Reply to Afterthoughts from AAP orientation

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[quote=Anonymous][b][u]Why are middle and high schools able to offer advanced classes to anyone interested and able, but apparently elementary school isn't? Plenty of "regular" kids would excel in advanced classes, depending on their area of strength[/u]. A student doesn't have to be advanced across the board. In fact, many AAP students are completely mainstream and aren't advanced in all subjects. Why does FCPS assume there's a "need" for them to be educated separately? [/b]

I'm quoting a PP above but the quoting feature is just making this thread way too long.

Wanted to comment on the question. 
I think the reason why advanced classes are not offered in early elementary is that the eager parents will push for this as early as possible. It takes time to get data on kids and that's why they wait till 1st grade to do the NNAT and 2nd grade to take the CogAT. I personally think that this is even too early but it does give the school system an initial baseline.

Surely we as first-time parents all think our children are so advanced. My DC1 was reading and writing before Kindergarten and was very articulate. DC was identified early for pull-outs. CogAT was just below the cut off and had superior score on Verbal.   I really could have referred her to AAP but when I went to the informational night when she was in 2nd grade, I thought that DC didn't fit despite her good grades, good feedback from the teacher, and she was also a Young Scholar. Come 3rd grade, she started to have trouble with math, which pretty much became the new baseline. She would have struggled in AAP had she been accepted.

As far as the WISC, I think parents should invest in it as part of your child's education- and don't consider the school as 100% of their education- I'd say it's 75% at best and you supplement the rest.  Don't let your only data points be from the school's NNAT and CogAT. We live in a transient neighborhood that is not wealthy. There are ways through GMU to get a reduced fee on WISC testing. Why do the wealthy parents get their child tested on the WISC? Because these parents are also more educated-- that is why they are wealthy. They have also studied how the school system works and will make sure that their kid get the best of everything. Can you blame them?

If we all clamored to get our kids into the advanced program and the school had no way to initially sort the kids out, differentiation in the classroom would be so difficult for the teachers.  I hear first-time parents who have kids in preschool who know about this way to get the best services in Fairfax county- all you have to do is "test them in."   Even if the county instituted a "line in sand", we as parents will always want to be that line to be in favor of our kid. You just won't please everyone.

In middle school, you can work with your kid to enroll in the advanced classes that they excel in and are interested in. By that time, you as a parent, would have a good idea of your kids strengths.  In high school, there are even more choices but a lot more focus. You can't have ALL those choices in 1st grade, when you as a doting parent think that your kid is advanced in everything, because reality hits when you find out your kid doesn't excel in everything, or has a special need (anxiety, LD, ADD etc.) that wasn't apparent in kindergarten.  School is such a long haul. Those kids who are identified early are given the advanced services. Some kids just bloom late- and that's why a lot of parents here say that in high school, everything evens out.

People here are so ticked off about the testing, the AAP Process, the appeals, the Center vs LLIV, and the idea that the advanced curriculum should be available to all from the beginning. And no, I don't think that a majority of kids can handle that AAP curriculum- but that also depends on how it's implemented in the particular school. My DC2 is in a very strong center school- that's why in retrospect, I realize that DC1 would have been a disaster in an advanced program.

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