Reply to Replicating ATS success — what are exact differences

Forum Index » VA Public Schools other than FCPS

Reply to "Replicating ATS success — what are exact differences "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think that ATS has some good things going for it. But a HUGE part of their success is that it’s a self selecting group that starts in K and stays through 5th.

Neighborhood schools have way more transient students that move around often. So you have kids (and often it’s low income kids) who are at their 3rd school in two years.

Also in neighborhood schools class sizes fluctuate and because of that staffing fluctuates. (A lot more teacher turn over and teacher teaching different grades).

These are things you just can’t replicate in a neighborhood school. [/quote]

All of that matters . But so do things like properly teaching kids to read,  regular updates to parents on kids,  and giving kids 1-1 tutoring when they are in danger of falling behind.

In fact so many families want a school like ATS that APS could try an experiment at a neighborhood school by adopting more of ATS’s practices and see what happens.

[/quote]
Science focus used to be a mini- ATS.  No tucking in shirts but mostly everything else was present— daily homework starting in kindergarten, encouraging reading, emphasizing writing and having daily writing homework in fourth and fifth grade, extremely encouraging playing an instrument (if you didn’t, you had to do sol tutoring during band/orchestra so most kids did an instrument).  It ended when they became a neighborhood school— it was part Covid relaxing standards, part that not enough parents wanted that type of school anymore so they couldn’t force it.  I think you need buy in for something like that.[/quote]

So it was an option school before?[/quote]
Yes— you could transfer in from either Taylor or Jamestown (they were part of a “team”)— roughly 30-50% of the school were transfers.  It became a neighborhood school in 2018, though there were still transfers in the upper grades.  [/quote]

"yes" is misleading. It was not an option school, not open to the County. It was, as PP says, part of a "team" of schools. So technically a lot of transfers, but only from within an eligible geographical boundary.

As to PPP's comments about how ASF used to be more like ATS but standards relaxed because the parents didn't want that anymore??? I'm doubting that. I suspect it was more general relaxation post-COVID that has hit everyone (but ATS, apparently) and wondering if it is actually primarily due to demographics and APS' general attitude toward schools with large groups of ED kids? I'm not familiar enough with the neighborhoods and boundaries - weren't more ED families districted to ASF after the Key move? Or is that Innovation? Or maybe, instead of most parents "not wanting it anymore," there just wasn't as much push for it? I'd still bet it's APS' warped perspective of equity more than parents driving those changes.[/quote]
The relaxation of standards coincided with it being a neighborhood school, not covid.  Most of asfs went to innovation when it opened, but the school started changing policies before that.  It went from daily homework at every grade in 2018, to only substantial amounts of homework for fourth and fifth grade in 2019.  Even fourth and fifth grade had a lot less— they went from daily graded readers responses and daily math problems to both of those being 1-2 times a week.  Post covid, only fourth and fifth grade have homework, and it’s very little homework.  This also coincided with standards based grading though.  
The old principal and some former teachers said they couldn’t force the kids to do the homework, which is why they changed the amount.  If parents aren’t supportive at home, and kids just don’t turn in the homework, they can’t fail them if they know the material.  My eldest was there back in 2013, and it was a pressure cooker type of environment.  Lots of kids with anxiety issues, but I’m not sure how much if that is typical.  [/quote]

Based on friends who kid transferred from the “old” ASF to ATS, ASF had more of a “pressure cooker” environment than ATS.  Their kid was happier at ATS than ASF. According to them ASF was lots of work with no love. ATS adds love to the mix which means the kids are happier. Not sure what they mean by that but that’s what they told me.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics