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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP, I have a similar story.  My DD was told by some other girls on the bus that they were all smart and she wasn't, because they all got into AAP and she didn't.  The sad part about all of this is that I know the other kids were parent referrals, and I didn't understand enough about AAP to refer my kid with a 130 CogAT composite (at a Title I school), meaning that my "not smart" DD had higher test scores than the "smart" girls who were bullying her.  Then, she got rejected when we applied in 3rd, despite having a nearly perfect GBRS to go along with the 130 CogAT, as well as being above grade level in both reading and math.

Across the next 8 years, my kid got pass advanced on every SOL with perfect scores on most of them, a 98th percentile IAAT, straight As, a 5 on an AP test taken in 9th grade, and another 4 APs in 10th.  She also flew through the math and completed AP Calc in 10th grade.

The AAP label is pretty meaningless, and kids will do fine even without it.  My DD was pretty salty about the whole thing, though, and it took quite a bit of time for her to regain her confidence after FCPS and her peers deemed her as "not smart."
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Yep kids can be mean. And kids move at their own pace. Luckily, AAP is there to provide supports for kids to need it sooner than later. And luckily AP classes are available for kids who need it later.[/quote]

Wow.  That's what you got out of it?  You read that as my kid with a 97th percentile CogAT, above grade level in everything, and with a perfect GBRS "needed it later," and the kids with lower scores all around who weren't even in the advanced math group or highest reading group "needed it sooner."   :shock:

The bigger issue is that aside from the very top kids who are above and beyond, AAP draws a pretty arbitrary line between [b]the above average kids who get the smart label and the above average kids who don't.[/b]  It's unfortunate that one group of moderately advanced kids with moderately bright test scores will be mean to peers who are completely indistinguishable from them and may even be smarter than they are, simply because FCPS created this huge gulf between the two groups.   And then the very top kids who are above and beyond don't get the supports they need because the program has been so watered down by the above average kids in AAP.  [/quote]

Some of us are trying to tell you that the bolded is just not true at every school. Kids at our AAP center definitely don't think of the AAP classes as "the smart kids" and the not AAP classes as "the not smart kids." The fact that plenty of non-level IV kids push in for advanced math probably helps. Plus even though we are a center kids get principal placed in some grades so kids will move in and out of the AAP classes pretty fluidly. And the kids who are mean about AAP are kids who would find something arbitrary to be mean about regardless. That's a kid problem, and a parent problem, and a school culture problem. It's not a system-wide problem. I'm sorry it happened to your kid, and some other kids, but plenty of people know how not to place arbitrary "smart kid" labels around.[/quote]
NP. I don't think anyone looking at the situation objectively could deny that FCPS contributes to the dynamic by maintaining a large, two-track system.

If only a small number of truly gifted kids were getting into AAP, then no one would bat an eye because the needs of those kids for a different environment would be obvious.

But with a large, two-track system, the incentives are created to push kids into AAP and then the "in-group" - whether kids or parents - is big enough to talk about their status. You can argue that some are modest or kinder than others, or that it takes on more significance in some pyramids than others, or that some kids would be bored out of their skulls absent AAP, but it's still FCPS that has created and perpetuated a fundamentally unhealthy and pedagogically suspect (despite the consultants they periodically retain to give them a gold star) dynamic.

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