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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]Again - with a very tiny exception, the vast majority of AAP kids are normal. There's a huge overlap between AAP and Gen Ed kids, as all of us know. If we were talking about GT, from more than a decade ago, then yes, those kids were exceptional. But the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that the AAP of today is simply not a gifted model any longer. There is no need for FCPS to continue creating an artificial "peer group" for a massive group of basically mainstream kids.[/b]

+100  Well said and so true!  [/quote]

I would say, by and large, 20-30% of the kids in GenED could do fine in AAP, and would be no different than 1/2 the AAP students.  Whether that is a huge overlap or not is up to interpretation.  Like any cutoff, there will be issues at the edges.  Certainly, the best non-AAP student is smarter  than the worst AAP student.  But, the top half of AAP are certainly smarter that the vast majority of non-AAP student.  But, if you cut the boundary so that AAP was half the size, you would still end up with issues at the edges.

FCPS has created a system where the kids that [b]NEED[/b] AAP are getting in (at probably the 99.5% level).  To do that, they also admit 3-4x as many kids that do not need it, but will do fine in it.

I think that is actually a good tradeoff.[/quote]

I disagree.  By admitting only the students who absolutely [b]need[/b] a different learning environment - and that number has got to be minuscule - AAP would become more similar to what GT once was.  There wouldn't be this ridiculous jockeying to get in because it would be understood that AAP was a special ed program, reserved [b]only[/b] for kids with exceptional ability.  [/quote]

The problem is identifying the kids that need it...they selection method is, by definition, predictive.  If the goal is to ensure everyone who needs AAP is admitted, then you will end up admitting kids that don't need it.  If the goal is to ensure you do not give the services to anyone who does not need it, then you will miss many kids.  The problem is there is no sure fire way to ID that, possibly short of giving every child a WISC.  Given that there are roughly 13000 kids per gran in FCPS, and the WISC cost for the county would be about 300/student, that would cost about 4 million/year.  And that does not include the logistical costs of the test....

So, we are left with our imperfect detector.  The county has a stated goal of having every potentially gifted student in AAP.  In order to achieve this, they have defined this process, which probably gets 99.5% of those kids, but falsely identifies about 10% of the kids (3% should be in and are in).

Read some detection theory...you will understand the problem.  It is probability of detection (.995 for FCPS) vs FAR (.10)....[/quote]

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