AAP application - are kids compared only within the same school?

[Anonymous]

This is disappointing to hear - I would like for this to be consistent across schools and not just within one school. I wonder if parents are going to start choosing to send their kids to crappy ES' for the first three years just to get them into AAP and then move.

[Anonymous]

E.g. my kid would get into AAP at a Title I school but not somewhere like Haycock.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is disappointing to hear - I would like for this to be consistent across schools and not just within one school. I wonder if parents are going to start choosing to send their kids to crappy ES' for the first three years just to get them into AAP and then move.

Well you can stop wondering because the answer is no, they won't, and if they were going to they would have started this practice a long time ago because this isn't some recent change to the AAP program... but you probably knew all that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is disappointing to hear - I would like for this to be consistent across schools and not just within one school. I wonder if parents are going to start choosing to send their kids to crappy ES' for the first three years just to get them into AAP and then move.

Well you can stop wondering because the answer is no, they won't, and if they were going to they would have started this practice a long time ago because this isn't some recent change to the AAP program... but you probably knew all that.

Actually, this move to local norms is, in fact, recent… as in it started 2 yrs ago. When we went through the AAP process w DC1, who is currently in 6th, there were no local norms/comparisons/variable local in-pool cutoffs. It was all determined district-wide. DC2 went through the AAP process last year under the new local norms comparisons and it was completely different and highly subjective. The school was making up
half the criteria on the fly. My biggest gripe w/ local norms is that in high SES schools it’s now keeping high performing, fully capable students from accessing the advanced math curriculum. That needs to change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is disappointing to hear - I would like for this to be consistent across schools and not just within one school. I wonder if parents are going to start choosing to send their kids to crappy ES' for the first three years just to get them into AAP and then move.

Well you can stop wondering because the answer is no, they won't, and if they were going to they would have started this practice a long time ago because this isn't some recent change to the AAP program... but you probably knew all that.

Actually, this move to local norms is, in fact, recent… as in it started 2 yrs ago. When we went through the AAP process w DC1, who is currently in 6th, there were no local norms/comparisons/variable local in-pool cutoffs. It was all determined district-wide. DC2 went through the AAP process last year under the new local norms comparisons and it was completely different and highly subjective. The school was making up
half the criteria on the fly. My biggest gripe w/ local norms is that in high SES schools it’s now keeping high performing, fully capable students from accessing the advanced math curriculum. That needs to change.

Yeah, I don't think local norms works at high SES schools. You just end up with a lot of frustrated and angry parents. I think local norms helps with lower performing schools because it allows for the higher performing students in those lower performing schools to get differentiation. In high SES schools, you end up with students not actually being met where they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is disappointing to hear - I would like for this to be consistent across schools and not just within one school. I wonder if parents are going to start choosing to send their kids to crappy ES' for the first three years just to get them into AAP and then move.

Well you can stop wondering because the answer is no, they won't, and if they were going to they would have started this practice a long time ago because this isn't some recent change to the AAP program... but you probably knew all that.

What an ass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is disappointing to hear - I would like for this to be consistent across schools and not just within one school. I wonder if parents are going to start choosing to send their kids to crappy ES' for the first three years just to get them into AAP and then move.

Well you can stop wondering because the answer is no, they won't, and if they were going to they would have started this practice a long time ago because this isn't some recent change to the AAP program... but you probably knew all that.

Actually, this move to local norms is, in fact, recent… as in it started 2 yrs ago. When we went through the AAP process w DC1, who is currently in 6th, there were no local norms/comparisons/variable local in-pool cutoffs. It was all determined district-wide. DC2 went through the AAP process last year under the new local norms comparisons and it was completely different and highly subjective. The school was making up
half the criteria on the fly. My biggest gripe w/ local norms is that in high SES schools it’s now keeping high performing, fully capable students from accessing the advanced math curriculum. That needs to change.

Yeah, I don't think local norms works at high SES schools. You just end up with a lot of frustrated and angry parents. I think local norms helps with lower performing schools because it allows for the higher performing students in those lower performing schools to get differentiation. In high SES schools, you end up with students not actually being met where they are.

Agreed. I feel confident my child will get into AAP at our school with a high low income population where only about half the LLIV class is actually LLIV kids, but definitely wouldn't get in if we were at a high SES school with a bunch of overachieving families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is disappointing to hear - I would like for this to be consistent across schools and not just within one school. I wonder if parents are going to start choosing to send their kids to crappy ES' for the first three years just to get them into AAP and then move.

Well you can stop wondering because the answer is no, they won't, and if they were going to they would have started this practice a long time ago because this isn't some recent change to the AAP program... but you probably knew all that.

Actually, this move to local norms is, in fact, recent… as in it started 2 yrs ago. When we went through the AAP process w DC1, who is currently in 6th, there were no local norms/comparisons/variable local in-pool cutoffs. It was all determined district-wide. DC2 went through the AAP process last year under the new local norms comparisons and it was completely different and highly subjective. The school was making up
half the criteria on the fly. My biggest gripe w/ local norms is that in high SES schools it’s now keeping high performing, fully capable students from accessing the advanced math curriculum. That needs to change.

Not really. If you look at the % of AAP kids in a given school, there's no consistent trend or change amongst Title I schools nor High-SES schools in recent years. If this was truly a new approach and it was a true countywide process before, you'd expect that Title I AAP % to rise (as their local norm threshold lowered) and the opposite at High-SES schools, but that hasn't happened. Maybe they formalized the policy 2 years ago and/or modified their methodology, but the net effect has been negligible, basically because they were already doing this previously (just not as explicitly).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does the committee see the child's race?

No, but if the application mentions that the child was in Young Scholars, they can deduce that the child is a minority.

This is an imperfect system. My daughter, who is US born, was classed as ESL bc there were other languages spoken at home. She was then placed in Young Scholars. We are affluent and white for census purposes. I’m not complaining about the YS assist but the idea she was seen as underprivileged on that account is silly. That girl has every advantage.

[Anonymous]

Soon local will be at all schools and centers will be a thing of the past. I don’t think there are many elementary schools left without AAP and FCPS isn’t transparent with this data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Soon local will be at all schools and centers will be a thing of the past. I don’t think there are many elementary schools left without AAP and FCPS isn’t transparent with this data.

FCPS is transparent - this maps shows AAP centers, local level IVs schools, and schools without a local level IV. Most schools do seem to have a local level IV. Our base school (an immersion school) is one of the apparently few that doesn't. I was surprised how much of an outlier we were.

https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/media/pdf/SY2023-24AAPElementarySchools_1.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is disappointing to hear - I would like for this to be consistent across schools and not just within one school. I wonder if parents are going to start choosing to send their kids to crappy ES' for the first three years just to get them into AAP and then move.

Well you can stop wondering because the answer is no, they won't, and if they were going to they would have started this practice a long time ago because this isn't some recent change to the AAP program... but you probably knew all that.

Actually, this move to local norms is, in fact, recent… as in it started 2 yrs ago. When we went through the AAP process w DC1, who is currently in 6th, there were no local norms/comparisons/variable local in-pool cutoffs. It was all determined district-wide. DC2 went through the AAP process last year under the new local norms comparisons and it was completely different and highly subjective. The school was making up
half the criteria on the fly. My biggest gripe w/ local norms is that in high SES schools it’s now keeping high performing, fully capable students from accessing the advanced math curriculum. That needs to change.

At our mid-SES school they just started encouraging anyone with either a pass advance on the math SOL or more than 90th percentile on the iReady in spring to take advanced math the next year. A whole bunch of very capable kids just joined DC1's 6th grade advanced math class, and now will have the chance at Algebra 1 honors in 7th and all that.

I think that was a great change.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is disappointing to hear - I would like for this to be consistent across schools and not just within one school. I wonder if parents are going to start choosing to send their kids to crappy ES' for the first three years just to get them into AAP and then move.

Well you can stop wondering because the answer is no, they won't, and if they were going to they would have started this practice a long time ago because this isn't some recent change to the AAP program... but you probably knew all that.

Actually, this move to local norms is, in fact, recent… as in it started 2 yrs ago. When we went through the AAP process w DC1, who is currently in 6th, there were no local norms/comparisons/variable local in-pool cutoffs. It was all determined district-wide. DC2 went through the AAP process last year under the new local norms comparisons and it was completely different and highly subjective. The school was making up
half the criteria on the fly. My biggest gripe w/ local norms is that in high SES schools it’s now keeping high performing, fully capable students from accessing the advanced math curriculum. That needs to change.

Not really. If you look at the % of AAP kids in a given school, there's no consistent trend or change amongst Title I schools nor High-SES schools in recent years. If this was truly a new approach and it was a true countywide process before, you'd expect that Title I AAP % to rise (as their local norm threshold lowered) and the opposite at High-SES schools, but that hasn't happened. Maybe they formalized the policy 2 years ago and/or modified their methodology, but the net effect has been negligible, basically because they were already doing this previously (just not as explicitly).

That's interesting because that's...exactly the opposite of what they said in 2021 after the pilot when they moved to local building norms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Soon local will be at all schools and centers will be a thing of the past. I don’t think there are many elementary schools left without AAP and FCPS isn’t transparent with this data.

FCPS is transparent - this maps shows AAP centers, local level IVs schools, and schools without a local level IV. Most schools do seem to have a local level IV. Our base school (an immersion school) is one of the apparently few that doesn't. I was surprised how much of an outlier we were.

https://www.fcps.edu/sites/default/files/media/pdf/SY2023-24AAPElementarySchools_1.pdf

They aren’t transparent. It doesn’t list schools slowly transitioning to AAP nor do they say what will happen when that’s the case. Why have centers if all schools will have AAP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is disappointing to hear - I would like for this to be consistent across schools and not just within one school. I wonder if parents are going to start choosing to send their kids to crappy ES' for the first three years just to get them into AAP and then move.

Well you can stop wondering because the answer is no, they won't, and if they were going to they would have started this practice a long time ago because this isn't some recent change to the AAP program... but you probably knew all that.

Actually, this move to local norms is, in fact, recent… as in it started 2 yrs ago. When we went through the AAP process w DC1, who is currently in 6th, there were no local norms/comparisons/variable local in-pool cutoffs. It was all determined district-wide. DC2 went through the AAP process last year under the new local norms comparisons and it was completely different and highly subjective. The school was making up
half the criteria on the fly. My biggest gripe w/ local norms is that in high SES schools it’s now keeping high performing, fully capable students from accessing the advanced math curriculum. That needs to change.

At our mid-SES school they just started encouraging anyone with either a pass advance on the math SOL or more than 90th percentile on the iReady in spring to take advanced math the next year. A whole bunch of very capable kids just joined DC1's 6th grade advanced math class, and now will have the chance at Algebra 1 honors in 7th and all that.

I think that was a great change.

They have not done this at our high SES center school, which is really unfortunate for a lot of students.