APS is failing my gifted child

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not a coincidence that each of Langley and McLean has more National Merit Semifinalists this year than all four of the high schools in APS combined. If you want a more challenging pyramid (and many in APS don’t), that is where you should go.

Yeah, this definitely has nothing to do with the average household income of McLean vs Arlington/SES/demographics.🙄 I’m not saying that accounts for all of the difference, but it’s not insignificant.

Yorktown is very high SES but it has only a handful of NMSF semifinalists. If your hypothesis is right it should be like Mclean

Not a direct comparison because of APS's option program. The top kids transfer to WL for IB

No. Not even close. A lot of top students don't transfer. Someone here keeps pushing this lie.

I'm very familiar with YHS, thanks. You are correct that a lot of top students do not leave YHS. But also, some do go to IB at WL. A few more go to HB. This is different from the FCPS system, so I don't think you can just make the direct comparison that you so desperately want to make. And for what it's worth, I do agree with you that FCPS is stronger for high achieving students. Just pointing out the flaw in your "methodology."

Wait, some "top" students go to H-B? There aren't enough of those kinds of kids enrolled there anymore for your numbers to add up given that there are two other high schools in the county they pull from.

Not alone but in conjunction with the moves to I-B, could make a difference, yes. Again you're missing the larger point. Can't do a direct system to system comparison of achievement between an APS neighborhood high school that top students transfer out of and a McLean HS where that option doesn't exist. It's not apples to apples.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For those with younger kids, the bar to get into the IB program is not high. It does not siphon off the students from the top of the heap like other programs in other districts might. I believe any student with an I believe any student with a B average or above is welcome to apply. Also, HB is a lottery that has nothing to do with academics.

Yes, HB is a lottery that has nothing to do with academics but the nature of the program tends to attract high achieving students, so there is some self-selection going on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sigh.

This post every year. North Arlington parents, who went to HLS or Georgetown or UVA, believe their snowflake is gifted. Smarter than the other stupid children from, say, dumb Va Tech that they are stuck in school with. I mean, your poor child’s cohort must be filled with absolute idiots. I sympathize

Then the whole they aren’t learning anything all day from the really terrible teachers in APS. I feel your pain. I mean, you should definitely get them into a CHALLENGING elementary school. Look at Sidwell or Beauvoir or GDS or Potomac, where those kids are being taught some hard core stuff. Oh wait. Have you actually looked at what the top elementary programs consist of?

You need some perspective. In 3rd grade, your kid needs mostly to learn some social skills. And to learn how to get along with other nice smart kids, which is who actually attends your kids elementary school. And then read a bunch. That’s it. Maybe discover love of, I dunno, skateboarding. Your kid is going to be way better off if you let them enjoy their childhood. But whatever you push. And see what it gets you. My take is this is your first kid/first rodeo, you have no perspective, and you are one of those overly competitive people who actually have difficultly in the real world.

This philosophy, in a nutshell, is why APS doesn't fare well in comparisons with either the privates or the top schools in FCPS and MCPS. There are lots of moderately well educated parents in Arlington who cannot handle the idea of someone else's kid perhaps being more academically advanced, and ready for greater challenges, than their own, so they insist on a system that masks any such differences well into high school. And then they make excuses based on demographics and income levels when the APS high schools have fewer high-achieving kids, even though North Arlington is among the most expensive suburbs in the region.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 3rd grade gifted kid is just being failed by this school system. No differentiation, no peers in their class that I can see, ridiculous low level instruction. Think 2-letter spelling tests. There are tears every night about how terrible school is and how they aren’t learning anything.

Please, any advice? What’s a viable option? Move to Fairfax? I hear AAP is no great thing. Are there any privates that are more challenging? Thanks for any advice or lessons learned.

You really need to stop crying in front of your children like that. It's unseemly. And nightly? Get a grip, lady.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not from DMV but I recognize all of the symptoms presented here from my local district which is safe, clean, cheerful and great for average students.

Gifted is a euphemism. We should all recognize that. Many of us had that tag as kids without being geniuses.

People want their kids to be appropriately challenged when the kids demonstrate good classroom behavior, can rapidly complete assignments, are reading well above grade level, and have good math skills that would permit advancement to material in the grade(s) ahead.

Current detracking trends in education unquestionably are worse for the learning and skill mastery of the top end of the classes. At my school, they also failed to make good on enrichment worksheets.

My kids were bored a lot in school until high school when ability tracking became more possible. We don't have APs for all. Kids have to step up.

However, as others pointed out, my kids did have to develop social skills. And had more time to be kids. As I told them, the time to get serious is high school.

I'm one of the many who recommended reading for interest. That can help a lot.

Also, if your kid is 2 grades ahead in competence for a subject, you may be able to insist on an IEP. Schools usually resist "gifted" IEPs at the elementary level but they do exist. Throw around the FAPE buzzword and see if you can get specific advanced needs addressed.

Don't do this. If you throw around the FAPE buzzword to try to get an IEP for a gifted and not a disabled student, you will lose ALL credibility. This isn't a thing.

It actually is a thing in some places - I had an IEP for gifted services growing up in Pennsylvania. It's not a thing in APS or Virginia, though. For the record, it did not make a difference in the course of my life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not from DMV but I recognize all of the symptoms presented here from my local district which is safe, clean, cheerful and great for average students.

Gifted is a euphemism. We should all recognize that. Many of us had that tag as kids without being geniuses.

People want their kids to be appropriately challenged when the kids demonstrate good classroom behavior, can rapidly complete assignments, are reading well above grade level, and have good math skills that would permit advancement to material in the grade(s) ahead.

Current detracking trends in education unquestionably are worse for the learning and skill mastery of the top end of the classes. At my school, they also failed to make good on enrichment worksheets.

My kids were bored a lot in school until high school when ability tracking became more possible. We don't have APs for all. Kids have to step up.

However, as others pointed out, my kids did have to develop social skills. And had more time to be kids. As I told them, the time to get serious is high school.

I'm one of the many who recommended reading for interest. That can help a lot.

Also, if your kid is 2 grades ahead in competence for a subject, you may be able to insist on an IEP. Schools usually resist "gifted" IEPs at the elementary level but they do exist. Throw around the FAPE buzzword and see if you can get specific advanced needs addressed.

They are way more than 2 grades ahead. But I thought gifted kids are not disabled and you need some sort of disability for an IEP. They are not autistic or anything.

I don’t want to advance my kid in school, I want them to be a kid and have a social life. But all the supplementation in the world is not going to help the pain of having to sit through basic phonics lessons every day and the other simple stuff.

I really wanted to avoid moving because it’s a pain but it looks like that’s what will need to happen. Thanks everyone for the input.

The basics phonics stuff can have value. Many gifted kids learn to read in preschool before they've been explicitly taught more advanced phonics blends. It can be helpful to see these explicitly taught, catagorized, and applied to words, even if it's not preventing the student from reading. It can give them skills to approach even harder words. It's helpful if the teacher differentiates by asking students who have the ability to apply the phonics skills to more challenging words, but that doesn't always happen.

True. But gifted kids don't need all the fluff that slows down lessons waiting for other kids to discover that there are 26 letters in the alphabet and that each one can have multiple sounds individually and in pairs. Kids learn at different speeds and by making some kids wait unnecessarily all day, every day at school, you are basically making them hate school and resent other kids getting all the attention. Gifted kids are kids, too, and since they are kids, they also need to be the focus of attention as much as gen ed kids or sped kids or EL kids. Too often teachers take a high intelligence level of kids and equate it to maturity level and expect gifted kids to act and react as if they are mini-adults.

No APS third grade classroom is still introducing the alphabet. I've seen the 95 phonics books and it's not going through the 26 letters. It's covering more advanced blends and combinations. A quick Google of the APS phonics curriculum for 3rd grade shows words like delight, explain, discreet, succeed, exclaim, banshee, floating, and complain.

A phonics lesson in third grade usually lasts less than 5 minutes and then kids are into doing the assignment. The advanced kids finish quickly. The other kids take longer. My kid manages to read a few hundred pages a day of her novel waiting for other kids to finish. I find this pretty ridiculous--they should be giving her more to do. But I also don't think she's mired sitting through long lessons. That's not how teachers teach these days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meeting your profoundly gifted child is more than just challenging them in spelling or math. It's also socializing them, giving them the opportunity to find solutions to being bored, teaching them to exist with others who may be different from them. It's about PE, and recess, and music, and art class. Not just math and reading. It's all the things.

All those are dumbed down as well in elementary school. At least in our APS experience.

PE is about silly things such as coordination or stretching (juggling with silks anyone?) and not about competition games and improving skills: not to say that kids shouldn't learn those things but gym class is not for that, maybe some kind of physical therapy or something.

Most playgrounds in schools don't have actual playground equipment anymore (no swings, no tall slides, etc.) and just have that giant plastic behemoth that's mostly useless. Plus there's limited time to do anything meaningful.

Music is literally not taught at any level that would be considered enriching (except maybe at ATS??). Even the junior honors band level is not that great overall.

And art class is a complete joke that teaches no actual art technique except gluing and coloring.

They don't want to push the gifted and talented kids, or even the gen ed kids, because the county has a perverse mission to not exclude anyone in their one size fits all classrooms. Can't hurt anyone's feelings I guess.

Amen to this. My kid did better art projects through CKLA than she did in actual art class. It got so bad even her regular teacher was complaining about the art teacher just phoning it in with coloring sheets.

People are trying to frame this as a gifted vs. not-gifted thing, but from what I can see the issue is that academic standards have just collapsed across the board. No one is interested in actual rigor, everything is directed at the bottom 40% of the class and trying to get them across the finish line. So much of what my kids do every day is just make-work or digital pacifiers while they focus on the kids who are behind.

They gave up cursive, they're giving up grammar, they let IXL do most of the direct instruction in math facts. There's something to be said for the idea that having high expectations leads to better learning outcomes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those with younger kids, the bar to get into the IB program is not high. It does not siphon off the students from the top of the heap like other programs in other districts might. I believe any student with an I believe any student with a B average or above is welcome to apply. Also, HB is a lottery that has nothing to do with academics.

Yes, HB is a lottery that has nothing to do with academics but the nature of the program tends to attract high achieving students, so there is some self-selection going on.

Stop the HB is high achieving legacy myth. HB has become a safe haven and has become popular with all things non-academic in general, a few classes and teachers excepted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not from DMV but I recognize all of the symptoms presented here from my local district which is safe, clean, cheerful and great for average students.

Gifted is a euphemism. We should all recognize that. Many of us had that tag as kids without being geniuses.

People want their kids to be appropriately challenged when the kids demonstrate good classroom behavior, can rapidly complete assignments, are reading well above grade level, and have good math skills that would permit advancement to material in the grade(s) ahead.

Current detracking trends in education unquestionably are worse for the learning and skill mastery of the top end of the classes. At my school, they also failed to make good on enrichment worksheets.

My kids were bored a lot in school until high school when ability tracking became more possible. We don't have APs for all. Kids have to step up.

However, as others pointed out, my kids did have to develop social skills. And had more time to be kids. As I told them, the time to get serious is high school.

I'm one of the many who recommended reading for interest. That can help a lot.

Also, if your kid is 2 grades ahead in competence for a subject, you may be able to insist on an IEP. Schools usually resist "gifted" IEPs at the elementary level but they do exist. Throw around the FAPE buzzword and see if you can get specific advanced needs addressed.

They are way more than 2 grades ahead. But I thought gifted kids are not disabled and you need some sort of disability for an IEP. They are not autistic or anything.

I don’t want to advance my kid in school, I want them to be a kid and have a social life. But all the supplementation in the world is not going to help the pain of having to sit through basic phonics lessons every day and the other simple stuff.

I really wanted to avoid moving because it’s a pain but it looks like that’s what will need to happen. Thanks everyone for the input.

The basics phonics stuff can have value. Many gifted kids learn to read in preschool before they've been explicitly taught more advanced phonics blends. It can be helpful to see these explicitly taught, catagorized, and applied to words, even if it's not preventing the student from reading. It can give them skills to approach even harder words. It's helpful if the teacher differentiates by asking students who have the ability to apply the phonics skills to more challenging words, but that doesn't always happen.

True. But gifted kids don't need all the fluff that slows down lessons waiting for other kids to discover that there are 26 letters in the alphabet and that each one can have multiple sounds individually and in pairs. Kids learn at different speeds and by making some kids wait unnecessarily all day, every day at school, you are basically making them hate school and resent other kids getting all the attention. Gifted kids are kids, too, and since they are kids, they also need to be the focus of attention as much as gen ed kids or sped kids or EL kids. Too often teachers take a high intelligence level of kids and equate it to maturity level and expect gifted kids to act and react as if they are mini-adults.

No APS third grade classroom is still introducing the alphabet. I've seen the 95 phonics books and it's not going through the 26 letters. It's covering more advanced blends and combinations. A quick Google of the APS phonics curriculum for 3rd grade shows words like delight, explain, discreet, succeed, exclaim, banshee, floating, and complain.

A phonics lesson in third grade usually lasts less than 5 minutes and then kids are into doing the assignment. The advanced kids finish quickly. The other kids take longer. My kid manages to read a few hundred pages a day of her novel waiting for other kids to finish. I find this pretty ridiculous--they should be giving her more to do. But I also don't think she's mired sitting through long lessons. That's not how teachers teach these days.

Hmmm... I was talking about elementary school in general using the posited phonics example to explain why its a fallacy to say that gifted kids can just do the phonics lesson like the other kids. Gifted kids need separate lesson plans from competent teacher that understand how gifted kids learn. There are books about this. And remember the 1000 books before kindergarten thing or whatever it is? My kids probably read closer to 1000 books per year all throughout their elementary school years, many at school. And yes the teachers were encouraging more reading but it was only as a pacifier because they were overwhelmed with teaching sped and EL kids, and making sure bullies didn't bully. I had to tell them to stop making my kids read. The different levels of kids have no business being in the same academic classroom -- there's no learning by osmosis. And people need to stop talking about learning how to deal with different kinds of kids-cum-adults. Private K-12 schools don't subscribe to this. Most competitive colleges also don't have this problem with all kinds of kids taking the same courses and neither do most workplaces (colleges, corporate, tech, law, medicine, etc.) that most gifted kids will end up in. No offense intended but that's more like community college or retail sales. This is not what co-existing means.

Also, my kids were forced to read picture books (oops I mean graphic novels)) and color maps and pictures with crayons, among other advanced technical skills, in high school in more than one class so I'm glad these skills were reinforced in K-5.

[Anonymous]

Over half our our 5th grade applied to HB. It wasn't b/c it was high achieving self-selection. It was because it was protected from being overcrowded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meeting your profoundly gifted child is more than just challenging them in spelling or math. It's also socializing them, giving them the opportunity to find solutions to being bored, teaching them to exist with others who may be different from them. It's about PE, and recess, and music, and art class. Not just math and reading. It's all the things.

All those are dumbed down as well in elementary school. At least in our APS experience.

PE is about silly things such as coordination or stretching (juggling with silks anyone?) and not about competition games and improving skills: not to say that kids shouldn't learn those things but gym class is not for that, maybe some kind of physical therapy or something.

Most playgrounds in schools don't have actual playground equipment anymore (no swings, no tall slides, etc.) and just have that giant plastic behemoth that's mostly useless. Plus there's limited time to do anything meaningful.

Music is literally not taught at any level that would be considered enriching (except maybe at ATS??). Even the junior honors band level is not that great overall.

And art class is a complete joke that teaches no actual art technique except gluing and coloring.

They don't want to push the gifted and talented kids, or even the gen ed kids, because the county has a perverse mission to not exclude anyone in their one size fits all classrooms. Can't hurt anyone's feelings I guess.

Amen to this. My kid did better art projects through CKLA than she did in actual art class. It got so bad even her regular teacher was complaining about the art teacher just phoning it in with coloring sheets.

People are trying to frame this as a gifted vs. not-gifted thing, but from what I can see the issue is that academic standards have just collapsed across the board. No one is interested in actual rigor, everything is directed at the bottom 40% of the class and trying to get them across the finish line. So much of what my kids do every day is just make-work or digital pacifiers while they focus on the kids who are behind.

They gave up cursive, they're giving up grammar, they let IXL do most of the direct instruction in math facts. There's something to be said for the idea that having high expectations leads to better learning outcomes.

The response here is exactly right. APS has dumbed down the entire curriculum in ES. I have an 8th grader and a 10th grader now, so we had a front row seat to watch it happen. To add to PP's list, they also eliminated FLES (Spanish used to be taught 3 days a week in our ES), they eliminated the Summer Laureate program (the APS gifted office used to offer a 3 week summer program), and a lot of the funding for exemplary programs and other extras has been chipped away at through the budget process over the past several years-- but that especially accelerated after the pandemic. Go talk to your neighbors with middle and high school kids, and they will tell you stories about elementary school programs that no longer exist for budget reasons.

Additionally, when my kids were in early ES (~2014-2016), there was a lot of criticism being leveled at APS for being a "system of schools" instead of a "school system"-- that led to a push by the Asst Super of Teaching & Learning to standardize what was going on across all the ES programs. Prior to that, the North Arlington schools could get away with doing their own thing to some extent with the curriculum, which is what led to the perceived divide in the "quality" of North vs South Arlington schools. There is a lot more standardization in how things are taught across all the elementary schools now, and teachers have less freedom to move the curriculum along faster even when most of the kids in the class seem ready.

Just be thankful you don't have a 2E kid. We have a gifted dyslexic. We were never able to get her the support that she needed because we were told that she wasn't having difficulty meeting the APS reading benchmarks (regardless of the fact that she was in the bottom spelling group and was struggling with multi-syllabic words). That's when I saw what the actual benchmarks are-- they are so, so low. If that's the bar now, then it is no wonder that kids are bored in APS (gifted or not).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Over half our our 5th grade applied to HB. It wasn't b/c it was high achieving self-selection. It was because it was protected from being overcrowded.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meeting your profoundly gifted child is more than just challenging them in spelling or math. It's also socializing them, giving them the opportunity to find solutions to being bored, teaching them to exist with others who may be different from them. It's about PE, and recess, and music, and art class. Not just math and reading. It's all the things.

All those are dumbed down as well in elementary school. At least in our APS experience.

PE is about silly things such as coordination or stretching (juggling with silks anyone?) and not about competition games and improving skills: not to say that kids shouldn't learn those things but gym class is not for that, maybe some kind of physical therapy or something.

Most playgrounds in schools don't have actual playground equipment anymore (no swings, no tall slides, etc.) and just have that giant plastic behemoth that's mostly useless. Plus there's limited time to do anything meaningful.

Music is literally not taught at any level that would be considered enriching (except maybe at ATS??). Even the junior honors band level is not that great overall.

And art class is a complete joke that teaches no actual art technique except gluing and coloring.

They don't want to push the gifted and talented kids, or even the gen ed kids, because the county has a perverse mission to not exclude anyone in their one size fits all classrooms. Can't hurt anyone's feelings I guess.

Amen to this. My kid did better art projects through CKLA than she did in actual art class. It got so bad even her regular teacher was complaining about the art teacher just phoning it in with coloring sheets.

People are trying to frame this as a gifted vs. not-gifted thing, but from what I can see the issue is that academic standards have just collapsed across the board. No one is interested in actual rigor, everything is directed at the bottom 40% of the class and trying to get them across the finish line. So much of what my kids do every day is just make-work or digital pacifiers while they focus on the kids who are behind.

They gave up cursive, they're giving up grammar, they let IXL do most of the direct instruction in math facts. There's something to be said for the idea that having high expectations leads to better learning outcomes.

The response here is exactly right. APS has dumbed down the entire curriculum in ES. I have an 8th grader and a 10th grader now, so we had a front row seat to watch it happen. To add to PP's list, they also eliminated FLES (Spanish used to be taught 3 days a week in our ES), they eliminated the Summer Laureate program (the APS gifted office used to offer a 3 week summer program), and a lot of the funding for exemplary programs and other extras has been chipped away at through the budget process over the past several years-- but that especially accelerated after the pandemic. Go talk to your neighbors with middle and high school kids, and they will tell you stories about elementary school programs that no longer exist for budget reasons.

Additionally, when my kids were in early ES (~2014-2016), there was a lot of criticism being leveled at APS for being a "system of schools" instead of a "school system"-- that led to a push by the Asst Super of Teaching & Learning to standardize what was going on across all the ES programs. Prior to that, the North Arlington schools could get away with doing their own thing to some extent with the curriculum, which is what led to the perceived divide in the "quality" of North vs South Arlington schools. There is a lot more standardization in how things are taught across all the elementary schools now, and teachers have less freedom to move the curriculum along faster even when most of the kids in the class seem ready.

Just be thankful you don't have a 2E kid. We have a gifted dyslexic. We were never able to get her the support that she needed because we were told that she wasn't having difficulty meeting the APS reading benchmarks (regardless of the fact that she was in the bottom spelling group and was struggling with multi-syllabic words). That's when I saw what the actual benchmarks are-- they are so, so low. If that's the bar now, then it is no wonder that kids are bored in APS (gifted or not).

Given the ages of your kids, I think you've missed some good progress. The adoption of 95 Phonics and CKLA to replace Lucy Calkins has been a huge, huge improvement in language arts. It's so much better than the Reader's and Writer's workshop nonsense.

I think there's still lots to be done on the math curriculum. The adoption of Mastery Connect has been a huge miss--it's terrible and full of errors. I also strongly dislike Dreambox.

I also don't think that killing FLES was much of a loss. They'd already cut back the program so much that kids weren't really learning anything. Replacing it with STEAM classes has generally been an improvement, IMO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My 3rd grader at an AAP canter school in FFX county is definitely spelling much more difficult words. Her test last week had illicit, immobile, and exercise on it.

My FCPS AAP kids never had a spelling test out side of the beginning-of-the-year DSA until we switched to private this year.

OP I would not be certain AAP will persist like it is. They have quite possibly changed elementary school advanced math to significantly water it down this year (https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/30/1226968.page#28326731). There's a general trend towards a cluster model similar to what APS does. Plus the boogeyman of the boundary study everyone on the FCPS forum is freaking out over.

Supplementation always works and privates are still there. If you move to McLean to be in one of their AAP centers you may find you're still supplementing, but so will many other people around you. Or you go private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meeting your profoundly gifted child is more than just challenging them in spelling or math. It's also socializing them, giving them the opportunity to find solutions to being bored, teaching them to exist with others who may be different from them. It's about PE, and recess, and music, and art class. Not just math and reading. It's all the things.

All those are dumbed down as well in elementary school. At least in our APS experience.

PE is about silly things such as coordination or stretching (juggling with silks anyone?) and not about competition games and improving skills: not to say that kids shouldn't learn those things but gym class is not for that, maybe some kind of physical therapy or something.

Most playgrounds in schools don't have actual playground equipment anymore (no swings, no tall slides, etc.) and just have that giant plastic behemoth that's mostly useless. Plus there's limited time to do anything meaningful.

Music is literally not taught at any level that would be considered enriching (except maybe at ATS??). Even the junior honors band level is not that great overall.

And art class is a complete joke that teaches no actual art technique except gluing and coloring.

They don't want to push the gifted and talented kids, or even the gen ed kids, because the county has a perverse mission to not exclude anyone in their one size fits all classrooms. Can't hurt anyone's feelings I guess.

Amen to this. My kid did better art projects through CKLA than she did in actual art class. It got so bad even her regular teacher was complaining about the art teacher just phoning it in with coloring sheets.

People are trying to frame this as a gifted vs. not-gifted thing, but from what I can see the issue is that academic standards have just collapsed across the board. No one is interested in actual rigor, everything is directed at the bottom 40% of the class and trying to get them across the finish line. So much of what my kids do every day is just make-work or digital pacifiers while they focus on the kids who are behind.

They gave up cursive, they're giving up grammar, they let IXL do most of the direct instruction in math facts. There's something to be said for the idea that having high expectations leads to better learning outcomes.

The response here is exactly right. APS has dumbed down the entire curriculum in ES. I have an 8th grader and a 10th grader now, so we had a front row seat to watch it happen. To add to PP's list, they also eliminated FLES (Spanish used to be taught 3 days a week in our ES), they eliminated the Summer Laureate program (the APS gifted office used to offer a 3 week summer program), and a lot of the funding for exemplary programs and other extras has been chipped away at through the budget process over the past several years-- but that especially accelerated after the pandemic. Go talk to your neighbors with middle and high school kids, and they will tell you stories about elementary school programs that no longer exist for budget reasons.

Additionally, when my kids were in early ES (~2014-2016), there was a lot of criticism being leveled at APS for being a "system of schools" instead of a "school system"-- that led to a push by the Asst Super of Teaching & Learning to standardize what was going on across all the ES programs. Prior to that, the North Arlington schools could get away with doing their own thing to some extent with the curriculum, which is what led to the perceived divide in the "quality" of North vs South Arlington schools. There is a lot more standardization in how things are taught across all the elementary schools now, and teachers have less freedom to move the curriculum along faster even when most of the kids in the class seem ready.

Just be thankful you don't have a 2E kid. We have a gifted dyslexic. We were never able to get her the support that she needed because we were told that she wasn't having difficulty meeting the APS reading benchmarks (regardless of the fact that she was in the bottom spelling group and was struggling with multi-syllabic words). That's when I saw what the actual benchmarks are-- they are so, so low. If that's the bar now, then it is no wonder that kids are bored in APS (gifted or not).

NO. This is interesting. Time was, APS was known for its excellent grade schools while FCPS (apart from AAP) were considered meh, and FCPS high schools were great while APS high schools were meh.

Now both school systems are wrecking their grade schools.