Algebra in 6th grade - new selection process?
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Anonymous
| I think it is only 11 schools that are piloting this in person. The administrator that mentioned the 11 schools later admitted that she was only thinking of in person and not virtual offerings. So many more could be taking this virtually. |
Anonymous
There was an email from fcps board member. “Piloting Algebra 1 Honors in sixth grade: FCPS will begin offering Algebra 1 Honors to sixth-grade students who have demonstrated readiness for advanced math. Selection will be based on passing the Math 6 SOL at an advanced level and an 1125Q quantile score on iReady assessment. This initiative will increase the number of students accessing Algebra 1 Honors from 25-30 to approximately 500 students, while giving families the option to opt-out their student.” |
Anonymous
ChatGPT was pretty useless on this one for me, quoting scores in the mid-to-upper-600s. The only useful thing it did was link me to the iReady website where the percentile scores are listed, where I was able to figure out ChatGPT was using the old norms (pre-2024) for its reply, and basically assuming a 99th percentile cutoff = 1125Q, which I have no faith isn't just a hallucination given the other garbage it was telling me. That said, at least I was able to on my own determine the 99th percentile cutoffs under the new norms to get a sense of how near/far my student was from that cusp, regardless of whether it's relevant to the 1125Q cutoff or not. |
Anonymous
| Our school is piloting it. It looks like maybe up to half our AAP students are eligible? My kid is not eligible and I'm glad. There is no way I would let my sixth grader take a high school level class. What is the rush? My older kid's middle school math teacher noted that your brain has to be more fully developed for understand the abstract concepts in alg2. There is no way that half of sixth grade AAP is ready for alg 2 in eighth grade. This is going to be a s***show. |
Anonymous
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If I knew the middle school algebra 1 honors teachers were going to come to the elementaries to teach it to the 6th graders, or even that the 6th graders were going to all walk over to the middle school for 1 class, I’d be all for it for my kid.
I’m scared at how it’s going to actually be implemented. I’m scared that when the people teaching it haven’t seen higher level math since high school, they won’t know how to teach to prepare for algebra 2 and precalc. It will be tricks and memorizing vs understanding. My child is SO excited to try it (and they’ve never been interested in school before since it’s so “boring”) so we are going to give it a go, but I’m nervous and prepared to support and extend the instruction at home. |
Anonymous
Holy cow, half? That’s wild. Our center isn’t doing an info session until next week but half would be almost 50 kids. That’s multiple course sections. In my mind it was going to be a group of 10 kids around a table with algebra tiles 
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Anonymous
We have a lot of kumon, Russian school of math, etc. kids at our school. Maybe it's not a full half, but it's a lot. I'm not sure how many will ultimately do it. I'm unhappy that these kids will then be tracked together for other parts of the day. |
Anonymous
I guess the RSM and AoPS centers must be putting their kids in time chambers to get them to mature faster. |
Anonymous
| For most kids - what’s the rush? |
Anonymous
Our DC just completed AoPS Prealgebra B and plan to accept Algebra 1 at our school (we got the letter for our DC). I wouldn’t say that AoPS Prealgebra A and B are prerequisites for Algebra that will be taught at FCPS. If you’ve been doing Beast Academy and AoPS and are trying to figure out where your DC stands, I would compare the curriculums. AoPS is usually ahead of the content, so I wouldn’t be surprised if AoPS PreAlgebra A and B lined up with FCPS Algebra 1. I could be wrong though and plan to check this myself before we make a decision whether DC should participate at our school’s pilot. I agree with previous posters that the most dangerous part of this move is not whether the selected kids can handle Algebra 1, but whether they will miss learning other important foundational concepts. ~OP |
Anonymous
ChatGPT told me the iReady vendor uses Meta Metrics to translate the standard score from iReady to the quintile score; that the quintile score is usually reported in the school division's dashboard for pupils but not reported on the parent report and then it provided a lexile-quintile website that translated the quintile into the readiness levels at 25%-50%-75% for K through 12. The lexile-quintile website is a pretty nifty one and now I finally understand what the lexile scores mean as well. (Didn't really ever find those useful until now.) I think it depends on how you ask the question to CGPT and what you ask. I'm curious as to why the iReady reports we get has the lexile scores in Reading but won't provide the quintile scores for Math--I'd like to ask FCPS why they don't send us that part of the report, but of course, they'll just pretend to not know what I'm asking or downright lie about not having it. |
Anonymous
My child qualified, and I think I’d agree with you on this. To make matters worse, the students taking the course will have virtually no foundation in pre-algebra. Even kids in programs like RSM or AoPS are typically planning to take pre-algebra this year to prepare for Algebra next year. I’m not exactly surprised that Gatehouse came up with this cockamamie idea—rolling it out just a week before school starts—and then obligating schools and principals to launch the program without proper planning. Had they thought it through, they could have used 5th grade to incorporate core pre-algebra concepts that are essential for success in Algebra. But, of course, that would require Gatehouse to actually know what they’re doing. It was also pretty clear that Dr. Reilly likely didn’t support this either. Her body language, along with how she answered the “why one week before the start of school” question, spoke volumes—she essentially said the decision was above her pay grade and pivoted to “the Board’s decision.” Good job, FCPS! |
Anonymous
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FCPS needed to standardize and publish how they were allowing kids to take Algebra in 5th grade because there are kids who are ready for it. They did not need to create a program to place 500 kids into Algebra in 6th grade. It is still a relatively small number but there are not that many kids ready for or needing Algebra in 6th grade. I think there are about 300 or so kids who end up in Algebra 2 in 8th grade, with most kids taking Geometry in the summer.
FCPS needed a system that flagged potential kids early, based on iReady scores and SOL scores, so that the school could be talking with the parents. Then, in 5th grade, have a meeting with the parents at each school who are identified as likely candidates in 6th grade and letting them know the options. Not every school is going to have 10-15 students ready for Algebra, we were at Fox Mill. It is a smaller school and I doubt it is piloting a class. There were a lot of kids in Advanced Math who went on the Algebra 1 in 7th. I would guess, off the top of my head, that there were 3-4 students who might have been ready for Algebra in 6th and that 2 of those kids/parents would not have been interested. What are the options for those kids? Hopefully one choice is to move to the Center, where there would be enough kids to have a class. I have never had a problem that FCPS limited the number of kids in Algebra in 6th, my problem has been that it only happened at certain schools through a process no one knew about. |
Anonymous
For most kids, there is none. For kids like mine, it isn’t a rush. He was bored in math all through ES and has only found the increased pace in homework and tests a bit challenging in MS. He would have appreciated a challenge in math, that is why he was involved in math enrichment. He loved the subject and wanted to be challenged. |
Anonymous
Which schools offer the in-person Algebra 1HN classes? On-site at the elementary or at the nearby Middle/Secondary schools? |