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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Did anyone with a rising 5th grader currently in compacted math get a letter noting their student will return to grade level math next year? [/quote]

I got a letter saying my rising 5th grader will be in Math 5/6, but there was also an option to check for returning to Math 5. Maybe this happens every year when they evaluate which math class students should take next year after current year performance?[/quote]

They don't want to push your child into 5/6 if [i]you[/i] think they have struggled.  Otherwise, they are placing all the 4/5 kids in 5/6 for this coming year only so that they close out the sequence, transitioning to the in-class cluster model for future years (and beginning with this year's rising 4th graders).  Unless they have some clear documentation of struggle, themselves, in which case they should be reaching out to you to discuss that possibly unexpected placement decision.[/quote]

I’ve heard some schools are pushing more kids down to the slower track. It seems so inconsistent across the district [/quote]

I mean, if they actually can get enrichment right (which is a *huge* if), they absolutely *should* be shrinking the number of accelerated kids.  Some schools have way, way too many kids in compacted.  I heard someone say that there's a school with like half of the kids in compacted math, which is nuts.   If some schools have been selecting a narrow group and some schools have been selecting a really broad group, then yeah, there's going to be differences throughout the district on how many get bumped down.

[/quote]

As a parent of older kids now in high school, I do think the criteria they were using for compacted math ended up including a lot of kids who probably shouldn’t have been on that track. But I don’t love dropping kids down based on a single data point, and I don’t love making permanent decisions based on testing performed on 9 year olds. I also don’t love the huge inconsistencies across the district and I don’t believe in using local norming to negatively recalculate scores. It’s really designed to boost kids with barriers not create ways to gatekeep. I also think calculus in 10th grade is insanity. What a mess this all is. [/quote]

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