Reply to Center Level IV school versus local level IV

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Reply to "Center Level IV school versus local level IV"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think the centers tend to be more rigorous because they draw from kids from multiple different ES.  They also offer more social opportunities as there are more kids (local IV programs often only have enough for 1 class of AAP kids that are with each other year after year).  For a "new kid" coming in, it might be good to go to the center where all the kids are "new kids" to each other.  Also a center usually has multiple AAP teachers in each grade who can share resources, collaborate etc.

On the downside, the days are often long for an AAP kid with a bus-ride and they are separated from the neighborhood kids.[/quote]

Thanks, this is good insight. You say the centers are more rigorous because they pull kids from multiple elementary schools in the area. [b]Any other reasons why it might be more rigorous?[/b] Because teachers have more of an opportunity to collaborate (because there are more of them in a center), or that the center has more resources because there’s a more concentrated segment of kids in level 4?

From the folks in my neighborhood, I keep hearing “my kid wanted to stay with their friends so we stayed at the base school.” And that is totally fine, but as I said previously, as someone who is coming from outside FCPS the whole friends argument seems.....not compelling enough when we potentially have an opportunity to go somewhere with more rigor, more resources and more social opportunities. Or maybe I’m way off base?! [/quote]

AAP teachers have a lot more latitude than gen ed. I think the collaboration of teachers is big in the center--they hold each other to a pace and get ideas from each other on how to go deeper in language arts/social studies.   Math in a local IV program will do the typical AAP accelerated pace, in a center there are often spin-off groups of advanced kids that do further acceleration and more math teams.  In one way, it's really just a matter of numbers--more AAP kids, more AAP teachers = more support for extracurricular academics, for extensions, for accelerated groups.

But there are also more qualitative differences in my experience. In many Local IV programs, only a portion of the AAP class is often center-eligible, principals have discretion to add kids who they think would benefit (or whose parents strongly advocate for their placement).  I think this actually makes the AAP program more permeable and effective for a wider range of kids, but in practice it means the pace might be slower or projects less of the intensity that you see at the center.  For instance, one of my DCs is highly attuned to social pressure--in the AAP center if she gets excited about a project she'll write 20 pages on it, do lots of detailed work, talk excitedly and no one blinks at it because many of them do the same thing about something that interests them. She has spin-off "book groups" outside of school because they want to read and talk about another book by an author they are reading in school, and has shared writing docs for stories with different friends in class and they have written hundreds of pages together.

But if she's in a context where any of that would be viewed as "weird" or "nerdy" she would shut that down.  I don't know if that would be the case in the local level IV, but in her girl scout troop (which is our neighborhood troop, not her center school's and about 70% of the girls in it are in our base school's local IV program) she talks way more blase and complain-y about school and her school-ish interests.

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