Reply to Adding a year in elementary school

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here. It’s more wishful thinking on my part. We love our elementary school and wish that both kids have an extra year in it. But yes I recognize that 6-8 makes more sense.[/quote]
Kids start taking highschool classes in seventh grade.  It’s good to have a year prior to that where they can get used to being in middle school without it tanking their highschool transcript.  Especially since they got rid of grades in elementary school.  Also moving sixth grade to elementary school would limit the advanced math track since you couldn’t have pre algebra in sixth grade then.[/quote]

I know this is not the FCPS forum but about 25% of the kids in 6th grade at ES in FCPS are taking pre-algebra in 6th grade. We call it Advanced Math. A Decent chunk of those kids will test into Algebra in 7th grade. MCPS and Loudoun County have similar programs. It is more then possible to teach pre-algebra in 6th grade at an ES. You simply have a math class or classes that are filled with kids taking pre-algebra and other classes that are taking the regular sixth grade math.

DS’s school is K-6. They prepare them for MS by having the kids rotate to different Teachers for each subject. Each class has a different group of kids. They are working on using a planner for homework assignments and the Teachers asked the parents not to sign it until the student has checked off that they did each assignment. They have guidelines for how to email a Teacher and we were asked to allow our child to be the one sending emails to their Teachers so that they get practice for MS and HS. All of this at an ES. [/quote]
Sorry but this isn’t relevant for Arlington— Arlington has a policy of no explicit differentiation in elementary school.  So no advanced classes in elementary school.  Only push in services.  
They have a similar planner arrangement in fifth grade and fourth grade at aps.  It’s still very different from getting letter grades (and seeing the consequences of missing assignments) that they have in sixth grade.  Realizing that you now have a b in a class because you forgot to turn something in is a good lesson to have before the b actually counts for something.  They can’t do that in elementary school because aps has a policy of standards based grading in elementary school.  You still get the same grade in elementary school even if you never turn in work, and they can’t change that because it’s the county level policy. 
They could change that, but APS is more likely to just eliminate the advanced math track starting in sixth grade.  They already really limit access to it.[/quote]

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