Why aren't children re-evaluated for AAP annually?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can evaluate without the use of a CogAT type test. There are SOLs starting in third grade and in class grades and projects. Teachers should be able to evaluate their students and the SOLs should further point out kids who are struggling.

Except the SOLs are a bit weird for AAP because they are not in great alignment with the accelerated content. I don't want the AAP teachers to have to focus more on the SOLs than they already do because parents are concerned their kids will be kicked out.

Presumably, that should mean that AAP students should be able to pass them easily.

Not really--they have content questions that are about topic areas they didn't study or worked on a year or more ago and they are not in the front of their minds. Also AAP kids can tend to 'overthink' multiple choice questions (and if you have looked at these they are not the most well-written questions--there's often multiple answers that could be correct if you tend to overthink). SOLs are not intended to be nor are they good measures of giftedness.

They are a good measure of 'advanced' though. For the reading and math SOLs, if a kid is advanced, they should be able to pass. If they can't pass a grade level SOL, then maybe they aren't advanced.

Not really. I just don't think SOLs are good assessments (and my kids do always score pass advanced on them). I would value the teacher's opinion more. I think I would be okay for a situation where if a kid did not pass the SOL and the teacher recommended it, they be re-evaluated for AAP. But I think the number of kids in that situation would be vanishingly small based --though that's just based on my own 2 kids' AAP class experiences.

The SOLs are objective. If the kid can't pass it then they likely don't need AAP (that's the standard the county sets for admission to AAP) and will be adequately served by gen ed.

Just because something is "objective" doesn't make it a good measure of whatever you want it to measure. SoLs were really designed to assess teachers--how well they are teaching the standards of learning, not the individual students potential or ability. The SOL are tied to taught content not underlying thinking capacity. Yes, AAP students usually do well on them as these things correlate, but I wouldn't bake that into policy. They are not great tests and they don't measure advanced abilities well. Using them in this way would also never fly with the state requirements around gifted learners anyway.

They measure knowledge of content. If a student can't pass something as basic as SOLs there isn't much point in measuring advanced. Look at any of the math or reading content areas and tell me which ones it's reasonable to not expect an advanced kid to know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If all schools maintained rigor and let underperforming kids fail, this would be a self correcting problem. Some schools take this approach. Others pause the rest of the kids to remediate to the ones who are struggling, or they do tons of group work, pairing the struggling kids up with high achievers to mask how much the kid is struggling.

The last thing a failing kid needs is a being paired with the advanced kid. Way to make them feel more stupid. And is the advanced kid supposed to teach the failing kid math? OMG.

Signed mom of a failing kid.

There have been a lot of studies that if you pair kids like this, all that happens is that more scores go down, including the failing kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you really want schools to spend more time/money on annual reevaluation? A Cogat score is a fairly stable measure of intellectual potential.
Parents can--and do--pull their kids out of AAP if they are not thriving there. That has happened in both my kids' classes. I don't see the need for more bureaucratic hurdles.

Sometimes kids are 2e (high IQ with learning disabilities) and they aren't always easily going to quite thrive anywhere but AAP is the best spot for them. Sometimes parents coached kids into a high test score and aren't willing to back down to a more appropriate education when their kids aren't thriving. But most of the time it works fine.

That strengthens the need for some sort of reevaluation. Those kids should be kicked out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
But ultimately I think FCPS policy which is to guarantee admissions once admitted but also allow new kids in with testing is the right way to go. Parents can opt out if it's not a good --but retesting has a ton of measurement errors.

DP. I agree that retesting is a waste of time, but I also disagree with guaranteed admissions through 8th. By the end of 4th grade, the schools should have 2 years of SOLs and 2 years of teacher evaluations of AAP kids. At that point, kids who are consistently receiving low scores on the SOL and have the teachers agree that the kid would be better placed in gen ed should be dropped from the program.

I agree. If GBRS is the primary tool for placing kids in, then teacher evaluation and SOLs are plenty good for placing children out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because for UMC parents, AAP placement is a status symbol, and they're not going to let you take that away from them.

100% this. This is the reason. Our school had a mass exodus for private school in 3rd and 4th grade and two close friends confided it was because their kids didn't get into AAP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can evaluate without the use of a CogAT type test. There are SOLs starting in third grade and in class grades and projects. Teachers should be able to evaluate their students and the SOLs should further point out kids who are struggling.

Except the SOLs are a bit weird for AAP because they are not in great alignment with the accelerated content. I don't want the AAP teachers to have to focus more on the SOLs than they already do because parents are concerned their kids will be kicked out.

Presumably, that should mean that AAP students should be able to pass them easily.

Not really--they have content questions that are about topic areas they didn't study or worked on a year or more ago and they are not in the front of their minds. Also AAP kids can tend to 'overthink' multiple choice questions (and if you have looked at these they are not the most well-written questions--there's often multiple answers that could be correct if you tend to overthink). SOLs are not intended to be nor are they good measures of giftedness.

They are a good measure of 'advanced' though. For the reading and math SOLs, if a kid is advanced, they should be able to pass. If they can't pass a grade level SOL, then maybe they aren't advanced.

Not really. I just don't think SOLs are good assessments (and my kids do always score pass advanced on them). I would value the teacher's opinion more. I think I would be okay for a situation where if a kid did not pass the SOL and the teacher recommended it, they be re-evaluated for AAP. But I think the number of kids in that situation would be vanishingly small based --though that's just based on my own 2 kids' AAP class experiences.

The SOLs are objective. If the kid can't pass it then they likely don't need AAP (that's the standard the county sets for admission to AAP) and will be adequately served by gen ed.

Just because something is "objective" doesn't make it a good measure of whatever you want it to measure. SoLs were really designed to assess teachers--how well they are teaching the standards of learning, not the individual students potential or ability. The SOL are tied to taught content not underlying thinking capacity. Yes, AAP students usually do well on them as these things correlate, but I wouldn't bake that into policy. They are not great tests and they don't measure advanced abilities well. Using them in this way would also never fly with the state requirements around gifted learners anyway.

They measure knowledge of content. If a student can't pass something as basic as SOLs there isn't much point in measuring advanced. Look at any of the math or reading content areas and tell me which ones it's reasonable to not expect an advanced kid to know.

Look at the actual questions and answers on the test--not the labeled content areas they are supposed to represent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Look at the actual questions and answers on the test--not the labeled content areas they are supposed to represent.

They seem pretty reasonable to me. I could see a kid overthinking a few of the reading questions and getting a few more wrong than they should have. I can't imagine how or why an advanced child would get enough wrong to fall below 450. Likewise, the math questions just look like math. Kids who are not getting pass advanced on the math SOLs have some significant gaps in their understanding of math. They need to spend more time with the material and not be pushed ahead.

My kids scored pass advanced on all of their SOLs. It's not a huge hurdle. At the very least, if both the SOL score and teacher indicate that a child would be better served in gen ed, the child should be removed from AAP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If all schools maintained rigor and let underperforming kids fail, this would be a self correcting problem. Some schools take this approach. Others pause the rest of the kids to remediate to the ones who are struggling, or they do tons of group work, pairing the struggling kids up with high achievers to mask how much the kid is struggling.

The last thing a failing kid needs is a being paired with the advanced kid. Way to make them feel more stupid. And is the advanced kid supposed to teach the failing kid math? OMG.

Signed mom of a failing kid.

This is all within AAP. Sometimes, the failing kid in AAP isn't trying very hard, and the teacher is hoping that one of the high achievers will be a good peer model. Sometimes, the teacher has a classroom of 28 kids and is hoping that the very advanced kid will somewhat help teach the failing kid. Generally, though, I think the teacher is trying to mask the deficiencies of the failing kid because it's less headache for the teacher. If Billy rightfully deserves a 1 or 2 grade, it's much easier for the teacher to inflate his grade by putting him in a group with a kid who is going to do all of the work and earn a 4, and then use that to justify giving Billy a 3 and passing him along to another teacher.

My kid had to deal with this in language arts. He was always paired with a kid who could barely write coherent sentences. Both kids got 4s for their project, where my kid did all of the research and writing, while the other kid found pictures on the internet for the slide show.

I was always the kid that was in the group who was in there to pull up everyone else's grades. The teachers all knew that I wasn't going to risk getting less than an A, even if that meant I had to do all the group's work myself because the others in the group couldn't (or wouldn't) do the work at that level. The teacher could give everyone As to pad their GPA, but they knew these kids didn't suddenly get 2 letter grades smarter just by sitting next to a high achiever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Look at the actual questions and answers on the test--not the labeled content areas they are supposed to represent.

They seem pretty reasonable to me. I could see a kid overthinking a few of the reading questions and getting a few more wrong than they should have. I can't imagine how or why an advanced child would get enough wrong to fall below 450. Likewise, the math questions just look like math. Kids who are not getting pass advanced on the math SOLs have some significant gaps in their understanding of math. They need to spend more time with the material and not be pushed ahead.

My kids scored pass advanced on all of their SOLs. It's not a huge hurdle. At the very least, if both the SOL score and teacher indicate that a child would be better served in gen ed, the child should be removed from AAP.

My kid's best friend in AAP is brilliant in math He can explain math concepts and solve spatial problems at a very high level--he intuitively seems to use calculus etc. He's regularly solves competition style math problems. But ask him to do basic 3-4th grade computation and his work is riddled with errors--he just flubs up a lot. Not this thing. If he uses a calculator he can do higher level math, but he would likely not pass the elementary math SOL. Kids at the higher end can be really quirky and uneven in their performance. They still need advanced educational supports. SO definitely there needs to be multiple measures besides the SoL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because for UMC parents, AAP placement is a status symbol, and they're not going to let you take that away from them.

100% this. This is the reason. Our school had a mass exodus for private school in 3rd and 4th grade and two close friends confided it was because their kids didn't get into AAP.

General ed is terrible in some schools as well and many will choose private over leaving their kid in failing classrooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because for UMC parents, AAP placement is a status symbol, and they're not going to let you take that away from them.

100% this. This is the reason. Our school had a mass exodus for private school in 3rd and 4th grade and two close friends confided it was because their kids didn't get into AAP.

General ed is terrible in some schools as well and many will choose private over leaving their kid in failing classrooms.

I suspect that parents who are leaving for private because the schools are not great and their kid could not leave the school for the Center are parents who could have bought a different house in boundary with a better ES. If you can find the money for private school, you can find the money for a different house. These tend to be the people who want the bigger house, for less money, and an amazing school. While that is the ideal, there is not anyone in the area who isn't aware that doesn't tend to happen. You read about this in the DC forums were parents end up upset that they have to send their kid to private or Arlington because they couldn't get into the schools that they want through the lottery and the neighborhood school is not what they want for the kid.

General Ed is not uniform across the County because there are clusters of wealth and poverty with some bleeding in between. Kids who come from poverty have parents with different educational starting points and goals for their kids. I would bet that many of the kids that attend some of the schools that people here disparage have parents who are happy that their kid can go to school at all because school was not a guarantee in their home countries. Middle class families are buying houses in those areas because the houses are far more affordable and then lean on AAP to move schools because they don't like the base school.

Do I think that in the ideal world all kids would have the same opportunities? Yes. Is this happening in reality? No. You cannot present kids who arrive at school having not been read to or playing math games or learning colors and shapes to be at the same starting point as kids whose parents have Nannies who are expected to be working on academics or sent to preschools that work on academics or have parents who read to the kids nightly and try and find enriching activities for the kids. Realistically speaking, the schools with a higher level of kids living in poverty or near poverty are at a different starting point and the expectation that the Teachers at those schools are not going to be able to get most of their kids to be at the same standard as my kids middle class school with parents who are able to help their kids personally or finding tutors.

The parents that leave schools because their kids are not accepted into AAP are ones who probably could have chosen a different base school. I have little sympathy for their plight because they choose that house in that location in that school boundary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Look at the actual questions and answers on the test--not the labeled content areas they are supposed to represent.

They seem pretty reasonable to me. I could see a kid overthinking a few of the reading questions and getting a few more wrong than they should have. I can't imagine how or why an advanced child would get enough wrong to fall below 450. Likewise, the math questions just look like math. Kids who are not getting pass advanced on the math SOLs have some significant gaps in their understanding of math. They need to spend more time with the material and not be pushed ahead.

My kids scored pass advanced on all of their SOLs. It's not a huge hurdle. At the very least, if both the SOL score and teacher indicate that a child would be better served in gen ed, the child should be removed from AAP.

My kid's best friend in AAP is brilliant in math He can explain math concepts and solve spatial problems at a very high level--he intuitively seems to use calculus etc. He's regularly solves competition style math problems. But ask him to do basic 3-4th grade computation and his work is riddled with errors--he just flubs up a lot. Not this thing. If he uses a calculator he can do higher level math, but he would likely not pass the elementary math SOL. Kids at the higher end can be really quirky and uneven in their performance. They still need advanced educational supports. SO definitely there needs to be multiple measures besides the SoL

As all my math major friends used to say "Math is not arithmetic." There are real differences in the way the brain does basic computation and the higher level math you find in upper division college classes like differential equations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because for UMC parents, AAP placement is a status symbol, and they're not going to let you take that away from them.

100% this. This is the reason. Our school had a mass exodus for private school in 3rd and 4th grade and two close friends confided it was because their kids didn't get into AAP.

General ed is terrible in some schools as well and many will choose private over leaving their kid in failing classrooms.

I suspect that parents who are leaving for private because the schools are not great and their kid could not leave the school for the Center are parents who could have bought a different house in boundary with a better ES. If you can find the money for private school, you can find the money for a different house. These tend to be the people who want the bigger house, for less money, and an amazing school. While that is the ideal, there is not anyone in the area who isn't aware that doesn't tend to happen. You read about this in the DC forums were parents end up upset that they have to send their kid to private or Arlington because they couldn't get into the schools that they want through the lottery and the neighborhood school is not what they want for the kid.

General Ed is not uniform across the County because there are clusters of wealth and poverty with some bleeding in between. Kids who come from poverty have parents with different educational starting points and goals for their kids. I would bet that many of the kids that attend some of the schools that people here disparage have parents who are happy that their kid can go to school at all because school was not a guarantee in their home countries. Middle class families are buying houses in those areas because the houses are far more affordable and then lean on AAP to move schools because they don't like the base school.

Do I think that in the ideal world all kids would have the same opportunities? Yes. Is this happening in reality? No. You cannot present kids who arrive at school having not been read to or playing math games or learning colors and shapes to be at the same starting point as kids whose parents have Nannies who are expected to be working on academics or sent to preschools that work on academics or have parents who read to the kids nightly and try and find enriching activities for the kids. Realistically speaking, the schools with a higher level of kids living in poverty or near poverty are at a different starting point and the expectation that the Teachers at those schools are not going to be able to get most of their kids to be at the same standard as my kids middle class school with parents who are able to help their kids personally or finding tutors.

The parents that leave schools because their kids are not accepted into AAP are ones who probably could have chosen a different base school. I have little sympathy for their plight because they choose that house in that location in that school boundary.

There are a lot of assumptions made in this post about everything from why a parent chooses a home to how easy/hard it is to manage a monthly payment for a $10K bill versus coming up with a down payment of $300,000 plus mortgage payments for a house.

While this may be true for some parents, that certainly isn't the case for most. There are only a few school pyramids where the elementary, middle and high school are all great. Usually families have to choose one. You cant blame parents for doing what will benefit their children. I dont think they're looking for sympathy, just what is best for their kid(s).

[Anonymous]

I think PP’s advice amounts to don’t be middle class. You can be rich enough to afford a house in a great pyramid or poor enough that you can’t afford in parish Catholic, but don’t have enough to be able to afford Catholic school, but not a house in McLean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because for UMC parents, AAP placement is a status symbol, and they're not going to let you take that away from them.

100% this. This is the reason. Our school had a mass exodus for private school in 3rd and 4th grade and two close friends confided it was because their kids didn't get into AAP.

General ed is terrible in some schools as well and many will choose private over leaving their kid in failing classrooms.

I suspect that parents who are leaving for private because the schools are not great and their kid could not leave the school for the Center are parents who could have bought a different house in boundary with a better ES. If you can find the money for private school, you can find the money for a different house. These tend to be the people who want the bigger house, for less money, and an amazing school. While that is the ideal, there is not anyone in the area who isn't aware that doesn't tend to happen. You read about this in the DC forums were parents end up upset that they have to send their kid to private or Arlington because they couldn't get into the schools that they want through the lottery and the neighborhood school is not what they want for the kid.

General Ed is not uniform across the County because there are clusters of wealth and poverty with some bleeding in between. Kids who come from poverty have parents with different educational starting points and goals for their kids. I would bet that many of the kids that attend some of the schools that people here disparage have parents who are happy that their kid can go to school at all because school was not a guarantee in their home countries. Middle class families are buying houses in those areas because the houses are far more affordable and then lean on AAP to move schools because they don't like the base school.

Do I think that in the ideal world all kids would have the same opportunities? Yes. Is this happening in reality? No. You cannot present kids who arrive at school having not been read to or playing math games or learning colors and shapes to be at the same starting point as kids whose parents have Nannies who are expected to be working on academics or sent to preschools that work on academics or have parents who read to the kids nightly and try and find enriching activities for the kids. Realistically speaking, the schools with a higher level of kids living in poverty or near poverty are at a different starting point and the expectation that the Teachers at those schools are not going to be able to get most of their kids to be at the same standard as my kids middle class school with parents who are able to help their kids personally or finding tutors.

The parents that leave schools because their kids are not accepted into AAP are ones who probably could have chosen a different base school. I have little sympathy for their plight because they choose that house in that location in that school boundary.

There are a lot of assumptions made in this post about everything from why a parent chooses a home to how easy/hard it is to manage a monthly payment for a $10K bill versus coming up with a down payment of $300,000 plus mortgage payments for a house.

While this may be true for some parents, that certainly isn't the case for most. There are only a few school pyramids where the elementary, middle and high school are all great. Usually families have to choose one. You cant blame parents for doing what will benefit their children. I dont think they're looking for sympathy, just what is best for their kid(s).

Nah. In Fairfax County, there are a lot of pyramids that are good schools, with lots of families who prioritize education, with townhouses and SFH in the very reasonable range of $300-600k. But people choose other areas for bigger houses and then complain about the schools. The GS score was right there, when you bought your house.

I agree that different people want different things from different schools and many parents with children at schools with lower GS scores are happy there. But the ones who complain on DCUM, they didn't want to buy a house in Burke and then they complain that FCPS is terrible.