Reply to Is FCPS ending advance math for students who are not in AAP?

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Reply to "Is FCPS ending advance math for students who are not in AAP?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Never understood why they don't have advanced language arts for those students who are advanced in that area.  [/quote]

Because if you compare the curriculum between AAP and GenEd for anything besides math, you will see that it's really not all that different.  In the long run, AAP will result in 1-2 years ahead in the HS math course sequence.  Once 9th grade starts, AAP makes no difference, it's either Honors, AP, or IB which is open to everyone.  Not the case for every school or teacher of course, but on the whole really not that advanced outside of math.[/quote]

+1
Which is why AAP is ridiculously unnecessary if flexible groupings would be used.  And before anyone jumps in to screech that "one teacher can't handle multiple different groups!!" - that's not what I'm talking about.  Each teacher would take one group.  Among grade level teams, which are usually made up of 5-6 teachers, that would be plenty.[/quote]

It would require their schedules to match exactly. They would all have to have LA, math, science and social studies at the same time for it to work. This could be very difficult. [/quote]

Fox Mill ES does this for 6th grade. The reason is to help the kids get ready for MS and switching classes in 7th grade. It also helps the Japanese Immersion kids and the Regular Class kids get to know each other better before MS because the groups are mixed together for the first time. Math is still in Japanese and Fox Time at the end of the day is used for conversational Japanese instruction a few times a week.

I don’t know how hard it is to schedule but there is one Teacher for each subject. Kids are grouped and change classes. My son only has 3 kids he is in all 4 classes with so the grouping changes. I wish they started it earlier or at least mixed the kids for LA and Social Studies because I think it allows for ability based groupings that are important for kids.

Is it harder to do when you have 6 classes at a school? Maybe but I suspect that there is a way to do it. Maybe there are 2 LA and Math Teachers and one Social Studies and Science Teachers. That would allow for smaller classes for Math and LA to be able to address the needs of the kids who are struggling.

What we are doing now isn’t working. The gap is growing, not shrinking, so maybe we need to re-think how we are approaching education. Inclusion has not helped the kids the farthest behind and is not helping the kids who would do better with additional challenges. In FCPS it has turned AAP into an arms race because parents don’t want their grade level kid ignored while the teacher focuses on the kids who are behind. The kids who are ahead are in AAP sot he answer becomes get the grade level kid into AAP so they get some attention. AAP becomes water downed. Now no one is happy. The kids whoa re behind are still behind, the kids on grade level are ignored, the advanced kids in AAP are bored because too many kids are in AAP because their parents don’t want them lost in the regular classroom.  [/quote]

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