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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]People need to chill out about AAP. Even if AAP did vanish from Fairfax county, their will always be GT services for those who qualify. Just like every county in America with $. The problem here is there is no cut off entrance score. We came from out of state, GT admission was Iq composite 132. No matter how gifted a mother or teacher thinks their child is the cut off is 132, no exceptions. GT services are part of the special ed dept and schools receive extra funding per student b/c of that. The openended cut off here brings about hurt feeling and aggression from parents of many students not accepted into the AAP. Not having AAP or GT services in the Special ed dept brings about eliteism in parents of AAP students. The combination of these two makes FFC an unpleasnt environment and a bet if a mess! [/quote]

We cam from out of state too. In the four states our kids have attended (in the gifted programs too) only fcps tests every single student, and only fcps tests every student twice. No other state that we have lived in does this.

All the other states only test a limited number of students RECOMMENDED BY TEACHERS. This includes the state that starts the gifted program in kindergarten. Two of the states also allowed parent requested screening, but it was a one time shot. You could also provide outside testing if you wanted to pay for it. Teachers could recommend a kid for testing in later grades if they showed a need. All the other states had hard number cutoffs.

In one state there were about 20 kids out of five kindergarten classes tested (at least one - mine - parent recommended). Two kids in the grade, mine and one other, qualified for services.  In the other state (3rd grade) fewer than ten kids were recommended for testing. At least two qualified that I am aware of (my kid and a buddy).

[b]If fcps either limited the testing to those kids recomended by teachers, [/b]or only retested the kids for Cogat who scored above a certain threshold on the nnat (may two standard deviations from the norm, or even one deviation) they could still identify all the kids who need tue services while saving sooo much money on testing and retesting the majority of kids who are right around the center of the bell curve.

Then, if they stuck to one hard number, say 132, no exceptions, they would likely fix the problems they have created.

They need to streamline and simplify the identification process.[/quote]

Oh no!  If they limited to whoever was recommended by the teachers, my child wouldn't have been tested! First grade teacher told me after the NNAT score came back that she was totally surprised by his 149 score and she didn't see it in his class participation/behavior.    Teachers have an unconscious bias toward the well-behaved, vocal and older students in their class.  There are a number of kids in DC's AAP class who wouldn't be noticed as highly superior b/c of their lack of maturity or youthfulness (i.e. summer bday kids).  I think  you must have been dealing with a different set of parents in those other states.  That has a big impact on our program here in FCPS.  So many highly educated parents -- therefore they expect "the best education" for their (presumably) highly talented children.  The pressure on the teachers would be significant.  If you allowed for parent requested testing, you'd probably be testing most of the kids anyway.  Why pull just a few out when it doesn't really change the process of giving the test to 3/4 of the class?

I like your idea of giving only one test... just not sure how that would be implemented or really much of a savings.  Seems like the easiest way to change the program is to either increase the admissions cut score, or push more of the AAP curriculum into all schools and call it a day.  Maybe they should have opt-in "honors" classes in all the ES or at least for 5th and 6th grades?  Or in some areas, cluster kids together (if there are not enough opting in for honors in one school). [/quote]

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