AAP at Base School vs. Going to Center School

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I think those kids come from my child's center. If they are anything like the advanced kids in my child's grade, those kids are wickedly smart. They aren't just bright, advanced math students; they are math freaks. (My kids is with the bulk of kids who are just "bright")

It is wonderful that this district is willing to promote and cultivate that kind of intelligence. Bravo fcps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

Great post!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

What school are your kids at? I want to send my kids there!!!

[Anonymous]

We heard great things about our school and it got great ratings but we didn't hear a lot of details even after talking to several neighbors which we were able to do since we had already bought a house. Then DC started there and it continued to be difficult to find out what was going on. Some teachers I hear have bad reputations and parents are looking to private for the upper grades, there are problems with the special ed kids, differentiation is not being taught because class sizes are too big. I don't think it's always that easy to find out everything about a school beforehand especially if you don't live there first.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

My kid is in 3rd grade AAP at a center and there are no groups.

[Anonymous]

I'm all for bussing these kids to schools for accelerated math if the county school budget was awash in money. There are classrooms though with over 30 children and not enough textbooks, not enough paper, and on and on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

My kid is in 3rd grade AAP at a center and there are no groups.

At our AAP center, I was told they don't group the 3rd graders for math until after 1st quarter