Reply to Please SOUND OFF if you think FCPS is in decline!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a longtime FxCo resident - attended FCPS as well.  The elementary and middle schools are nowhere near as rigorous as they were in the 80s.  The whole AAP nonsense has been such an unwelcome distraction.  The county should have stuck to its very well-regarded GT program that only accepted a tiny percentage of kids.  AAP has turned into a circus and isn't really much different from Gen Ed.  That, in and of itself, has made elementary and middle school education somewhat of a joke.

However, the high schools do an excellent job of educating students - probably because at that point, AAP ends and all students have the opportunity to take whatever level they want to (regular, honors, or AP/IB).  My kids all said that they didn't feel they were really learning anything until they got to high school - and then it was a brand new and interesting world.  No more busy work and silly projects.

Two of my kids are now in college, and the third is still in high school.  The college kids have been very well prepared.  Maybe one day FCPS will come to its senses and do away with AAP; simply raise the bar for ALL kids.  [/quote]

New poster. Sorry that your particular AAP did not prepare your particular kids as well as you would have liked for their excellent HS education; however, the AAP my child did in FCPS was great preparation for the very rigorous education DC got in an FCPS high school. The kids who went through AAP at our ES and MS were more than ready to handle high school and benefit from it.

Your particular experience, and mine, do not define every family's experience with AAP.

There is a huge tendency on DCUM to tar AAP as horrible yet we and other families who went to our specific schools had good experiences overall and some kids had excellent experiences. The constant drumbeat here of "do away with all AAP" pretends that every school, every program, every teacher, every student is the same and has the same experiences. That's just not the real world. If AAP disappeared tomorrow, you'd get what you call "raise the bar for all kids" and teachers would call "differentiation in the classroom." Over time, the complain of parents like you would be this: "In our school there's not enough differentiation to keep kids who work at a higher level interested in learning! We need to give them more stimulation that meets their needs." That's exactly why AAP (whether at center schools or in all schools) exists. Make it vanish in favor of differentiation in the classroom and see how well that works over time. You'll go back to wanting some form of GT or AAP or separate "streams" for students at that level, because teachers just can't help the kids who need help and at the same time provide what other students need to keep engaged and be ready for MS and HS.

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I think the problem most people have with AAP is that it has expanded to the point of being ridiculous. Parents find ways to get their borderline students into the program. It used to be very selective. So while these borderline students may work hard, they are not exceptional in any way. I have witnessed this very thing happening.

This also punishes the non-center schools as they lose not only their exceptional students but also the students whose parents will really push them. This leaves base schools with the more than their fair share of remedial cases and English language learners. This causes scores to drop and then the school becomes less desirable as a neighborhood school - resulting in a downward spiral. 
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