FCPS Appeals decision are out

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
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.

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.

I only assume that because many of the parents who have posted about low GBRS have made those comments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
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.

You pretty clearly think that your kid is better and more deserving of AAP than all of the people posting here whose kids got rejected with high scores. The committee could have just as easily looked at your kid and assumed that a child doing chess, coding club, and robotics clearly has over-involved tiger parents and wouldn't be nearly as impressive without this level of enrichment. Your kid also could have had a teacher that was a bad fit, and ended up with a poor GBRS in 2nd. Your kid isn't more deserving of AAP than the PP's kids. Your kid is just luckier with a very random, biased system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I only assume that because many of the parents who have posted about low GBRS have made those comments.

My DS is one of those kids who got a low GBRS because he didn't do all of the work. The teacher had a huge liking for coloring sheets and word searches. My kid instead wanted to read Percy Jackson and derive new math formulas, like how to add and subtract numbers in binary. My kid was tested by the reading specialist as being 2+ grades ahead in reading and by the math at the beginning of first grade as knowing all of the content through the end of 4th grade. I-ready scores confirmed this level of advancement. Kid also had 140+ in WISC and CogAT. Teacher gave a low score for motivation to succeed, since she understood neatly completed coloring sheets but didn't understand any of the work my kid was doing. She also left the comment in my child's GBRS form that *Child* eagerly and readily engages with adults to discuss complex topics, but does not relate to peers and is not motivated to engage with peers.

My "unmotivated" kid got straight 4s in AAP for the last two years, and the AAP teachers were worried that they couldn't challenge him enough. He is also spending hours every day this summer teaching himself high school level geometry.

A lot of 2nd grade teachers are pretty dim. They don't have the faintest clue what giftedness even looks like. Instead, moderately bright people pleasers with pretty work are the ones who get the high GBRS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
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.

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.

I only assume that because many of the parents who have posted about low GBRS have made those comments.

The way they handel the screening is not uniform and needs to be fixed. My son sees the AART Teacher frequently enough in his classroom that he knows who she is and she knew who he was. She is a part time AART but apparently more active then other AARTs people have mentioned. There were two teachers listed and we knew both of them and knew how they had worked with him.

The biggest problem I have with AAP is that it is not administered equally across the county which puts everyone in a bad place. Programs are not available to all kids at the same grade level with the same amount of pull out time. Admissions processes are different school to school. Ds school had 10% of the second graders accepted into AAP. I have no idea how many accepted or not. I only know one of the other families and they reached out to us because they knew I had attended some of the meetings but they had only been to one.

I don't think there is a way to make the process transparent enough to make everyone happy because there are a good number of parents willing to game the system. I don't think test scores are the answer, they are too easily skewed to benefit parents will to pay for or provide enrichment. I don't think the GBRS's are a great solution for all the reasons that people have discussed here.

I also suspect that the number of kids with high scores not accepted is very small. I do think the County should be able to provide something specific so that it is something that you can look to address if you reapply. But I don't think that the County is targeting specific kids or groups to exclude.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
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.

You pretty clearly think that your kid is better and more deserving of AAP than all of the people posting here whose kids got rejected with high scores. The committee could have just as easily looked at your kid and assumed that a child doing chess, coding club, and robotics clearly has over-involved tiger parents and wouldn't be nearly as impressive without this level of enrichment. Your kid also could have had a teacher that was a bad fit, and ended up with a poor GBRS in 2nd. Your kid isn't more deserving of AAP than the PP's kids. Your kid is just luckier with a very random, biased system.

No, I don't. I thought my kid wouldn't get accepted because he is a quieter kid and not someone who looks to stand out. He was in pool with his test scores. He enjoys those activities and that makes me smile. I love seeing him involved in those type of programs but I love seeing him in his athletic programs as well because he is doing something he enjoys. I think he would do great at AoPS and have suggested to him that it is a possibility if he wanted to do more math but he wasn't interested. I have no problem saying that those types of programs provide an enrichment that helps him in school and when he is tested. It is simply a different type of tutoring.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would love to see the data for race, sex, school, cogat scores, nnat scores, gbrs, dra, and wisc scores (when available) and accepted/rejected. I bet there would be some shocking trends.

They'll never let you see that.

Why not? Why couldn't you FOIA that information? There's no personal sensitive information in what you're asking--you're not asking for the child's name! I think it's entire possible to FOIA it, and it can't be held back as 'deliberative' especially if deliberation has already occurred and it's not a matter of national security, but rather transparency in a process against program criteria/claim. I think FCAG could easily make the request and publish their findings, if they wanted to.

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.

A FOIA is very different from sending an email to Kristen Maloney or the school AART/Principal. A FOIA request would be categorized as a raw data file supporting the bolded information noted above in an XLS spreadsheet or similar. Or however they can get us the raw data. We would then need to mine the data to produce a report. I don't think FCPS will want to do this on their own accord because as we all suspect, the process is faulty--whether it's faulty on purpose or just because it's not thoroughly vetted process--and as such, the results are skewed. I don't think FCPS wants to out itself on that front, so you'll never get a straight response from anyone within FCPS. They aren't even above the board when it comes to the quotas at each center school. How in the world do we expect them to be fully transparent on a response that could potentially put them in a lot of hot water.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I also suspect that the number of kids with high scores not accepted is very small. I do think the County should be able to provide something specific so that it is something that you can look to address if you reapply. But I don't think that the County is targeting specific kids or groups to exclude.

I definitely agree that no group is being intentionally targeted. But if the screening is too reliant on subjective criteria, then factors like whether the teacher likes the child's smile (on the classroom/GBRS side) or whether their name reflects an ethnicity the reviewer can empathize with (on the screening side) are always at risk to play a role.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I don't think there is a way to make the process transparent enough to make everyone happy because there are a good number of parents willing to game the system. I don't think test scores are the answer, they are too easily skewed to benefit parents will to pay for or provide enrichment. I don't think the GBRS's are a great solution for all the reasons that people have discussed here.

Step 1 is for them to figure out whether AAP is a gifted program intended to serve the needs of kids who are gifted, whether it is an honors program intending to provide curriculum that is more advanced than what is available in gen ed, or whether it's to help develop talent in kids they perceive as motivated and curious. It's failing right now at trying to be all three.

A gifted program would have some kids who are underachieving, some kids who are unmotivated, and some kids with 2E issues. The program would need to help address those in a way that the current program isn't managing to do. If it's supposed to be an honors program, then there's no reason to include kids who aren't above grade level. If kids can't keep up with the pace, they should be returned to gen ed rather than slowing things down for the other kids. If it's a talent development program, then it seems somewhat redundant with Young Scholars. So, they should strengthen YS and make it available at every school to capture the kids who would be well served by it.

[Anonymous]

by conflating all three they cast a wider net. The program is already under fire, narrow it to truly gifted and watch how fast it looses any kind of support.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I also suspect that the number of kids with high scores not accepted is very small. I do think the County should be able to provide something specific so that it is something that you can look to address if you reapply. But I don't think that the County is targeting specific kids or groups to exclude.

The number of kids with scores in the top 1% is small, so if you reject a large number of them, it will still be a small number.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
No, I don't. I thought my kid wouldn't get accepted because he is a quieter kid and not someone who looks to stand out. He was in pool with his test scores. He enjoys those activities and that makes me smile. I love seeing him involved in those type of programs but I love seeing him in his athletic programs as well because he is doing something he enjoys. I think he would do great at AoPS and have suggested to him that it is a possibility if he wanted to do more math but he wasn't interested. I have no problem saying that those types of programs provide an enrichment that helps him in school and when he is tested. It is simply a different type of tutoring.

Okay. Cool. But the point is that scrutinizing your kid's activities and deciding that your kid is doing them because you're forcing him to do so and not because he loves them is problematic and often racist. My kid loves math and his musical instrument, thinks chess is boring, and is only mildly interested in coding or robotics. So he does math and his instrument. I'm no more forcing him to do so than you are forcing your kid to do his activities. It seems like an Asian kid doing math, chess, coding = pushed by parents and not very advanced without the tutoring, while a white kid doing the same = the kid loves the activity.

[Anonymous]

the fact that this devolves into race and class so easily is why I'd expect them to just kill off the program whenever they get around to looking at it again. Far more people either have no stake or would rather see the resources spread that have a stake in keeping it going.

[Anonymous]

I definitely think we've had to resort to some weird logic to rationalize the AAP decisions. Imagine it in a different context: "Kobe Bryant wasn't such a great basketball player because he was fanatical about practicing and his race is over-represented in the sport"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I also suspect that the number of kids with high scores not accepted is very small. I do think the County should be able to provide something specific so that it is something that you can look to address if you reapply. But I don't think that the County is targeting specific kids or groups to exclude.

I definitely agree that no group is being intentionally targeted. But if the screening is too reliant on subjective criteria, then factors like whether the teacher likes the child's smile (on the classroom/GBRS side) or whether their name reflects an ethnicity the reviewer can empathize with (on the screening side) are always at risk to play a role.

I disagree. Someone posted this earlier:

"If you scroll down to page 66, you can see average CogAT and NNAT scores of LIV eligible kids broken down by race. It's very enlightening. For the kids who got accepted to AAP - CogAT Q score: Asian mean = 130.95. AA mean: 119.8 Hispanic mean: 118.9"

Asians have to meet a higher standard. Why is race included in the application? And I'm not just talking about names reflecting ethnicity - there is a Federal Ethnic Code field on the screening sheet.

It's outrageous that the AAP board members can make these decisions without having to explain or be held accountable. All anyone gets is the "holistic" canned response, which judging from the rejections seen here means arbitrary or even discriminatory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I definitely agree that no group is being intentionally targeted. But if the screening is too reliant on subjective criteria, then factors like whether the teacher likes the child's smile (on the classroom/GBRS side) or whether their name reflects an ethnicity the reviewer can empathize with (on the screening side) are always at risk to play a role.

I disagree. Someone posted this earlier:

"If you scroll down to page 66, you can see average CogAT and NNAT scores of LIV eligible kids broken down by race. It's very enlightening. For the kids who got accepted to AAP - CogAT Q score: Asian mean = 130.95. AA mean: 119.8 Hispanic mean: 118.9"

Asians have to meet a higher standard. Why is race included in the application? And I'm not just talking about names reflecting ethnicity - there is a Federal Ethnic Code field on the screening sheet.

It's outrageous that the AAP board members can make these decisions without having to explain or be held accountable. All anyone gets is the "holistic" canned response, which judging from the rejections seen here means arbitrary or even discriminatory.

Why would it have to be the result of intentional targeting, though? All it would take would be for the reviewer to be someone who was never particularly smart and who believed that school is difficult and nebulous, and to empathize less with kids who find things easy. They'd fall for the premise that kids who do exceptionally well aren't natural and were probably prepped, which would lead to an apparent bias against groups which have much higher representations at higher score levels.