Reply to Are you happy with Thoreau?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Do the kids going to Madison from TMS seem to be well prepared for the writing and work load? [/quote]

I think you are over-estimating how prepared one needs to be for honors classes at Madison.  Seriously.  My child was in honors at TMS.  She is prepared just fine for honors classes at Madison.  It's not some wildly advanced curriculum.  Yes, it is high school, but the teachers understand that they are teaching 14 and 15 yr olds.... so they teach them what they expect them to do/know in class.  There isn't some secret magic that the AAP kids get (at TMS or LJ) that dooms the non-AAP kids from getting A's in honors classes at Madison.  If your kid wants to get good grades at Madison, he or she will put in the effort to do what the teacher asks, and will get good grades.  This whole idea that some middle schools prepare you for Madison (or any FCPS high school) and some do not, is just silly.  
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Totally disagree with this. First, if a middle school has more homework, requires planning ahead and budgeting time, makes kids work for their grades, graders harder, has higher expectations, or teachers a higher level curriculum, that has to - and does - help in high school. My friend is a teacher at Madison and said she can tell which ones went to LJ and which went to Thoreau. She said, by far, the Thoreau students were not used to more rigorous grading and expectations, their writing was inferior and they complained more about the amount of work. Yes, a kid who cares about his grade, will do so regardless of the school, but that doesn’t negate the fact that one middle school can better prepare you for high school than another.

—former teacher [/quote]

How long ago did you have this conversation and did it account for fact that LJ kids at Madison were all AAP, and Thoreau students at Madison were mostly non AAP kids?  That's changed now.[/quote]

She’s mentioned it multiple times [b]over the years[/b]. The last time she mentioned it was about a month and a half ago. [/quote]

???  You realize that the kids who did AAP at Thoreau (in the first year of the AAP program there) are only in 11th grade right now (since TMS didn't do AAP until a few years ago).  So, if we are talking about last year or the year before, those kids would have been in 10th or 9th grade.  ALL of the other kids at Madison in the past years were kids who came from TMS doing honors.... and somehow, by the grace of God (or tutors), Madison still had a stellar reputation!  Go figure!  Must have been in large part based on those TMS slackers![/quote]

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