Reply to Are all AAP centers (including LLIVs) created equal?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's more comparable to athletics. Kids can see who's most athletic, who runs the fastest, and no one sees any shame in ranking. They get put on different tiers of teams and that's just life. What's important is that you don't keep the slower runners from racing and being challenged, and you don't give the message that your worth as a person is defined by how fast you can run.

Kids have always been able to see who is brighter and more academically oriented. In a well-run school, they can know these things and it doesn't affect them negatively. [b]But people who cry over the existence of different programs, like AAP differentiation, are just trying to pound everyone into a soothing mush of mediocrity, where we pretend there are no intellectual equivalents of faster runners and never really challenge those intellects because somebody might feel bad about themselves.[/b]
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Sorry, but no.  Saying AAP needs to go (or be vastly revamped) isn't the same as saying advanced instruction needs to go - merely the segregation of two very similar groups of kids into completely separate classrooms.  Of course there needs to be differentiation and multiple levels of grouping.  But that could easily be accomplished by having the kids cycle in and out of flexible groupings, as needed.  There is [i]zero need [/i]for separate AAP vs. Gen Ed classrooms.  Parents who insist there is simply enjoy the perceived cache of saying their child is in AAP.  They like the separateness of it all. [/quote]

Teachers cannot manage differentiation now, and they continue to have even larger class sizes. How are teachers supposed to successfully differentiate by adding even more levels of differentiation? Adding more complexity to an already overly complex situation is a recipe for disaster.[/quote]

And the current implementation of AAP isn't overly complex??  The point is doing away with the complete segregation found in center schools, and simply making flexible groups for all.  So many kids in Gen Ed could be doing AAP work in language arts, social studies, etc.  There is no reason to have those classes only for AAP kids.  Math is already differentiated for Gen Ed and there are plenty of GE kids doing AAP math; the other subjects need to be available to all as well.  The system would become less complex, not more, if all kids could cycle into and out of whichever classes suited their abilities.  [/quote]

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