improving the performance of the top 10-20% of students would be totally self-defeating. Whatever meager gains have been made in closing the "gap" by improvements in the lowest-performers will be wiped out by improvements in the top performers.

If closing the achievement gap is your organization's top priority, then a successful gifted ed program is indistinguishable from failure.

You’re right. Many of the gifted are 99th percentile already, they don’t show much growth

Imagine saying this and thinking you're clever. You have a Yogi-Berra-like understanding of statistics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is OP saying they are at Taylor, or is that someone else responding?

Someone else I think. We are from Taylor but I’m like 90% sure most of the parents aren’t from Harvard… maybe some UVA but all I’ve met are from UmD and Penn State etc

How do you even know where the other parents in your kid's elementary school went to college? This comes up in casual conversation?

Status-obsessed strivers love to bring this stuff up in conversations.

You're wrong. I went to a status school, and I promise you I never bring it up. I often deflect even when asked directly.

This is VERY typical behavior by the way with people who went to my college.

No you didn't.

I’m a NP but come on. You’ve never noticed that when asked where they went to college, Harvard grads say “in Boston”? A lot more people deflect than you might think.

Why do you hang out with losers who ask what school you went to when you were a teen/early 20s? Backwards-looking people.

It comes up when we talk about where our kids are thinking of going “where did you, go was it a rural campus, did you like it” sort of thing. I also ask people where they grew up and last vacationed, all in the past!

Here's our answer. It comes up because YOU ask. I literally never ask parents of my kids' friends where they went to college. And I am one who went to school "in Boston."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not to put too fine a point on it, but APS has one goal with regards to its gifted students: to create a semblance of a program that appears to do something (so as not to lose too many of those students to private and other systems), while in fact doing as little as possible.

APS leadership, both the board and the superintendent, have made clear over and over again that their primary goal is closing the "achievement gap." That is the main metric by which they measure themselves these days. That is a noble goal. With the possible exception of adopting science-based literacy approaches, APS' efforts over the last five years have barely moved the needle.

In that environment, it's clear that putting significant effort into improving the performance of the top 10-20% of students would be totally self-defeating. Whatever meager gains have been made in closing the "gap" by improvements in the lowest-performers will be wiped out by improvements in the top performers.

If closing the achievement gap is your organization's top priority, then a successful gifted ed program is indistinguishable from failure.

The metrics that the state uses to test student performance are not open ended scores. It's not like the smart kids are going to 2x their scores while the not smart kids are only going to 1x theirs. SOLs only test for the standard curriculum, which is pathetically low. Like sped level low compared to a few decades ago. Some of the other standardized tests seem to have an artificial ceiling that some kids have hit, where I'm not sure if it's the teachers or the testing program preventing them from continuing. Even the PE annual tests (like the pacer test) in ES/MS were stopped before kids could "finish," in effect causing them to max out at a level lower than when they could have finished. I'm not sure if this is normal for all APS schools but it has been the case for at least more than one. We've been told multiple times by our kids that the teacher just made people stop. So I'm not sure if the ceiling of the smarter kids can be raised much higher in terms of the measurables. What APS seems to want to do is to stop teaching to the mid-tier and above average level kids so that they can close the gap that way (i.e., race to the bottom), instead of raising the level of the underperforming kids. I mean seriously, how hard is it really to teach normal kids to read and write? And if they're not normal, they need to be moved to separate classrooms or programs anyway because they're just stealing time and resources from the normal kids in the classroom.

[Anonymous]

Warehouse the not normal kids? You’re objectively awful.