Reply to Should we transit from private to AAP?

Forum Index » Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)

Reply to "Should we transit from private to AAP?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We went from AAP (mid-range school where there's only a few parents doing outside enrichment) to private (on the academically rigorous end of religious schools, so not a top private). Note the AAP program is only different from gen ed in math. The rest is the same with theoretical "extensions" for AAP kids. That really just means the teachers give them less help on projects. Comparison:

- by 6th grade AAP is only about 1/4 of a year ahead in math of the general math curriculum at our school. The top math scorers in our school - about 5% of kids - are in pre-algebra in 6th. Whether in pre-algebra or not about 10-15% of the entire class will go into Algebra 1 Honors in 7th, which is from what I see faster paced and more intense than the same class in FCPS. This is slightly [i]less[/i] than overall percentages in FCPS, but the class is more intense. Our school uses a variant of Singapore math, and I've found that curriculum goes way more in depth than FCPS AAP math while going nearly as fast.

- science all the way through is much stronger, but most notably in elementary. They actually learn things which prepare them for high school science in the early years, versus cramming all their science learning in upper grades. The project based learning promises of public school are bogus OP. What that looks like is each group of kids in a class teaching themselves part of one of the standards in science or history, then presenting that to the whole class. Do you really want your kid taught half of science by her peers? Meanwhile in our private, science projects are labs from very early on that are taught by teachers and demonstrate meaningful concepts to the class. That's project based learning I can get behind. That said, a smallish private like ours will never ever offer the science opportunities of any FCPS high school. Or the tech or engineering opportunities for that matter.

- surprisingly I don't find the history curriculum at our school to be that much more organized or better than FCPS. The history and literature based homeschool curriculum I did for a few years as a kid was much better. I want history to provide the kids with meaningful facts and timelines early on so they have solid information to get into comparison and assessment later in their educations and I don't see that at our private our in public. Other privates probably do much better.

- language arts is so much head and shoulders above public it's not even funny. The kids actually [b]learn how to write[/b]. They learn grammar and spelling. They learn how to structure a paragraph. They learn how to structure an essay. When they turn something in a live teacher gives feedback instead of meaningless peer review. Because the kids actually know the building blocks of language, when they do peer reviews they are often better than what I saw in public. In addition my kids are being taught presentation and public speaking skills. It shows - our school's debate team does very well at the local and national level.

In addition to the academics, at our private we don't have to worry about the county mucking with our boundaries for our school, spending money on a building before deciding what kind of school to even put there, adding 3 hour early dismissals to the school day after promising they wouldn't do that for another year, and all the other stunts FCPS pulls. Our private isn't in a constant war with the current administration's Dept. of Ed (whoever's fault you think that is), or ANY administration's Dept. of Ed. for that matter. They just...teach the children.[/quote]

Which history curriculum did you use for homeschool? How does the private's English curriculum compare to what you used for homeschool?[/quote]

I used (and would still use) Sonlight growing up, because we're religious. Any curriculum that is actually structured and focuses on timelines, dates, facts, figures, and actually covering the globe is better than our private, which in turn is slightly better than FCPS. I'm really not sure what the history textbook is for private because it lives at school. Public had one in 4th, but I don't know what that is either because again, lived at school. My kids report looking at the private school textbook, but never reported looking at the textbook at public.

The language arts is superior. Some sort of Houghton Mifflin for spelling, Easy Grammar Plus for grammar complete with workbooks, and the school's own structure for essays and other writing projects as well as whole class novels. The novels do sometimes relate to the history, which I love.[/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