Reply to WAPO article about sever FFX school budget cuts

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][I beg to differ.  This is talking about where to cut the wasted tax dollars in FCPS schools.  Looking for $148 million in cuts FY2014.  AAP in elementary schools would be a good chunk to start with.  It is not necessary and as it exist today a waste of $10million in tax dollars.  Not to mention it is creating a community of divisiness, putting a lot of stress on very young children, offering a better education to a select few, creating wasteful spending, creating elitist entitled children, and bottom line wasting my tax dollars!!![/quote]

no, those who need it benefit from it very much.  [b]State law requires a special program for advanced learners[/b].  A few disgruntled people like yourself not withstanding, AAP and TJ are an understandable source of pride for the FCPS.[/quote]

True:  for GIFTED learners, not your average good student-learners!!  [b]When AAP students are outnumbering GE students,[/b] the system has run amok.  [/quote]

Do you mean at AAP centers? You know that the AAP kids there come from several schools, right?[/quote]

Umm, yes I do know this.  But do you know that center schools are also neighborhood schools for the kids who live in-boundary?  And for those kids, many of whom are in GE, the AAP center model is a pretty unpleasant place to go to school.  The majority of kids there are in AAP and if you're in GE, your class is considered "less-than".  I'm wondering how you would (honestly) feel if you had a GE child who was very smart, but not in AAP, and who came home wondering why he or she was somehow considered less intelligent than the other kids simply by virtue of what class he or she was in.  I imagine you'd be pretty pissed about it.  [/quote]

I'm sure that I wouldn't be happy if this was my situation (and it may be with my younger child). Does your child not feel very smart within his/her own classroom, like the "big fish"? Would it really be better if the neighborhood kids who qualified for AAP were mixed back in with the rest from the neighborhood and your child might be in a lower reading group, math group, etc.? Could he/she not feel overshadowed in that way?[/quote]

We are in this situation - overall 80% kid in the GE at an AAP center school.  We have had a really difficult time with DC not feeling less than for being in GE.  After the first day of school, DC came home and said, "I used to think I was smart.  Why am I not in AAP?  If AAP is for advanced academics, and I'm not in it, then I must not be very smart."  The school has been working very hard at trying to get DC to feel good about being in GE.  We're almost finished with the first quarter, and DC still stays regularly that DC wants to be in AAP.

DC does not feel like a "big fish" in the GE class, DC feels like the GE pond is for the dumb kids.  DC feels like the GE students are not as smart as the mixed class from the year earlier.  DC was in the pull-out math group in 1st and 2nd, so DC is really annoyed that the students who were not in the AAP level II math for 1st and 2nd are now in a more advanced class.  DC doesn't feel overshadowed at all - DC is just thinks it's not fair that some children are in another class that DC wants to be in.

People say that beng in the GE in an AAP center school can benefit your GE child.  We have not found this to be the case.  Even though DC is very strong in math, the school will not let GE students mix with the AAP students for math.  The school has created an advanced track through flex-grouping within GE for advanced math.  However, the group only works one grade level ahead.  If DC was in AAP, DC could work in the most advanced math group.  So far, we have found no benefit to DC being a GE student in a center school.  [/quote]

Let your kid know - this is the real world.  A lot of people are smarter than you no matter how smart you are.  He will learn it sooner or later whether he is in center school or not.   However, high IQ doesn't mean much in terms of having a successful career or a happy life. Teach him to value hard work and improve his EQ.
[/quote]

The CogAt/FxAT [b]does not [/b]measure IQ; these are simply reasoning tests.  http://www.riverpub.com/products/cogAt/support.html#4  So scoring high on them does not necessarily indicate a high IQ.  [b]Many GE kids are [i]equally intelligent[/i], but just missed the benchmark on those tests. [/b] This is why GE students, within center schools especially, feel the stark division of AAP/GE so acutely.  It's obvious that most of their AAP counterparts are no "smarter" than they, and yet they (the AAP kids) are receiving special services.  This is a program that needs to be cut or deeply overhauled.[/quote]

If the kids just missed the benchmark, why would their parents not have parent referred?[/quote]

Speaking as one of those parents, we didn't parent refer because we don't feel AAP is the end-all be-all.  AAP is not that much more "advanced" than GE, and we didn't want to go through the whole referral process just so our child could have a meaningless label.[/quote]

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