LEMON ROAD AAP CENTER
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Anonymous
Yes, I agree. That is the primary complaint I have with Shrevewood. They obviously took a teacher that should have been for kindergarten/first grade and put it in the 4th grade so those classes could all be small, and then they went further to make one class even smaller just for AAP. |
Anonymous
| does anyone have any information on Lemon Road AAP vs. Shrevewood LLIV |
Anonymous
| Apparently, Shrevewood has smaller classes, but I have a feeling that won't be the case next year because it sounds like the cat is out of the bag. |
Anonymous
MCA will probably threaten suit against FCPS to fix this issue. |
Anonymous
What or who is MCA? |
Anonymous
http://mcleancitizens.org/ey/MCA%20Class%20Size%20Resolution%20-%20final.pdf |
Anonymous
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I think the problem is not with the Shrevewood principal skewing class sizes. It is with the AAP parents still being allowed to opt to send their children to a Center when there is now a perfectly good AAP program offered at the local school.
LLIV is not intentionally designed to be a smaller class. I recognize that this has been the outcome, but if ALL the AAP students opted to stay rather than go to the center, there would not be a disparity in class size in any of the grade levels that currently have AAP at Shrevewood. Or, at least it would only be a difference of about 3-4 kids. But as it is, we have this bizarre choice to make that basically compares apples to apples...but makes the LLIV principal and the Center principal feel as though they need to demonstrate that their apple is somehow shinier than the other school's apple. For example, when we attended the Center presentation, parents were told that one advantage of a Center is that "at the Center, we GUARANTEE your child will be in a class with ONLY AAP children...and (beware! implied) a Local Level IV principal cannot offer that, and therefor the 'integrity' of the program 'may be' compromised." Those were the words used. So if the LLIV parents seem threatened by having the LLIV principal hand-pick a few kids to add to the AAP class to even out the numbers, it's because we were specifically told by the AAP Center that this practice "may" compromise the "integrity" of the program. I'm not trying to Center Bash here, but I happen to believe that's garbage because there are many children who were not county-identified as AAP eligible who easily could thrive in the AAP class, but there are some parents who were likely influenced by this claim. (In the Center's defense, though, I get that they needed to have a strong pitch. My impression was that they needed "our" kids to go there in order to make the numbers work to have two classes per grade level. It was also pretty clear in the presentation that if not enough of us opted to send our kids to the Center, then they would end up with ONE AAP class per grade level that could potentially contain somewhere between 28-32 kids!) The problem is, this puts the LLIV principal in a terrible bind! If she does choose to add in some hand-picked non-AAP children to the class in order to balance the numbers, some of the AAP parents will surely panic and be worry that they aren't getting the same experience as the Center program--because that is what they were told. It's just a bad system to pit the center vs. LLIV and put the choice into the hands of the parents. And the principal is in an impossible position if she wants to both sustain the LLIV program and appease the (valid) class size concerns of the parents of gen-ed students. Just doesn't seem like they have figured out how this is all workable. |
Anonymous
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^I went to that center presentation and yes that was pretty much our takeaway too.
But also the Shrevewood principal did not promise incoming 3rd grade AAP parents that our kids' class would be small because she had no way of knowing if all the kids would end up going to LemRd or not. And she didn't say there would be AAP kids only except for in Language Arts and Math. And in those two classes she did say there might be other kids who are invited in if they qualified AAP in those subjects. I have a neighbor whose kid is in the 4th grade class and that is what they did this year too. She said on paper it looks like there are 15 kids in the class but that is just because there are 15 kids who were AAP eligible for all subjects and those kids were put in the AAP teacher's homeroom. But for the different academic subjects, there were anywhere from 5 to 7 more kids that come into the class. So for math there are 5 more kids who join those 15 and for language arts there are 7 other different kids who join the core 15. The posters who are all hot under the collar about the principal cheating the numbers really should calm down because it just isn't true that there is this huge discrepancy. I would understand if there was, but they are working under misinformation or misunderstanding. What she told us is that she would not put kids in the class who did not qualify for level IV services in that subject. So when people say she promised not to put them in a class with non-AAP students, they just meant that she was telling them the program was still an AAP program and any kids who were added in there would be eligible to do the work. Some kids qualify in just one subject and not both math and language arts. We haven't started yet so maybe I misunderstood this, but that was my take away. Plus one thing we liked about LLIV as we understand it at Shrevewood that another poster mentioned here is that the principal has the grades that have AAP classes mix up all their kids for all the specials to make TEAMS that are different from their homeroom classes. And they go with these TEAMS that are evenly balanced to all their specials. She does a good job promoting community and we believe our son will benefit from a faster pace in certain academic areas but did not want him to always be isolated from his non-AAP class peers. I should note we have another son in general education and this principal is just really great with all students across the spectrum. |
Anonymous
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Why is one full classroom horrible? I attended a large high school where we were put into ability level classrooms by subject, but we basically had the same 25 or so people in every single class for 4 years - we just were the high level kids, and that was that.
Frankly, MS (which started at 6th for us) was very much the same. We saw the other kids in our homerooms and stuff like gym and home ec, but our academic subjects? Yeah, same kids, all day for years. |
Anonymous
One classroom of the same children in elementary school can be a problem where there are conflicts between classmates (there is no way to move Billy from Ms. Adams' class to Ms. Baker's class). Also, two classrooms (at a minimum) per grade level provide for teaming of teachers. Obviously this is less of an issue in middle and high schools. |
Anonymous
PP Why do you hate Shrevewood so much? Instead of focusing all your energy on making Shrevewood look bad, why not focus your energy on making you school kick ass? |
Anonymous
I don't think it's horrible at all, necessarily. But at the Center presentation, a lot of emphasis was placed on the benefits of having two AAP classrooms per grade level at the centers so that teachers could plan vertically and horizontally (as in within among the same grade level with their AAP partner teacher) and also how wonderful it was to be able to shift the kids around to mix personalities from one grade level to the next. I can see the benefit of that, of course. But when pushed on the "oh, do you have two classrooms in 3rd grade?" the principal conceded that no, they do not this past year. And may not next year if they don't hit that critical mass of over 30 students. So all those benefits were touted in an effort to sell parents on sending their kid there only applied if they actually got enough kids to split into two classrooms. They have that in the upper programs because there is no LLIV yet in those grades at the feeder schools. I'm sure it's a great Center, but that argument about the benefits of two classes per grade level doesn't hold up if you don't have the numbers to make it work. So when considering the option of one "full" class of AAP kids at the center, which could be 24 kids,...(but also could be as high as 32 before they could split into two classes) vs. staying at the base neighborhood school with potentially 20-22 in math and 24 in language arts, it seemed to be a safer bet to stay put. When you put the apples under the microscope, it looked the same, with the added benefit of remaining with other non-AAP friends in a familiar environment and a school we already like. Again, both schools seem like viable options, as I didn't see any big red flags with either situation, but the issue is that the schools/principals end up pulling out all the stops in an effort to compete for AAP students to make the core of their program workable. I think each is doing what they can to build a solid program, but they are put in a unenviable position of having to "convince" parents to "buy" their program as one would buy a used car! And it feeds the ugliest part of all of us. I just don't like it, and it's a predicament that FCPS should recognize and try to address, IMO. |
Anonymous
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I don't think you can blame the Center principal here. If the guy needs the numbers to make two classes, he's left with no choice but to make you think the Center is superior so you won't stay at your base school. No brainer.
And if I'm that LLIV parent that gets to choose, what else would make me not go to the Center but a promise of a comparable experience? Otherwise, why would you stay? A class of half AAP kids and half non-AAP kids would not be the same experience that you get in a Center. That is pretty clear. So as soon as that happens, parents will fly out the door so fast that there will be no LLIV program. Not such a bad thing in my mind since I'm a gen ed parent and it sucks that my kid would be in a class of 26 when your super special star students is in a class under 20. But I'm not going to throw these principals under the bus for trying to make their programs work. I agree with that PP who said it is a problem with the system. FCPS needs to get their heads out. |
Anonymous
Well I will then! It's not a principal's job to manipulate class size to the detriment of the gen ed students. It's unconscionable. I don't get the point of even having LLIV when there is a center a mile away. Sorry, but let them take their "super special star students" as you called them down the road and then our kids at the base school can have 20 in a classroom instead of 27! And can we talk about how they keep taking the best gen ed teachers and pulling them to teach the AAP classes? Worms. Can. Opened. |
Anonymous
I wondered about this at the time. We opted LR mainly for this. |