Reply to ACPS -- what am I missing?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My youngest is in elementary and oldest now in MS but pvt.  I would say that public elementary for us wasn’t bad.  It wasn’t OMG amazing and I do not drink the KoolAid that most In my community to on public schools here.  I would say that [b]George Mason[/b] and Barrett are relatively strong.  What makes the, really nice is the strong PTA and community.  The families here are warm, educated and kids are well adjusted and just really good kids.  A close knit community.  Academically it’s not academically strong but I’m not that parent that wants my kid to go to Catholic school and know 8th grade vocabulary words in 5th grade.  My expectations are for love of learning, engaging and caring teachers and a really healthy social experience.  These boxes are checked.

Where things are wrong is more the public curriculum of all the SOL and MAP testing, the work is just really not that hard and the TAG program is not productive in who gets n.  The idea of academic equity is ridiculous.  Getting everyone to the same level should not be goal rather promoting excellence among all.  So philosophically ACOS has a problem there.

But I have told you about the pros and cons we experienced.  In terms of MS, I have friends whose kids do great there.  You really have to be a well adjuster, very mature and responsible kid who is going to be in honors classes to make it there.  If so, it will likely be fine.  I would never put my kids there but if they were like perfect kids maybe I would reconsider but I would still be uneasy about it.  That’s me.  I have pretty high standards when it comes to conceptual learning ~ that is ~ I want more than just transactional pass a test learning.  Esp after grade school,  personally I think it’s too overwhelming socially with 599 kids per grade on each floor.

We are going to however try to get ours back in public for HS.

A lot depends on your kids.  ACPS is not a strong public system in total, but Alex is a really great place to be.  We would never want to live in Arl or Falls Church or Fairfax.  We are city folk.  But I would say that by MS you’d be hard pressed to keep kids in public.  I did A lOT of research into the various public elementary school systems around NOVA and if you are strictly concerned about academics, run away from Alex public schools.  But if it’s more than just that you seek, elementary I think is good enough.

[/quote]

Thank you for this very balanced, kind and honest post & while I agree with much of it,  I have to disagree with you about George Mason.

It's not a good school. Math instruction is particularly weak. Good teachers were run off by the previous principal.

Some current teachers are so obsessed with equity that they refuse to help students because that's "not equitable". When they asked a question, my child was told by their math teacher, "too bad. you must not have been paying attention. you'll have to figure it out."

The "grading" is wildly inconsistent since there isn't a standard (this may be more of a ACPS problem). No homework (that's inequitable too). Never saw a test or any classroom work after kinder. Our fourth grade homeroom teacher lied to me for months on an issue and the administration wouldn't provide any resolution. In fact, they didn't seem concerned at all or see an issue.

Friends with kids in other ACPS ES assure me that it isn't like that at their schools.

It's pretty telling that GM had the most departures over the last two years of any ES in ACPS.

I know test scores aren't the end all and be all but check out the proficiency numbers on the VA DOE website over the years, including pre-pandemic. The results are pretty awful.

[/quote]

These are such privileged white family complaints. You want to see what equity really looks like in ACPS? It’s all the white kids leaving for tag and all the brown and black kids staying behind. [/quote]

Devil’s advocate:  what are they supposed to do if the black and brown kids don’t get the CogAT scores to test into TAG?[/quote]

Not speaking to the so-called privileged complaints. Just noting that TAG will be changing soon. It will not be pull-outs or a segregated separate 4th/5th grade classroom. And it seems that there may no longer be as much reliance on NNAT or CogAT scores for identification purposes. There will be differentiated plans for all students who need accelerated or more challenging material in any subject area and it will be push-in support. For students from underrepresented groups, there will continue to be more after-school or summer support and enrichment.[/quote]

When will this change happen?[/quote]

Changes to the design of a new system/model/program are being contemplated and are slated to be finalized/approved this year. It is required that the plan be revised every five years and this is a part of that process. Not sure when the SB would approve implementation/when changes go into effect. Seems that this big of a transition would require some time, likely a year or more to implement – train classroom teachers, train TAG teachers, train paraprofessionals, and come up with curriculum and map out the way services will be delivered in the classroom.

The school board, district, committees, and consultants have reviewed several concepts about the proposed revisions being contemplated and are working on finalizing a delivery model and an identification process. Maybe the proposed changes will change at the end but so far, it appears that there will be a shift in the delivery model from pull-out services for 4th and 5th graders to a push-in model. If you look at what other school districts are doing, one way this would be done would be to group by ability in a classroom depending on the subject matter or topic – several clusters of students working on problems or projects. Some of the models out there also have peers tutoring peers but also ones where peers are on the same academic level.

There also seems to be a shift in what the identification process will look like in that the focus would shift to finding and serving students who need more academically in the moment (and overlaying with an equity lens to ensure students are not overlooked and left behind) and on providing them the additional advanced academic services they need as soon as possible and not only identification of students that is heavily reliant on test scores. It seems that identification would be on a continuum based on a child’s ongoing portfolio and ongoing teacher evaluations and not only identification after test results become available.[/quote]

Virginia requires districts use a test as a factor in TAG.  At the last school board meeting, it did not seem like ACPS had any alternatives to the NNAT or CogAt. [/quote]

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