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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]AAP is only laughable. You do not need it. Your schools will be fine without the program. Better even. Taking the top 20% of kids who are most prepped in 2nd grade is only creating a pseudo-private school that’s free for those who don’t want to pay. It is not a right you all deserve as public school patrons and it does a disservice to those kids not in the program. I’ve lived in Fairfax and then all around the US and abroad. So I’ve seen a lot of different public education. [/quote]

There's some evidence that having higher performers in a class with lower performers helps the lower performers, but is it true the other way around?

Shouldn't we want all kids to be challenged?  If you have a kid who is above performing, wouldn't you want your kid to get small group time with their teacher?

Is "benign neglect", good for higher performers? It might force them to become self-learners, which is a good skill, but how much does this also lead to classroom disruption?

If we are in a global competition with other nations, wouldn't we want to nurture higher performers as well?[/quote]

This would be my concern, too.  My husband went to a poor, rural school system where the "gifted and talented" program was taking a field trip to see The Nutcracker at Christmas.  They did not read a full novel in high school English (only readers and excerpts) until dual-enrollment (no AP classes there) senior year.  (I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not.)  He was, without trying, one of the smartest kids in class and is [i]still [/i](at 45) bitter about never being challenged in school and being expected to help teach the low performers since he finished his work correctly and quickly.  He had one or two teachers who went out of their way to give him special projects to challenge him, but he had far more who basically ignored him because others needed their help more.

I didn't grow up in FCPS, but my school did have tracked elementary school classes and honors/AP in high school.  I saw the same people in most of my classes.  My husband and I went to school in the same state at the same time, but I got a far superior education to what he got and was better prepared for college, even he probably has a number of IQ points on me.  I'm not married to the AAP system, but I also don't want either my AAP kid or my gen ed kid to be in a place where the teacher is spread so thin across abilities that no one is getting what they need.[/quote]

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