Reply to New Budget Recommendations -- eliminate AAP busing and centers

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Reply to "New Budget Recommendations -- eliminate AAP busing and centers"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]If people were being honest, they would acknowledge that the impact of sorting kids into AAP and GenEd tracks at public schools is of a different nature than a kid making a travel soccer team.  Not that one predicts success, or the other guarantees failure, but the message delivered and longer-term consequences are more significant.

But, please, carry on with the rationalizations.  It's fairly amusing to watch the rhetorical somersaults when the truth is fairly obvious.[/quote]

Absolutely agree.  The tired travel soccer analogy is comparing apples to oranges.  It's one thing for a child to know that he or she isn't athletically talented enough to compete on a travel team.  Obviously, travel teams are all about competition and want to win, so they'll only accept the best players.  (And no, my kids aren't athletes, so I don't have anyone on a travel team).

It's quite another thing to tell one group of kids they're "smarter" than the other group.  Labeling based on something as basic as innate knowledge can follow one through life.  And what makes the AAP system even more egregious than simply offering a GT program for the exceptionally gifted, is that it sorts the entire population of students into two groups, with an incredible amount of overlap in each.  Most AAP kids no smarter than most Gen Ed kids, but all of these kids will grow up falsely believing that they are either smart or not.  Nothing about the system as it stands is right.[/quote]

I have kids in both programs.

Many AAP kids at the elementary level especially are smarter than many non AAP kids.

I say elementary level because some kids are late bloomers who can't work to the level or pace of AAP as a third or fourth grader but who start to catch up in late elementary or middle school.  Some kids are not as bright but as a result have to work their tails off throughout elementary and in the process due to determination and hard work catch up or surpass some of the AAP kids by middle school.  Some AAP kids might be smarter and quicker in early elementary but because they don't have to work very hard for mastery, even in AAP, they end up being passed up by middle school.

Many AAP kids at the elementary level specifically are very much accelerated and learn at a quicker pace than their non AAP peers. But if gen ed is being done correctly, as I believe it is, that gap starts to close around middle school and the majority of the kids even out by high school.

That is what happens in the vast majority of schools and centers in fcps. Because of their success in closing the gap, I think they way fcps structures gen ed, centers and level 3 services is a good program.[/quote]

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