Reply to Why do people say schools in NOVA are competitive and cutthroat when people also say the education system here is bad?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Students are tracked. Told they are gifted, or not, or how gifted - it pits students against each other. Only a limited number of spots in AAP, so parents fight fiercely. It's so toxic. In HS, which should not have tracking, class grade distributions for the same subject are all over the place. No predictability. No consistency between schools or classes of the same subject/level in the same school.

FCPS are handed students, the vast majority are, of the well educated, the well off. FCPS does an ok job, but FCPS is not the reason these kids are doing well in life and headed to college.[/quote]

I’m glad our schools do not use gifted programs.  There’s no reason to.  Our high school still has a disproportionate amount of students going to Ivy League and top schools.  Those kids do fine.

One thing that’s not mentioned is the amount of Asian immigrants, immigrants from India and other countries.   In our area they come for the high tech jobs.  They are STEM people and they want  their kids to be mini versions of themselves.   Our math club in middle school is made up of about 30 Asian kids and a couple of non-Asian kids. My dd friends are from the US, Eastern Europe, South America and African counties.   She had one Asian friend at school who live two houses over.   By 4th grade she couldn’t leave the house after school so the friendship.  It becomes a segregated school.  It works a lot better if students blend and share their talents from various subjects and activities    [/quote]

I disagree. You don’t need to label things gifted but you do need some type of flexible grouping/tracking so that kids who are ahead can be in a place where the teacher can focus on them at their ability level. Too ma=nay classes today have students that range from 2 years behind to 2 years ahead and everything in between. Asking a teacher to prepare lesson plans for kids at 6-8 different levels in their learning is causing burn out for the teachers, it is too much work, and it leaves the kids who are ahead working on their own a lot because they don’t need help.

Flexible groupings for the core subjects would help by allowing kids who are strong in math but mediocre writers, like my kid, be in a group where kids learn math concepts quickly and easily but in a group where the teacher knows she/he needs to focus on core writing skills. The kids who need more help with math fundamentals can get their needs meet and if they are stronger writers, be in a group that works at their pace and not be held back by kids who don’t like writing or need to improve.

We do need to return to retaining kids who are not reading or fluent in math fundamentals in ES. More and more states are retaining kids in 3rd grade if they cannot pass the state test and I think that is great. We are passing on kids who are not ready to do the next grade levels work and that harms the student, the teacher, and the other students in the class. [/quote]

If you mean grouping within the class by ability I agree.  I don’t agree that you need to separate by putting students in separate classrooms by ability. The top students don’t always have the best social skills, lower performing kids don’t always have confidence.  They can learn from each other.

What happens if they track too early, testing too early and the student can’t keep up by 5th grade?   Advanced math starting in 8th grade is soon enough.   [/quote]

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