AAP Center Elimination Rumors

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our base school is a center and I would fully support this! The kids who come from other schools are like outsiders, no connection to our neighborhood.

let me guess haycock...

No Lemon Road. The bussed in kids cause a lot of problems.

Seriously? They’re coming from Westgate and Shrevewood 🙄
What kind of “problems” do these kids pose?

If anything, I feel badly for the kids assigned to a center school that don’t qualify for AAP; truly an “us” vs “them” scenario.

Yes, it sucks to have a bright kid at a center but not in aap. Wish we had a choice. The kids see kids that they are smarter than getting to learn stuff that they don't get to learn and they don't understand why they don't get to. Man, and some of the aap families are jerks about how "gifted and talented" they are.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I'm angry about comparing kids to kids at their own school instead of the entire FCPS population. I literally know a family that picked a house zoned to a Title I school so their child would get into AAP. My child has higher test scores (NNAT, COGAT, iready, SOL, everything) but because we're at a school with lots of highly educated, wealthy families, my kid didn't get in. Why is her child more deserving of a better education than mine just because she goes to school with poor kids?

If your school has a ton of smart kids, your child already has a cohort of smart kids. They don’t need to go to another school to get one.

The curriculum is different. Why should her kid get advanced math but mine doesn't just because all the other kids are smart? That's STUPID.

Advanced Math is offered at every school. Your kid will have a chance to take Advanced Math. Kids in LIV get Advanced Math but plenty of kids not in LIV are placed in Advanced Math.

I'm not sure our center school has advanced math for kids outside of the aap level 4 kids. If it did, my kid should have been in it. He's had teachers say he should be in advanced math, but it's too bad... there's nothing they can do....

Advanced math at our base school doesn't start until 5th grade. At the center they start advancing in 3rd grade. The difference in classwork, homework (non-existent at non-center school), and overall classroom behavior was very stark between my Level 4 kid at the center and my Level 3 advanced math kid at the base school. Before 5th grade advanced math, the Level 3 pull outs were once a week (when Mondays didn't fall on a holiday) and practically useless.

DP. Pullouts are completely useless. They just do them so they can pretend they've given those kids the "enrichment" they deserve. The reality is, it's a rushed 30-60 minutes of busywork - once a week - and then they're expected to make up the classwork they missed. Absurd.

Just do away with Level this and Level that and offer flexible groupings, every single day.

+1 The levels are so lame. The AARP worksheets are stupid. The whole thing is a disaster in its current state.

Michelle Reid comes from the Seattle area; the public schools in Seattle recently eliminated their version of AAP entirely.

Don’t expect Reid to do anything other than diminish AAP in Fairfax as much as she possibly can.

[Anonymous]

Eliminating AAP centers would require a massive shift in boundaries--expanding the boundaries of the current center schools (as they no longer have an influx of AAP students) and reducing the boundaries of the current non-center schools (as they no longer send AAP students into the center schools).

The current boundary study does not do any of that. It seems implausible that FCPS would conduct a countywide boundary study only to immediately need a second (even more dramatic) countywide boundary study to accomodate ending AAP centers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Eliminating AAP centers would require a massive shift in boundaries--expanding the boundaries of the current center schools (as they no longer have an influx of AAP students) and reducing the boundaries of the current non-center schools (as they no longer send AAP students into the center schools).

The current boundary study does not do any of that. It seems implausible that FCPS would conduct a countywide boundary study only to immediately need a second (even more dramatic) countywide boundary study to accomodate ending AAP centers.

Precisely this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm angry about comparing kids to kids at their own school instead of the entire FCPS population. I literally know a family that picked a house zoned to a Title I school so their child would get into AAP. My child has higher test scores (NNAT, COGAT, iready, SOL, everything) but because we're at a school with lots of highly educated, wealthy families, my kid didn't get in. Why is her child more deserving of a better education than mine just because she goes to school with poor kids?

If your school has a ton of smart kids, your child already has a cohort of smart kids. They don’t need to go to another school to get one.

The curriculum is different. Why should her kid get advanced math but mine doesn't just because all the other kids are smart? That's STUPID.

Advanced Math is offered at every school. Your kid will have a chance to take Advanced Math. Kids in LIV get Advanced Math but plenty of kids not in LIV are placed in Advanced Math.

I'm not sure our center school has advanced math for kids outside of the aap level 4 kids. If it did, my kid should have been in it. He's had teachers say he should be in advanced math, but it's too bad... there's nothing they can do....

Advanced math at our base school doesn't start until 5th grade. At the center they start advancing in 3rd grade. The difference in classwork, homework (non-existent at non-center school), and overall classroom behavior was very stark between my Level 4 kid at the center and my Level 3 advanced math kid at the base school. Before 5th grade advanced math, the Level 3 pull outs were once a week (when Mondays didn't fall on a holiday) and practically useless.

Did your base school offer local level IV?

No, but apparently they are phasing it in now at the lower grades. Not sure if it's a "real" level IV or if its the stupid clustering model where they just spread the AAP kids out among all the classes and do nothing for them. Clustering is pretty much the opposite of meeting the needs of AAP kids - just ensures they are bored to death while the teacher teaches to the level of the kids in class needing extra help.

I don't understand how clustering is the opposite of meeting the level 4 kids needs. They pull in level 3 kids to fill out the class depending on the subject. My 3rd grade dd complained about being bored in math, the AART teacher would then give her additional work. If anything she gets more attention than if she went to the center with all the average kids who qualify for level 4 yet aren't actually special. This whole argument is comical when the bar for qualifying is so low.

Our base school clusters. They limit it to no more than 6 LIV kids in each classroom. There are 8 classes of 3rd graders, with no more than 6 LIV kids in each room. The remainder is a mix of all ability levels, from English learners to those struggling with numeracy to middle of the road ability kids to strong LIII kids.

The idea is that the teacher does flexible groupings for everything. Supposedly instead of reading groups 1-5 like they used to have, they now have reading groups 1-6. Instead of a science lesson with scaffolds for struggling readers, they have science lessons with scaffolds for struggling readers and extensions for advanced learners.

The reality is that it is one more level of differentiation teachers don't have time to plan for, so it's the first thing that gets dropped because those kids don't raise red flags on test scores. It was miserable. My child was a free tutor for struggling classmates. We would have absolutely stayed if they did a self contained LLIV program, but we left for the center in 4th grade after a miserable 3rd grade year. It's been night and day in expectations and growth.

DP. Clustering is madness - flexible grouping is the way to go. Each core class is made up of ONLY kids on a particular level. So a kid might go to Teacher A for advanced language arts, and then Teacher B for grade level math, etc. That way, everyone gets what they need per core class and the teachers don’t have to differentiate within each class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Centers are needed in schools where there aren’t enough level 4 kids to make a whole class.

Ok. But there are schools that have a large enough cohort. In my opinion, the centers should only be allowed if the cohort is too small. Why should we bus kids to a center when there is a large enough cohort with a designated class. I know our center pulls from two schools. Both of these schools including my own, has a designated AAP class (not cluster model) and routinely has enough kids (12-17 kids)

It's crazy that you are anti busing AAP kids but are just fine with a 1:12 teacher to student ratio only for AAP. Doubtful that general ed classes have that ratio.

Wow. No, mommy, principals place other smart students into the Level IV class to make sure it is a similar size to the other classrooms. Most of these kids would have gotten into AAP if they were in a Title I or lower SES school anyway, so it works out. Your little baby is not "gifted" as much as you want to think s/he is. Principal placed kids do just as well if not better than the kids who got into AAP because their 2nd grade teacher liked them.

Principal placed kids get there because parents suck up to them.
Second grade teachers of the student are not on the selection committee for full time AAP.
Principal placing kids who did not make the cut into classrooms are part of the reason people prefer centers. The peer group has all been selected by a neutral centralized committee rather than who sucks up to the principal.

AAP is an advanced program. It must be hard for you to accept that even with a lower standard than gifted your kid still didn't make the cut. It's not the end of the world.

DP. Going to have to push back on this claim that center school principals don't principal place students into AAP classes. They absolutely do. I've had three kids attend a center and every year, the principal would place certain kids (usually the kids of principal's friends) into the AAP classes. Every year.

Are you sure?

You seem to know a lot about other people's kids and their test scores.

Quite sure. The parents were very candid about how their kids were chosen to be principle placed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have to say I never understood why some schools were designated as “centers” while there were also a small group who had no AAP services at all. Seems highly inequitable. They should offer local IV to all schools, like a majority of the ES in FCPS do.

Yep. Center schools are highly inequitable when the vast majority of schools already have AAP classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our base school is a center and I would fully support this! The kids who come from other schools are like outsiders, no connection to our neighborhood.

let me guess haycock...

No Lemon Road. The bussed in kids cause a lot of problems.

Seriously? They’re coming from Westgate and Shrevewood 🙄
What kind of “problems” do these kids pose?

If anything, I feel badly for the kids assigned to a center school that don’t qualify for AAP; truly an “us” vs “them” scenario.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our base school is a center and I would fully support this! The kids who come from other schools are like outsiders, no connection to our neighborhood.

let me guess haycock...

No Lemon Road. The bussed in kids cause a lot of problems.

Seriously? They’re coming from Westgate and Shrevewood 🙄
What kind of “problems” do these kids pose?

If anything, I feel badly for the kids assigned to a center school that don’t qualify for AAP; truly an “us” vs “them” scenario.

Both my kids were bussed to LRES and were very popular, well integrated into the school. Administration is excellent and you would never be able to tell who started in third grade vs. kindergarten. There are some 2e kids, but that has nothing to do with them being bussed in from elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Centers are needed in schools where there aren’t enough level 4 kids to make a whole class.

Ok. But there are schools that have a large enough cohort. In my opinion, the centers should only be allowed if the cohort is too small. Why should we bus kids to a center when there is a large enough cohort with a designated class. I know our center pulls from two schools. Both of these schools including my own, has a designated AAP class (not cluster model) and routinely has enough kids (12-17 kids)

It's crazy that you are anti busing AAP kids but are just fine with a 1:12 teacher to student ratio only for AAP. Doubtful that general ed classes have that ratio.

Wow. No, mommy, principals place other smart students into the Level IV class to make sure it is a similar size to the other classrooms. Most of these kids would have gotten into AAP if they were in a Title I or lower SES school anyway, so it works out. Your little baby is not "gifted" as much as you want to think s/he is. Principal placed kids do just as well if not better than the kids who got into AAP because their 2nd grade teacher liked them.

Principal placed kids get there because parents suck up to them.
Second grade teachers of the student are not on the selection committee for full time AAP.
Principal placing kids who did not make the cut into classrooms are part of the reason people prefer centers. The peer group has all been selected by a neutral centralized committee rather than who sucks up to the principal.

AAP is an advanced program. It must be hard for you to accept that even with a lower standard than gifted your kid still didn't make the cut. It's not the end of the world.

You're absolutely right, it's not the end of the world, yet here you are getting suuuuper defensive and freaking out and insulting people that you 100% know are telling the truth but oh boy, you just can't handle the fact that your child isn't as precious as you think s/he is. Trust me, my kids are going to end up in the exact same AP classes as yours in high school and will probably blow them out of the water.

You were the first to bring up kids saying my "little baby isnt gifted as I think he is." Well it's a good thing there are tests that independently confirmed giftedness for them. No sucking up needed.

It's very weird that you are comparing your kids future academic success to that of strangers. You sound very insecure about needing that annual principal placement for your future academic rockstar.

Yeah some people are really bothered by their kids not being selected for AAP. I enjoy listening to them complain and denigrate others kids.

If they stood back and took a second to breathe, they would understand that the kids are really where they need to be and should be happy the system allows this much flexibility for everyone’s learning needs.

DP. Except - it doesn’t. Plenty of kids are advanced in one/two subjects but not all. Pullouts are useless and mean nothing. The different “levels” are absurd. Those kids deserve to have *their* needs met just as much as the kids who are in full time AAP.

Instead, they are locked (and labeled) into one group with zero flexibility to move up. And don’t say, “Oh, they can reapply every year.” That’s an entire YEAR wasted.

Flexible groupings are the answer that would allow ALL students to reach their potential at any given time. Frankly, I find it disgraceful that FCPS chooses to divide and label two enormous groups of kids, as if they don’t overlap greatly. They do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Eliminating AAP centers would require a massive shift in boundaries--expanding the boundaries of the current center schools (as they no longer have an influx of AAP students) and reducing the boundaries of the current non-center schools (as they no longer send AAP students into the center schools).

The current boundary study does not do any of that. It seems implausible that FCPS would conduct a countywide boundary study only to immediately need a second (even more dramatic) countywide boundary study to accomodate ending AAP centers.

Which is why all of that should have been studied before any boundaries were changed. Naturally, FCPS doesn’t have a clue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Centers are needed in schools where there aren’t enough level 4 kids to make a whole class.

Ok. But there are schools that have a large enough cohort. In my opinion, the centers should only be allowed if the cohort is too small. Why should we bus kids to a center when there is a large enough cohort with a designated class. I know our center pulls from two schools. Both of these schools including my own, has a designated AAP class (not cluster model) and routinely has enough kids (12-17 kids)

It's crazy that you are anti busing AAP kids but are just fine with a 1:12 teacher to student ratio only for AAP. Doubtful that general ed classes have that ratio.

Wow. No, mommy, principals place other smart students into the Level IV class to make sure it is a similar size to the other classrooms. Most of these kids would have gotten into AAP if they were in a Title I or lower SES school anyway, so it works out. Your little baby is not "gifted" as much as you want to think s/he is. Principal placed kids do just as well if not better than the kids who got into AAP because their 2nd grade teacher liked them.

Principal placed kids get there because parents suck up to them.
Second grade teachers of the student are not on the selection committee for full time AAP.
Principal placing kids who did not make the cut into classrooms are part of the reason people prefer centers. The peer group has all been selected by a neutral centralized committee rather than who sucks up to the principal.

AAP is an advanced program. It must be hard for you to accept that even with a lower standard than gifted your kid still didn't make the cut. It's not the end of the world.

You're absolutely right, it's not the end of the world, yet here you are getting suuuuper defensive and freaking out and insulting people that you 100% know are telling the truth but oh boy, you just can't handle the fact that your child isn't as precious as you think s/he is. Trust me, my kids are going to end up in the exact same AP classes as yours in high school and will probably blow them out of the water.

You were the first to bring up kids saying my "little baby isnt gifted as I think he is." Well it's a good thing there are tests that independently confirmed giftedness for them. No sucking up needed.

It's very weird that you are comparing your kids future academic success to that of strangers. You sound very insecure about needing that annual principal placement for your future academic rockstar.

Yeah some people are really bothered by their kids not being selected for AAP. I enjoy listening to them complain and denigrate others kids.

If they stood back and took a second to breathe, they would understand that the kids are really where they need to be and should be happy the system allows this much flexibility for everyone’s learning needs.

DP. Except - it doesn’t. Plenty of kids are advanced in one/two subjects but not all. Pullouts are useless and mean nothing. The different “levels” are absurd. Those kids deserve to have *their* needs met just as much as the kids who are in full time AAP.

Instead, they are locked (and labeled) into one group with zero flexibility to move up. And don’t say, “Oh, they can reapply every year.” That’s an entire YEAR wasted.

Flexible groupings are the answer that would allow ALL students to reach their potential at any given time. Frankly, I find it disgraceful that FCPS chooses to divide and label two enormous groups of kids, as if they don’t overlap greatly. They do.

Flexible groupings can’t happen in most schools in FCPS because of the massive range of skills and abilities. 1993 called to remind you we are not in a 5% FARMs school district with strong parenting and discipline encouraged at home and school. Times have changed dramaticallly.

[Anonymous]

Jealous GenEd parents never give up. First it was changing the name to AAP from G&T now this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our base school is a center and I would fully support this! The kids who come from other schools are like outsiders, no connection to our neighborhood.

let me guess haycock...

No Lemon Road. The bussed in kids cause a lot of problems.

Seriously? They’re coming from Westgate and Shrevewood 🙄
What kind of “problems” do these kids pose?

If anything, I feel badly for the kids assigned to a center school that don’t qualify for AAP; truly an “us” vs “them” scenario.

Yes, it sucks to have a bright kid at a center but not in aap. Wish we had a choice. The kids see kids that they are smarter than getting to learn stuff that they don't get to learn and they don't understand why they don't get to. Man, and some of the aap families are jerks about how "gifted and talented" they are.

We specifically avoided looking at houses zoned to AAP Center schools for this reason - my kids were entering 2nd & 4th when we moved so I knew one was not going to be in AAP and I didn't want to subject her to what I knew from just being at an LLIV school was going to be so much cliquishness and pettiness from AAP girls.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have to say I never understood why some schools were designated as “centers” while there were also a small group who had no AAP services at all. Seems highly inequitable. They should offer local IV to all schools, like a majority of the ES in FCPS do.

Some of this was to bring high SES kids to low income schools. Like Clearview in Herndon.