APS for a bright engaged student - APS in decline?

[Anonymous]

We have been frustrated by the quality of instruction during the pandemic, but I can give them a pass.

We are worried that APS is dealing with too much overcrowding, an influx in high need students from the huge boom in AHA (such as the Amazon property), and generally a focus on simply passing students through the standards rather than differentiating and truly preparing students for college.

We are in Middle School; elementary actually had a good gifted program, and felt that our DS got challenged, had a good cohort of equally motivated friends, and made good progress in all material.

In MS, it seems to be much more “everyone learns the same” and they only differentiate on math, and even that has been taught in such a miserable way that he no longer likes math. I hope the pandemic is part of the issues, but reading the news on the board about how “APS is in decline” — is it really?

I hear about WL may have huge overcrowding, like 4k students on campus, that they do night classes or DL classes as a standard part of curriculum even post-pandemic. Have they finally built a 4th high school at the career site, though without a pool or field it will always be a 2nd tier and thus may not address overcrowding.

Should we bite the bullet and go private? It’s so expensive, I just cant imagine, and we already spent so much buying a freaking house here, but education was a big part of the equation but we are very dismayed.

[Anonymous]

Speaking of my kids’ experiences before DL, they have both been clustered with other bright, engaged kids, and that really is important. I can’t say what the future holds, and we’re willing to move our 6th grader to private if we need to (older kid is a sophomore and will probably stay with APS regardless), but as long as those other bright kids are around, great teachers are still around, challenging options still exist, and the schools actually fully reopen in the not too distant future, we will stick with APS.

[Anonymous]

W-L does not have 4000 students. That’s ridiculous. It has about 2000. We have been very pleased with the level of instruction there. My son is in 10th grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:W-L does not have 4000 students. That’s ridiculous. It has about 2000. We have been very pleased with the level of instruction there. My son is in 10th grade.

+1. Do what you need to do, OP, but don’t be such drama queen to justify going private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:W-L does not have 4000 students. That’s ridiculous. It has about 2000. We have been very pleased with the level of instruction there. My son is in 10th grade.

No the projections for the 2008 birth cohort. Basically after financial crisis, way more families stayed in apts and th rather than moving to ffx and aha units are on the rise.

It was Murphy who made all these projections, Durans background is equity officer so we know where the school board focus lie.

I want us to invest in all students, happily pay more property tax, to see everyone served but instead we end up with last March where we don’t teach new material b/c some can’t access. Rather than spinning up new solutions, we water things down

Will that improve after pandemic? Fairfax has it AAP and TJ; Moco has magnets, APS Has lottery only HB. Mainstream schools used to have solid fundamentals but they are too over crowded and seem giving up on differentiation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:W-L does not have 4000 students. That’s ridiculous. It has about 2000. We have been very pleased with the level of instruction there. My son is in 10th grade.

No the projections for the 2008 birth cohort. Basically after financial crisis, way more families stayed in apts and th rather than moving to ffx and aha units are on the rise.

It was Murphy who made all these projections, Durans background is equity officer so we know where the school board focus lie.

I want us to invest in all students, happily pay more property tax, to see everyone served but instead we end up with last March where we don’t teach new material b/c some can’t access. Rather than spinning up new solutions, we water things down

Will that improve after pandemic? Fairfax has it AAP and TJ; Moco has magnets, APS Has lottery only HB. Mainstream schools used to have solid fundamentals but they are too over crowded and seem giving up on differentiation

The next priority for the woke crowd is to get rid of differentiation entirely. For example TJ, but also look at other districts in heavily-left leaning areas. It's called "opportunity hoarding", because they think in zero-sum and "crab in a bucket" mentality. If left unchecked, it will drive more and more families to private and erode the reason a lot of families move to Arlington in the first place.

[Anonymous]

Okay troll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:W-L does not have 4000 students. That’s ridiculous. It has about 2000. We have been very pleased with the level of instruction there. My son is in 10th grade.

Any trouble getting registered for classes? Do classes fill?

[Anonymous]

I’ve got a bright, engaged student who will enter HS next year and I worry about these things. There is cohort placement in some classes, but not others. I like IB, but fear the size projections for WL. As a parent and staff member, I’ve seen a lot of problems with decisions meant to even the playing field and how it negatively impacted higher level students.

[Anonymous]

It seems to me like middle school in APS is more of a struggle with this than high school. I don’t actually remember why I have that impression except I have generally heard more complaints along this line about middle school. I am zoned for Wakefield and I have only ever heard good things about it from friends whose kids go there, and they are all bright, go-getter types.

[Anonymous]

It seems to me like middle school in APS is more of a struggle with this than high school. I don’t actually remember why I have that impression except I have generally heard more complaints along this line about middle school. I am zoned for Wakefield and I have only ever heard good things about it from friends whose kids go there, and they are all bright, go-getter types.

+1

This may be because parents are used to pull-outs from ES, and expect that middle school is going to be the same way. Then, they assume no differentiation is going on just because they can't see it. (Do they really expect the teacher to announce to the entire class who is in the gifted group, or to loudly remind the class that students are working at different levels? This would be demoralizing to the rest of the class).

Then, when students get to high school, they can sign up for APs, so that serves for gifted instruction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:W-L does not have 4000 students. That’s ridiculous. It has about 2000. We have been very pleased with the level of instruction there. My son is in 10th grade.

Any trouble getting registered for classes? Do classes fill?

I have a sophomore and senior at W-L. Only issue we ever had was for this year one tech class my senior was interested in got cancelled for lack of enrollment. But he is taking a small dual enrollment class on geospatial data analysis so it seems sign up has to be very low to cancel. Both kids have had to make last minute and in one case mid-year class change and it's never been a problem.

Look on the APS site for the class size report. That will show you the variety of classes at each school, number of sections, and class sizes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It seems to me like middle school in APS is more of a struggle with this than high school. I don’t actually remember why I have that impression except I have generally heard more complaints along this line about middle school. I am zoned for Wakefield and I have only ever heard good things about it from friends whose kids go there, and they are all bright, go-getter types.

We have a rising 6th grader and similar concerns to OP. My understanding is that other than the two math tracks, there is almost no differentiation in middle school. There's been a push for years to add an Advanced language arts track but pushback again in the name of equity. GT kids are clustered, but parents, teachers and kids all report that differentiation is insufficient to non-existent. See the most recent GSAC report for more detail on that. Elementary schools handle differentiation in a number of different ways, some better than others. High schools have advanced and AP classes. Middle school doesn't adequately serve a lot of students.

To the W-L posters, projections are that W-L could end up well over 3,000 by the time the kids born around 2009-2012 get to high school. The bubble is real, they are adding an addition to W-L and still don't have plans for a 4th high school. Who knows how many of those who left for private or homeschool will return, so perhaps the pandemic has helped the population crunch a bit, but I personally doubt those are permanent losses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Okay troll.

Not a troll, struggling if we should move, go private, or hope county ramps down the watering down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It seems to me like middle school in APS is more of a struggle with this than high school. I don’t actually remember why I have that impression except I have generally heard more complaints along this line about middle school. I am zoned for Wakefield and I have only ever heard good things about it from friends whose kids go there, and they are all bright, go-getter types.

We have a rising 6th grader and similar concerns to OP. My understanding is that other than the two math tracks, there is almost no differentiation in middle school. There's been a push for years to add an Advanced language arts track but pushback again in the name of equity. GT kids are clustered, but parents, teachers and kids all report that differentiation is insufficient to non-existent. See the most recent GSAC report for more detail on that. Elementary schools handle differentiation in a number of different ways, some better than others. High schools have advanced and AP classes. Middle school doesn't adequately serve a lot of students.

To the W-L posters, projections are that W-L could end up well over 3,000 by the time the kids born around 2009-2012 get to high school. The bubble is real, they are adding an addition to W-L and still don't have plans for a 4th high school. Who knows how many of those who left for private or homeschool will return, so perhaps the pandemic has helped the population crunch a bit, but I personally doubt those are permanent losses.

OP here. Sorry it was 3000, not 4000. Just huge. And they were thinking of converting buck property to class space, and have all those crazy DL or night shifts, and getting spots in extracurriculars becomes a blood spot.