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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]I'm not sure I fully subscribe to this American notion that you should get into this program (or not) based solely on your "natural" gifts. [/quote]

No one is suggesting you should have to agree with this American notion, but since Fairfax County is in the United States of America, would you agree that it is not all that odd that the standards by which the schools are run should be based on American ideas? Not saying that American ideas are better than any other culture's ideas, but isn't it reasonable that any country's schools be run based on that country's ideas? 
If I were living in England or France, it would not surprise me at all that their schools were being run according to English or French ideas, and while I might not agree with everything, if I were sending my children to their schools, I wouldn't expect them to do things differently because I disagreed. It seems to be that it is standard procedure (and generally good manners) to abide by the customs of the place where you are.[/quote]

This is an ironic response because you clearly assumed I'm a foreigner-- which I'm not.  My grandparents are all American-born children of Irish/German descent.

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Actually, I made no assumption about the writer's nationality, nor was I being ironic. I simply was making the point that it shouldn't be that unusual to understand that a school system in the United States of America would subscribe to what are thought of as American ideas. My own grandparents were not all born in America, but that does not change my expectation that American schools will follow American standards. If I were in a country where a grandparent of mine was born, I would expect the schools to follow that country's standards and customs, even tough I was born in America.

I actually don't think the people who run AAP are sitting on the fence on this. They realize that the scores from these tests are not reliable when kids have been prepped, but they also realize that there really isn't a lot they can do about it. Last year they changed the test, but how many times can you change the test? That gets expensive. How do you really know if parents have prepped their kids in advance? You can't really have second graders signing an honor code.  
I believe that eventually, they will drop this testing or simply give it much less weight in the process. You are right that if some families prep their kids and some do not, you end up with scores that simply don't have the same meaning that they would if all the kids took the test without prepping.

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