FCPS Appeals decision are out
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Anonymous
Agreeably, there are many more opportunities in nicer neighborhoods, wealthier areas. Just go to Mclean! Parents have no issue paying whatever because they can. But what about the kids who score high just because? They may live in a wealthy district and be Asian. But why ASSUME they were prepped? And also, Cogat classes are publicly EVERYWHERE. You can buy books right on Amazon. There are virtual classes, in person classes etc. It is obviously out there. Same with the NNATS. So they would literally need to ban these businesses to stop kids from taking these classes because TONS of AAP kids are taking them. And parents also think, we can afford it, and when others are prepping, why should my kid be left behind? If people can afford it, they will try to give that leg up but I don’t think that is for the AAP Board to decide what the child did and didn’t do. I understand LOWERING the standard for certain groups due to a lack of opportunities. But I do NOT understand RAISING the standard for Asian Americans, for example. This is not fair to the kids who work hard and score well. |
Anonymous
But why are race and SES being correlated so strongly? There are plenty of upper middle class black and hispanic kids who receive a lot of enrichment. There are also poorer white and Asian kids who don't. I would agree with most of your points and most of the ones in the equity report if they focused purely on SES and not race. FARMS kids and lower middle class kids are going to be disadvantaged, regardless of the child's race. |
Anonymous
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The most equitable thing, though, is to teach every kid at a level appropriate for that kid's intelligence and current abilities. It is not fair or equitable to refuse to teach a child at an appropriate level because that child's race is overrepresented in the advanced classes. Likewise, it makes no sense to pull a child up to a level higher than what is appropriate for that child, just to balance the races.
One important thing that should be asked, though, is why gen ed programs are largely failing to provide appropriate education for their advanced learners. My oldest went through gen ed, and while this child has consistently tested at the capped DRA and has consistently had perfect scores on the reading SOL, my child was not able to receive above grade level language arts instruction. The school's excuse was that they didn't have enough advanced kids to offer an above grade level reading group, so instead my child had to be pulled down to a lower level. I didn't push the issue, since my child's reading group only met with the teacher for 15 minutes/week, and spent the other 485 minutes "working independently." People would be less obsessed with AAP if gen ed had advanced math starting in 3rd, above grade level reading groups for all who quality, and enough reading group facetime with the teacher to even count as being educated and not educating yourself during that time. |
Anonymous
The classes and books are there and they can't be banned but that is why those scores are discounted. The tests are too easy to prep. The WISC scores are going to be influenced by enrichment opportunities, I am not saying that people are prepping for the WISC, I am saying that if your child is willing to participate in tutoring or interested in/willing to participate in coding, chess, robotics or other similar clubs they are going to learn problem solving techniques and creative thinking that other kids will not. Those skills will help them on tests like the WISC. The committee knows this. So do they take a 140 WISC and other high scores on their own, knowing how they can be influenced and knowing that there is a significant portion of the counties population who cannot afford those enrichment opportunities or to pay for a WISC, or do the weight them with something else? FCPS's holistic approach weighs the test scores with Teacher input. I don't see too many people with 4CO and a higher CogAT or WISC not being accepted. I do see high test scores with GBRS's that include Occasionally Observe not being accepted. That seems to be a big part of the trend. I get it, parents are annoyed that their kids are bored and need more of a challenge but don't seem to be able to wrap their heads around the fact that the Teachers are not seeing it that way. They don't see the bored genius, they see the kid distracting others who isn't finishing his work. Is that because they are bored or have ADHD or are just not interested in being in school because they are 7. The report says that FCPS needs something better then the GBRSs but do you really think that a kid who is not completing their work and chatting with their neighbors is going to do well on any Teacher observation/evaluation? Your kids Teachers are going to be involved in the selection process. FCPS is not likely to put a lot of weight on letters of recommendation, the report recommends getting rid of those, because the people writing them are either paid by the parents or are volunteers in a program. Are they really going to rock the boat and say that a child is anything but amazing? If I am a tutor or run an enrichment program or a center, am I going to risk losing a client, maybe more then one if the parent complains about the letter of recommendation that I wrote? |
Anonymous
And that is why the report suggested AAP at each school based on the needs of each school. A Title 1 school is going to have different needs then a school in McLean. I just fear that the educational acceleration will only get worse at some schools because parents want their kids in the school based program. I am pretty thrilled that my kids school seems to have lots of parents who don't worry about AAP. It removes some of the pressure to push kids because you want the best for them and just let them learn how they learn. |
Anonymous
| ^If test scores are not considered valid, achievement scores are not valid, GBRS is not valid (which is true -- it's not a psychometrically valid measurement. It's also not drawing from a large enough cross section of teachers, and kids who are more advanced due to enrichment will look better to the teacher), isn't that a compelling argument to make AAP open enrollment for everyone who can keep up with the pace? It would make much more sense than trying to guess which kids are prepped and then rejecting kids with high scores. |
Anonymous
| It would seem somewhat cynical to me if parents dedicate all they can to their child's education, resulting in the child's respect for education and high test scores, resulting in the AAP committee using that to infer that they'd have been much weaker without enrichment. It comes across as a success tax and a penalty to those people who think that FCPS should be operating on a higher level to begin with. |
Anonymous
I'm not sure what a FOIA could turn up, I'm just basing it on the fact that we've sent multiple emails trying to clarify the basis of the decision and gotten multiple responses with some variant of the nebulous "it's a holistic process!" claim. |
Anonymous
Isn't this the basis of a lot of the larger conversation about race right now? Systemic racism in the US and how it has impacted Blacks over the history of the US. It is messy and hard to trace. It does not explain everything but does point to how an education gap developed and now is widening. And how do you solve that? |
Anonymous
Write to Tammy at FCAG. She is more responsive. |
Anonymous
A lot of the racial education gap is based on poverty. But, making it easier for wealthier URMs with educated parents to get into programs like AAP will not help anything. If they want to be equitable and help fix the education gap, then AAP should give a boost to poorer kids who seem bright, rather than to wealthy URMs who are receiving a ton of enrichment. They would in turn still be targeting more URMs for services, since the poverty rate is generally higher for URMs than it is for whites or Asians. |
Anonymous
If the child respects their education then the child will be finishing their work and doing extra work without prompting leading the higher GBRS's and fewer complaints about the child being disruptive. And let's keep in mind that we are talking about 7 and 8 year olds here. A child may very well go to tutoring and do the extra work because their parents make them. That does not equate with "respecting education." That means that his/her parents respect education and the kid knows better than to say no. FCPS discounting those activities is a way of saying "where would you child be if they didn't do an extra 2 hours of math at AoPS every weekend." Is your child doing well because they are gifted or because they being pushed ahead by their parents? My kid asks to do robotics and chess and coding club because they are fun and engaging. He gets to hang out with friends for an extra hour, build things, and play games. My kid has never asked to go for extra math tutoring. He does ask his Dad to make up math problems for him and he does love solving logic puzzles. we asked him about math tutoring this past spring because DL was not exactly exciting and he looked at us like we were crazy. |
Anonymous
It sounds like you're making up a scenario in an attempt to justify a lousy screening paradigm |
Anonymous
In case of our child, their teacher wasn't the one assigning the GBRS score, but rather a different specialty teacher, who our child claims they barely ever spoke with. The comments from the regular teacher on the GBRS were great and reflect the idea that the child is advanced. They've told us that the child is a model student. The other teacher, the one who assigned the scores, had many gaps in knowledge about our child. So we're supposed to believe that this GBRS is the primary thing which should determine our child's eligibility, when all of their test scores are high, across the board?
Sure, we all have stories about how our child is a brilliant little bubble of academic inspiration, yet as we can see happening here, due to the unusual selection criteria, some people's stories have gotten chosen as valid, while others, quite sarcastically get put down for not respecting education, when it's quite certainly unfair. In the first place, a school should be objective, and there should be no place for the notion of "I don't feel as though your child isn't advanced enough." It reminds me of what happened to some friends of ours (who happened to be an URM), the teacher told the parents that they didn't feel like he was doing well in math, only to look up the test scores and see that they were almost all 100s. |
Anonymous
Why do you assume that a lower GBRS means that the kid isn't completing the work or is chatting with neighbors? There have been numerous cases here of kids who are above grade level in all subjects, get straight 4s, and still get low GBRS. I've posted before about my DD who had a K, 1st, and 3rd GBRS of 15s and 16s, but a 2nd GBRS that was low. My DD was in the top groups and always completed her work, so there were no issues there. In this case, the teacher was a huge neat freak, so she interpreted my DD's sloppiness as not being motivated to do better rather than as a sign that my DD's fine motor skills were still developing. My DD also didn't raise her hand very much because a few other kids were bullying her, and she didn't want to do anything to call attention to herself. She was also afraid of her teacher, since her biggest bully was the teacher's pet. Why should that teacher's biased opinion be the end all and be all of the program? Amazingly, the year after apparently not showing any gifted traits, my DD once again became a gifted student by the teacher's metrics. If they used a more comprehensive gifted behavior rating scale, and if they solicited input from more than just the classroom teacher, my DD certainly would have had a higher rating in 2nd. I know someone will show up claiming that GBRS is decided upon in a committee, but when the committee includes the classroom teacher and two people who've never interacted with your child, it ends up being the classroom teacher's sole viewpoint. If every school asked the 2nd grade teacher, the 1st grade teacher, any reading or math specialists with whom your child has worked, or maybe even the music, art, or steam lab teachers for their opinions, a much more accurate rating would result. |