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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]These ratings systems got crap when it was all about test scores, which are typically a proxy for income level.  Now they factor in diversity.  So an all white school with the same test scores won’t rank as high.

ATS is able to produce high scores with diverse students because it’s a self selecting population of students.[/quote]

Here we go again. ATS diversity comes from the VPI program. There are VPI programs in several APS schools and all students get into through a lottery. Yet the ATS VPI students do better than their counterparts in other schools. Also other option schools have a self selecting population but they aren’t doing as well as ATS. ATS is simply a better school. [/quote]

What other schools have self selected student populations on academic rigor ? That’s literally ATS selling point, teaching stuff like it used to be taught.

It’s the combination of VPI and EVERY STUDENT there has engaged parents who want their kid there. [/quote]

Yes but you are acting like there is nothing different about the school itself. My daughter’s friend was in Discovery. They moved her to ATS. Her mom told me that ATS is just much more rigorous. That’s the story you hear from parents who come from other neighborhood schools. The curriculum is more rigorous. Now whether this means anything in the long run is something else. Because even if the curriculum is more rigorous in elementary school it may not make a different in the long run.  [/quote]

One clear difference is the number of minutes spent on literacy in the lower grades and how they remediate kids who aren't making top scores, even without and IEP, 504, or whatever. They just do it, including 1:1 tutoring. [/quote]

If they spend more time on literacy, what are they cutting back on? The school day is the same length as other elementary schools in APS, no?

And the kids who are pulled for tutoring — what do they get pulled from? I can’t imagine it’s recess.

ATS also has weekly assemblies, right? This, again, eats into instructional time.

Maybe it’s more about what’s happening at HOME than most people acknowledge. ATS has big class sizes which makes any meaningful amount of 1-on-1 support during the school day impossible. Of course kids with involved parents are going to outperform their peers whose parents can’t be bothered to work with their child at home.

(And I agree with PP, at the MS and HS levels, I don’t see any difference. The former ATS kids in our neighborhood vary greatly in how well they’re doing later on. Some are bright. Others… not so much.)[/quote]

A lot of the extra tutoring to get students at grade level happens after school. Other times it’s during what ATS calls “starblock” where teachers work one on one with students based on their individual needs. ATS teachers have a lot of support in the classroom. They use their specialists a lot and there are many of them. The specialists help everyone and according to my kids there is at least one “extra teacher” that comes in the class during the day. So yes the classes are large but the specialists are utilized extremely well. They have specialists that other schools don’t have and they will now be getting more specialists after being designated a title 1 school. As for the literacy block, you tell me. Why can’t other schools fit in a longer literacy block? How are they using their time?[/quote]

So ATS has extra staff that other schools don’t have, and they’ve had them prior to becoming Title 1?!

They employ more teachers and reading specialists than the other elementary schools in APS?

And the struggling learners are expected to stay after school for tutoring?[/quote]

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