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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
Exhibit A reading thru todays post.

Definite defensiveness from people with anyone asking about grade level or accelerated classes.  Not a good sign.  The people repeatedly telling posters to ask the school ad nauseum is also not a good sign.

The poster who says they can’t believe everything DCPS admin tells you is correct.  Go to an open house and ask about accelerated classes, honors classes and many times you get vague answers, not straightforward.  Ask about what is the criteria for these classes and again vague, non-descript answers.

The one thing is clear is that there is no accelerated math class from the sole person on here with kid there says his kid is in the accelerated math class and will be taking Algebra in 8th grade.  In fact, DCPS is notorious, as someone mentioned, of pushing kids into Algebra who are not even on grade level or ready for it which is true.  So I am not confident that it’s even taught on grade level.

Any class can be labeled whatever you want.  Accelerated does not always mean accelerated and that is a big fact in DCPS.[/quote]

OK I'm the parent with a kid in the 7th grade 'accelerated' math class. I can't tell you a ton about it. It's not Algebra. My kid likes the math teacher a lot and has anecdotes to share about him and class that make it sound positive. The kid gets good grades in math. I mean . . . I expect they cover the DCPS curriculum.

So this isn't trying to be defensive - a discriminating parent would want to know if they really do more than just normal 7th grade math maybe? I don't go into my kid's class or ask other students how they are doing in class, so I lack direct input from the teacher or longitudinal information regarding other students, i.e., I only hear from my own kid. I expect that's normal and would be impressed by people who know more . . . I guess you can look at public test information, and that probably shows many students not succeeding, which is not a positive for any parent, right, and many here believe that there is some kind of spiral toward success if kids are surrounded by kids succeeding at a peer level on testing. Ahead of PARCC my kid told me that some peers said they don't care about PARCC because it doesn't really count for anything, and you can take that as dispiriting or a clear-eyed understanding of priorities, cf. posts on this forum.

So - I don't meant to be overly defensive, but it's hard to be that omniscient informer when you mostly hear about what's going on at school from a remove, based on anecdotes shared by a teenager.[/quote]

Thank you for your candid report. How did your kid get placed in the class? For a parent coming in with a 6th grader, how do they decide each kid's class schedule?

Honestly I don't really care about PARCC because in most years it doesn't count for anything for the individual student. As my DD said "It's not like they're going to give you candy if you get a 5". I don't know why we would expect a kid to care about a test that isn't connected to any specific outcome.[/quote]

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