AAP at Base School vs. Going to Center School

[Anonymous]

DD is in aap center, 5th grade. I just asked if they have reading groups or math groups. She answered no. 1 teacher teaches math and they all get taught at the same time, same for reading. Does not sound differentiate at all. What's the deal.she said they only had groups in 3rd grade aap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:15:56 please reply or were you exaggerating?

Some of us are actually not on DCUM all day -- sheesh.

The school is Canterbury Woods.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are pacing guides for each grade which spells out exactly which skills should be taught. To me this is the curriculum. Maybe I should have said pacing guide? The projects and actual math problems may be different, but the skills should be the same. One poster made it clear that some children are 2-3 levels above in math at a center and have their own classroom for this level of work. That is a different set of skills then that is taught in those classes verses a local level IV program. I'm told a local level IV program cannot accommodate all of those math levels. We are considering many different schools since my husband has a job in the middle of the county and it would be daunting to check with all of them. How do I know if all the AAP centers are similar leaving out demographics. The numbers of AAP students at each center is very different from school to school. Some are in the 100's, others in the 200's, others in the 300's, and some like Haycock in the 400's. Does it matter how large the school is whether there are different classes taught at each grade? Are some children taught with others a year ahead or in combination classes for these smaller AAP centers?

Please provide the link for the pacing guides for each grade. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:15:56 please reply or were you exaggerating?

Some of us are actually not on DCUM all day -- sheesh.

The school is Canterbury Woods.

So taxpayers are paying for the bus to transport a group of 6th graders from Canterbury Woods to a local MS? Is the school board aware of this? This seems rather selective and like a waste of money for a very small group. Interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:15:56 please reply or were you exaggerating?

Some of us are actually not on DCUM all day -- sheesh.

The school is Canterbury Woods.

So taxpayers are paying for the bus to transport a group of 6th graders from Canterbury Woods to a local MS? Is the school board aware of this? This seems rather selective and like a waste of money for a very small group. Interesting.

Site-based management. It's not the only Center school that does this.

[Anonymous]

And who pays? The principal out of the budget or taxpayers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is the school board aware of this? This seems rather selective and like a waste of money for a very small group. Interesting.

Yes, and foreign language instruction such as FLES is selective and a waste of money for a very small group. And while we are at it, why waste our time and money with band and strings?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:15:56 please reply or were you exaggerating?

Some of us are actually not on DCUM all day -- sheesh.

The school is Canterbury Woods.

So taxpayers are paying for the bus to transport a group of 6th graders from Canterbury Woods to a local MS? Is the school board aware of this? This seems rather selective and like a waste of money for a very small group. Interesting.

You wouldn't think it was a waste of taxpayer money if your kid needed it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And who pays? The principal out of the budget or taxpayers?

The principal out of the budget.

[Anonymous]

At Lake Braddock, they have had some 6th graders take the first period Algebra I class. They take the regular Lake Braddock bus in the morning and then another bus takes them back to the elementary school. It's two or three times a week, depending on the block schedule.

It seems to be a function of parents who request this for their children. I believe only one of the AAP centers that feeds to LB does this. Plenty of bright math students at the other AAP centers, but the parents might not know about the program.

[Anonymous]

Our elementary school (not a center) has one 5th grader ride the morning bus to the MS for honors Algebra I and then a special bus comes to pick him up and drives him back to the ES. One bus for one student.

[Anonymous]

Waste of money. School board is out of the loop on this. Not happening at our school because I would fight it. Wow!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Waste of money. School board is out of the loop on this. Not happening at our school because I would fight it. Wow!

Really ? I'm not the poster about the busing but I would say a 5th grader that can take honors Algebra with MS peers is truly gifted in math. Why would you want to deny him/her that opportunity ? What about the money the principal spends on aides for special needs kids or kids with IEPs ? Is there a difference ?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That is even more difficult to find out. How do you do that easily other than just looking at test scores and demographics and reading great schools or this board?[/quote]

17:16 here. It is quite easy to find a good school that you love. We were able to find two.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:That is even more difficult to find out. How do you do that easily other than just looking at test scores and demographics and reading great schools or this board?

17:16 here. It is quite easy to find a school you love that fits the personality of your family and kids. We found two (a small, loving, intimate base and a big, exciting, challenging center). We did the common sense things.

We talked to people in the neighborhood. In the case of both schools, people said things like "We love our school" "The teachers are wonderful" "It really is the best place to go to school" "We knew that we only wanted to buy in this school". No one complained about other parents. No one bean counted between who was smarter/slower/didn't belong/etc. No snark. Very few teacher complaints (in fact, any mention of the staff at both schools was almost consistently glowing). Both of these places were filled with students, teachers and parents who had the type of character, priorities and values that we would want our kids to grow up around and that we would want to be around.

In terms of web research, yes, we used Great Schools and the fcps site for test scores and demographics, but that was a piece of the puzzle. We looked at the school websites, and more importantly the PTA websites (you can learn a ton from comparing all the things the PTA does/does not do for the school). The PTA websites are where you get a great feel of the personality of the schools. DCUM was helpful in showing us what schools we wanted to avoid. A school might be considered "cream of the crop" but if the only side the parents show about this school is snarking at each other, constant comparison and bean counting, infighting, trying to one up each other, and distain for students who transfer into the school or who do/do not make the AAP cut, then we knew that would not be the type of environment that would help our children become loving, successful, contributing, happy adults.