Reply to FCPS potential changes to AAP

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don’t understand why FCPS want to increase more student in AAP since many parents already complaining AAP now has been watering. If FCPS believe there is so high percentage of kids can go to AAP it only means the GE is too easy, they should consider putting some AAP Level curriculum to GE.

It is not helping the kids by put them in AAP because they are minority but CogAT is not over 97%. they won’t catch up to the AAP and always in the bottom of the class. [/quote]

I agree with you, but FCPS isn't necessarily trying to improve educational outcomes. They're trying to look better in the US News& World report school rankings, GreatSchools, etc.  One example of this is that the USNWR high school rankings give you credit for the number of kids taking AP classes and the URMs taking AP classes, but they don't seem to care as much about whether those kids actually pass the class.  So, FCPS encourages tons of kids to take AP, FCPS pays for the exams, and then a lot of kids only score 1 or 2 on the test.

Right now, the educational fad is the achievement gap, and all of those ranking sites have some sort of achievement gap metric.  FCPS is doing everything it can to look better on paper with this.  I'm not sure how much they care about whether they're serving highly gifted kids who will be more bored with a bloated AAP or the URMs who don't belong there and will struggle with the curriculum.  [/quote]

The US News methodology takes into account both AP/IB participation and the percentage of students at a school actually receiving passing scores on AP/IB exams.  In that regard, it is different from Jay Matthews' "Challenge Index," which only looks at the number of AP/IB classes taken by students and rewards schools that channel kids into more AP/IB classes regardless of their performance in the classroom or on AP/IB exams.

Schools in FCPS have done very well in all the national rankings.  I don't think FCPS is motivated by a desire to boost those rankings, so much as it's trying to pay greater attention to equity at the same time it is wedded to a large, and very bloated, AAP system.  Rather than reconsider its AAP model, it's easier for Gatehouse to set arbitrary targets that can be manipulated to demonstrate a commitment to equity.

Few would argue that giftedness can only be revealed through test scores administered to students in second grade.  However, expanding AAP with an explicit goal of ensuring that a minimum and eventually similar percentage of students from every cohort end up in AAP is ripe with the potential for mistakes that end up hurting some FCPS students, especially Asian students. [/quote]

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