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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am so tired of this whole AAP process, it has been the most stressful experience. I hope this was made easier. We all pay the taxes and knowing the best resource is used for [b]kids who are smart and would learn well in any environment is truly bad.[/b] All the kids should have same kind of education and kids who cannot manage that curriculum can opt for lower standards.[/quote]

It really shouldn't be a stressful experience.  I am assuming that your child is 2nd or 3rd grade?  They have so much promise and potential at that age.  Whether or not they get accepted into the AAP program should not be an all consuming experience for the parents.  If you are a caring, involved parent just know that your child will probably have a great life, whether or not they are put into a program at school.

In response to the bolded part, it is just a different way of looking at education.  Not all of the kids who qualify are able to learn well and to their full potential in regular classrooms, even with high quality, dedicated teachers who differentiate instruction.  Having this group of kids in a larger class with the other AAP kids who may or may not learn well in either an AAP class or regular class is a huge benefit.

Teaching kids by level and ability is a great way to achieve success, not only for the kids at the top but for the kids at the middle and the bottom too.  This is true for any learning process, be it a dance class, a travelling hockey team, a music class or more.  Would you take a 3rd grader who was playing Bach and Vivaldi on the cello, and say they had to go into the class with the kids learning to pick out Hot Cross Buns and say that it is a fair learning environment, when you could break the class into two levels and put that child with the kids who are at a similar or closer level?  Or what would you think about a group of dancers being ready to go on pointe, but not being allowed to do it because some of the other kids or their moms might feel left out?  I think it is less fair to put them all in one class in the interest of saving parents feelings, especially if it doesn't really impact the school resources (AAP classes are larger btw)

I saw this with my child's early soccer team.  The kids were together for 2 years, and by the end, around 1st-2nd grade, the ones with true ability were starting to pull away, not just from the lower ability kids like mine but the intermediate kids who were hard working but maybe not as gifted.  As much as you don't want your kid to be left behind, at some point those advanced kids needed to be somewhere they could be challenged and grow.  The same training they needed would not have worked for my child and a few others on the team.  It would not be fair to either set of kids to say that they only could learn in the exact same way so no parent got their feelings hurt.  Why should academics be any different?[/quote]

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