4 AAP classes, 2 GE (4th grade). What's wrong with this picture?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Keep living in your dream world. That's not true. Even when they do the first in-school screening panel it carries more weight with the staff on the panel if the they think the referral came from the teacher so that candidate is more likely to pass successfully through the following county committee.

The AAP website says the local in-school screening committee can decide not to forward a file to the central committee. Are there any stats available on how many files don't make it past each local in-school screening committee? At our school, the AART made it sound like the local committee sends every file on to the central committee. She said the local committee reviews the files and makes suggestions to the AART and classroom teacher if they think anything needs to be added to make it a stronger file. A parent asked if the local committee ever decides not to forward a file and the AART said no. The AAP website also says that if the local committee declines a file and the parent appeals, it automatically goes to the central screening committee. What would be the point of any local committee declining a file?

If any such stats are available, they would be available at each local school and not in the central office.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone else seen more parent referrals being for girls? At our school I have seen this, just among the families I know. It makes sense because girls are more verbal, and NNAT is based more on perceptual reasoning, and FxAT has just one verbal component. For FxAT the composite needs to meet the benchmark, but only 1/3 of the test (verbal) plays to what are stereotypically girls' strengths and 2/3 (nonverbal and math) plays to what are stereotypically boys' strengths.

In my child's AAP class there are five more boys than girls. If parent referrals are eliminated, the ratio may be even more skewed.

Does anyone know of a gender breakdown of referrals vs. in-pool, and/or the number of AAP girls vs. boys?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Does anyone know of a gender breakdown of referrals vs. in-pool, and/or the number of AAP girls vs. boys?

AAP girls vs. boys (among other data) from one of the July 15, 2013 work session documents:

http://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/99K2BT016C29/$file/c_Level%20IV%20demographics%20data%20by%20school.pdf

The entire set of documents from that work session are attached to the BoardDocs agenda item:

http://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=999QC7675B41

[Anonymous]

There should be no classes where FCPS states that other children cannot be in. Class sizes are being skewed because AAP students at centers are being guaranteed a class with no other children besides other AAP students. AAP students should be guaranteed classes with other AAP students. That is as far as they should go. No other school should have greater class sizes because general ed and AAP students at center schools can't mix in the slightest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Does anyone know of a gender breakdown of referrals vs. in-pool, and/or the number of AAP girls vs. boys?

AAP girls vs. boys (among other data) from one of the July 15, 2013 work session documents:

http://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/99K2BT016C29/$file/c_Level%20IV%20demographics%20data%20by%20school.pdf

The entire set of documents from that work session are attached to the BoardDocs agenda item:

http://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=999QC7675B41

Thank you! I looked at the first document and see that overall AAP percentages are 51.9% male and 48.1% female. So about a 4% difference in favor of more males. I wonder if more parent referrals are for girls as I've seen anecdotally at our school, and even then the final percentage found eligible is skewed. In the interest of our daughters (and highly verbal sons), I would review NNAT and FxAT test results carefully by gender before proposing to eliminate parent referrals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Does anyone know of a gender breakdown of referrals vs. in-pool, and/or the number of AAP girls vs. boys?

AAP girls vs. boys (among other data) from one of the July 15, 2013 work session documents:

http://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/99K2BT016C29/$file/c_Level%20IV%20demographics%20data%20by%20school.pdf

The entire set of documents from that work session are attached to the BoardDocs agenda item:

http://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=999QC7675B41

Thank you! I looked at the first document and see that overall AAP percentages are 51.9% male and 48.1% female. So about a 4% difference in favor of more males. I wonder if more parent referrals are for girls as I've seen anecdotally at our school, and even then the final percentage found eligible is skewed. In the interest of our daughters (and highly verbal sons), I would review NNAT and FxAT test results carefully by gender before proposing to eliminate parent referrals.

One thing that is not captured on the chart is the number of deferrals. There are students that are found Center eligible that opt to defer placement. I have no idea if there are more girls than boys that defer, or if the number is so small that it really does not affect the percentages.

[Anonymous]

9:56 back to add:

I looked at the third page of the chart where middle school stats are shown, and the gender balance is the opposite of that for elementary school. For middle school the chart shows 48.5% males and 51.5% females, a difference of 3 percentage points in favor of the girls.

I recall that as recently as two years ago kids could qualify to be in-pool if any CogAT subscore met the benchmark. The composite did not need to meet the benchmark. I wonder if this was the case at the time that the cohort now in middle school had their eligibility determinations made? If true, girls could have been in-pool based only on their verbal CogAT scores, and would not have been excluded based on lower math and nonverbal subscores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:9:56 back to add:

I looked at the third page of the chart where middle school stats are shown, and the gender balance is the opposite of that for elementary school. For middle school the chart shows 48.5% males and 51.5% females, a difference of 3 percentage points in favor of the girls.

I recall that as recently as two years ago kids could qualify to be in-pool if any CogAT subscore met the benchmark. The composite did not need to meet the benchmark. I wonder if this was the case at the time that the cohort now in middle school had their eligibility determinations made? If true, girls could have been in-pool based only on their verbal CogAT scores, and would not have been excluded based on lower math and nonverbal subscores.

Does the difference between boys and girls in math show up at such a young age when testing is done? I've always thought that the difference was due to nurture not nature and so showed up at an older age.

[Anonymous]

It has to do with redshirted boys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It has to do with redshirted boys.

It shouldn't have to do with age since most test scores, except for FxAT last year, are age adjusted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:9:56 back to add:

I looked at the third page of the chart where middle school stats are shown, and the gender balance is the opposite of that for elementary school. For middle school the chart shows 48.5% males and 51.5% females, a difference of 3 percentage points in favor of the girls.

I recall that as recently as two years ago kids could qualify to be in-pool if any CogAT subscore met the benchmark. The composite did not need to meet the benchmark. I wonder if this was the case at the time that the cohort now in middle school had their eligibility determinations made? If true, girls could have been in-pool based only on their verbal CogAT scores, and would not have been excluded based on lower math and nonverbal subscores.

Does the difference between boys and girls in math show up at such a young age when testing is done? I've always thought that the difference was due to nurture not nature and so showed up at an older age.

Good question!

It looks like the difference does show up early for spatial thinking (so potentially affecting NNAT and nonverbal portion of CogAT):

http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/991118/spatial.shtml

http://www.washingtonparent.com/articles/1201/gender.php

But for math ability more evidence seems to state that the genders are equal early on (so more balance for math portion of CogAT):

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=571F0E86-9E2C-6F6B-44A864E897AA54FE

Later there is a clear difference in math achievement:

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/09/2012-sat-test-results-a-huge-gender-math-gap-persists-with-a-33-point-advantage-for-high-school-boys

Overall for NNAT and CogAT boys may have an advantage. They would have an advantage for the NNAT since it is spatial. They would also have an advantage for the CogAT composite: Math and verbal may balance each other out and be a wash, but nonverbal if considered spatial will give an advantage to the boys.

Another factor to consider: The percentage of boys versus girls in FCPS as a whole at different ages.

[Anonymous]

We have 2/3 boys and 1/3 girls in my DC's grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have 2/3 boys and 1/3 girls in my DC's grade.

My younger son's grade was like that from kindergarten on. They happen that way from time to time- same for the ones where there are far more girls than boys.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Navy usually has 4 3rd grade classes, but this year it swelled to 7 3rd grade because of the 3 new AAP classes. The school is now overcapacity.

Pathetic! And remember Navy was one of 3 new centers added to deal with overcrowding at other AAP schools. Another new center, Westbriar, is also already overcapacity. And we're supposed to believe that without all these centers these "gifted" kids would be denied a decent education. Utter rubbish perpetuated by pushy parents and a school board that needs to get a back bone.

Absolutely agree. Centers, if needed at all, should be there to educate kids who can't otherwise get the education they need in a Gen Ed classroom. That was the original intent, however you would never guess that from looking at the current state of AAP. I'm all for "gifted education" for those kids who actually fit the criteria and are not just a bit above average (if that). The school board needs to reevaluate retroactively the past couple of years of AAP admissions and return the Gen Ed classrooms to ALL kids except those who are tremendously gifted. And that percentage, as we all know, is very, very small.

+1000 You said it, sister (or brother).

I feel like this is closer to how it used to be when I went through FCPS in the '90s. GT centers (as well as local pull-out) existed but there was not such a "great divide" - I'm not quite sure what happened to cause all of this AAP madness.

[Anonymous]

Immigration, especially uneducated.