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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]AAP isn't what it used to be.  Public school systems nowadays are often somewhat ideologically hostile to the notion that some students are smarter and/or more advanced than others and deserve an advanced curriculum.

"Helping the smartest students reach their full potential" is no longer on the list of the top 10 goals of public education systems.  If your DC is smart, AAP is certainly better for him or her than general education, but it's not nearly "as much better" as it would have been 25 years ago.

For one example of a kind of anti-advanced-placement attitude, public school leaders in Cambridge MA have fought to prevent students from having exposure to Algebra 1 in middle school, because they don't want any students getting too far ahead of other students. 
 https://www.boston.com/news/the-boston-globe/2023/07/18/cambridge-schools-are-divided-over-middle-school-algebra/  [/quote]

Using an article from Cambridge to reflect FCPS trends is not helping the conversation. FCPS is not stopping kids from taking Algebra in MS. About 15% of the 7th grade students take Algebra 1 H and a good chunk of kids take Algebra 1 in 8th grade. I believe that about 25% of the students will take Algebra 1 in 9th grade and most of those students are coming out of pyramids with lower SES families. FCPS is promoting finding ways to increase the number of kids taking Algebra 1 in 8th grade in order to close the gap.

[/quote]

+1. We are leaving FCPS AAP for private, but our experience at our ES was that they were pushing [i]more[/i] kids towards advanced math and Algebra 1 in 7th or 8th rather than fewer. Last year our FCPS ES (an AAP center, so we have plenty of advanced math classes to go around) implemented a program that any kid who pass advanced on the math SOL or got >90th percentile on the iReady in math for spring would be in advanced math the following fall. Several new kids joined my DCs in advanced math who had not been there prior. Being in advanced math gets you on the track to take the placement test for Algebra 1 in 7th and guarantees you Algebra 1 in 8th at the latest unless your parents object.

That said, this is a young district policy and I believe there are plenty of people within FCPS who are anti-advanced placement as well. But from the top there is not quite the same push to flatten everything that there was even two years ago, at least in math.[/quote]

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