Why do parents get so worked up about prepping their kid to get into AAP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Why not do it by subject, rather than wholesale? Few kids are so advanced in both math and language arts that they require different learning environments for both. Likewise, few kids are so behind in everything that they need remedial services for everything. There would be both less prestige and less stigma if math/science and language arts had different AAP-> resource tiers.

AAP Level III is for that reason.

AAP Level III is a one hour pull out once/week. It's not even remotely comparable to full time AAP instruction in an area of strength. A lot of the AAP angst is that kids who rightfully should be in Level III (strong in only one area) are either being placed in Level IV, thus slowing things down for the entire AAP class in their weaker subject, or they are not placed in Level IV, and thus are completely denied AAP instruction in their areas of strength.

+1 There is too big of a cliff b/t AAP and almost nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. I’m not sure how you interpreted that. Wow - what a crazy stretch!

I’ve heard from folks in education that have be concern about AAP and the high numbers is that it often seems like White flight. Sad but true is that many immigrants/children of immigrants are unaware of how the education system works.

That's how it looks at my kids' (base) school. If you look at the yearbook, grades K-2 are very diverse. Grades 3+ are very brown. Basically, all of the South Asians, the majority of the East Asians, half of the white kids, and basically none of the brown kids head to the center in 3rd, which greatly changes the demographics of each classroom.

I'm confused.. Are you calling the AAP classes "very brown" because of all the South Asians or are you calling the non-AAP classes "very brown" because most of them are left behind in non-AAP?

Most of them are left behind in non-AAP. I should have said African American and Hispanic children, but earlier in the thread, people were talking about AAP excluding the "brown" kids. I just continued with the terms already being used.

[Anonymous]

Can we take a step back here? In every country, city, town and village there are smart kids/smart parents with average kids, etc that push for advantage in whatever matters in that location. This has been the situation for generations. So why are we wringing our hands over that topic now? What are we as individuals doing to help the "brown" kids? A lot of us volunteer at school because we have the time. Do we observe the brown kids to see if there are any smart ones (there must be according to the law of averages) and try to help them out? Does any school have PTA outreach efforts to help the lower-class (for lack of a better word) kids? Wouldn't that be the way to go?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Why not do it by subject, rather than wholesale? Few kids are so advanced in both math and language arts that they require different learning environments for both. Likewise, few kids are so behind in everything that they need remedial services for everything. There would be both less prestige and less stigma if math/science and language arts had different AAP-> resource tiers.

AAP Level III is for that reason.

AAP Level III is a one hour pull out once/week. It's not even remotely comparable to full time AAP instruction in an area of strength. A lot of the AAP angst is that kids who rightfully should be in Level III (strong in only one area) are either being placed in Level IV, thus slowing things down for the entire AAP class in their weaker subject, or they are not placed in Level IV, and thus are completely denied AAP instruction in their areas of strength.

NP. I don't think Level III is defined as "strong in one area." And it certainly does not function that way. As PP says, it's a pull-out class that is its own thing, completely independent from Level IV Language Arts or Math. I agree that it makes much so more sense to place kids in higher levels according to their area of strength.