Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The bottom line is that the scores of these AAP identification tests are affected when kids have been practicing with materials that replicate past tests. Some people know this and have decided to make some money off this fact. The more they can convince young parents that:
a: a child's intelligence is dependent on how many of this business's worksheets the child does and,
b: that there is no good education available in FCPS except in AAP and,
c: the best way to get a child into AAP is to use our services/products,
the more money they will make.
They do not want the school to know that kids have been prepped, because they know that the scores would then be taken less seriously. It would certainly be bad for business for the schools to know which second graders have been doing practice questions from old tests at camps or classes or clubs or just at home with a parent. Even the idea that teachers might be asking kids at school if they have seen questions like these before could be bad for business. Parents may hesitate to buy into test prep programs or materials if they hear that the schools might not use test results from kids who say they have seen questions like this before.
Most of these businesses sell other types of tutoring and test prep so they will not lose their shirts if FCPS were to stop using these tests or drop the AAP.
But it would eat into their profits to a certain extent.
It's funny that, in a thread about identification tests for a program for elementary and middle school students, there have been multiple posts about tests taken by high school students. FCPS has had to change the identification tests because of one kind of prepping that is inappropriate for that particular test, which has a different function than the SATs/ACTs.
But still, post after post filled with bromides about the wonders of preparation appears, seemingly in hopes that parents will conflate SAT/ACT preparation with prepping for these first and second grade tests. As though to say, "If it is good for the SATs/ACTs, than it must be good for these tests, too!"
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