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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Welcome to the wonderful world of AAP vs. Gen Ed.  Enjoy your stay for the next six years.[/quote]

Were things ALWAYS like this? With parents on these boards going on and on about an alphabet soup of tests and "when will we get notification" and "should we get our child tested independently" and (worst of all) "how can I prep my preschooler so he gets into AAP"?

Maybe it was just our school and our parents whose kids were there, but kids were tested in school (we weren't even told it was coming and were never given anything on paper re: scores) and we were told if they were in the pool and asked if we were interested in a center (zero chance of anything in our base school except once weekly pull-outs). I never even heard of these tests by name until I saw this board (after my kid had been in AAP a few years) and I guarantee I never heard any parents, at our original school or at our center school, talk about these tests, ever. We were just told at the end of second grade, your child qualifies for the pool and here's what happens next.

This was in about 2008. And our original, assigned school was and is one with issues that mean it does not have many kids who go on to AAP centers, so this wasn't on the radar for most of the school. I just know that it was a surprise to me that so many parents are so focused on retesting, getting outside testing done, etc. It just wasn't even something we were aware of at that time. Not sure if that's a function of our base school's quiet attitude about AAP, or if the times have really changed since 2008....[/quote]

No, things were definitely not always like this.  When my oldest was in 2nd grade, I believe it was 2005 or so, and I think this is when it was still GT.  This was a much more selective program and no one had a problem with it or lobbied hard to get in because it was understood that it was a program truly meant for [b]gifted[/b] kids.  My son, who was and is very bright, didn't get in and it barely even registered for me, because so few kids were accepted in the first place.  I never gave it any thought at all.  There was never this division between AAP and Gen Ed kids that you see at many centers, because there were only a few GT classes and the kids in them really needed to be there.  Fast-forward to the past few years, and incredibly bloated program AAP now is, and there's just no comparison.  Our center, for example is almost 50% AAP/Gen Ed, and there's definitely a feeling of "us and them" there. [b] Now that so many kids are accepted, and the program is so watered-down, parents of mostly average kids see that their kid has a pretty good shot at AAP acceptance and they will stop at nothing to get them in.  It's become an obsession, and an incredibly unhealthy one[/b].   [/quote]

You nailed it. I know several people personally in our neighborhood who are so obsessed by the AAP, that they send them (while in K) to Prep classes in the library (private tuition for the tests). One kid who was not in pool because of the scores was like "even-though I didnt get in, my Mom is trying really hard to get me into the program".[/quote]

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