Reply to Our school only had one child accepted into AAP

Forum Index » Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)

Reply to "Our school only had one child accepted into AAP "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So the consensus is the quality of the second grade teacher and AART are the most important factors for getting in. [/quote]

I would say it's hugely important in the kinds of cases that come up here all the time, and the kinds of kids AAP is reportedly trying to reach out to: Very bright, motivated kids who missed the cutoff by a couple points and whose parents didn't understand how parent referral or getting help with the extra testing to appeal works. This is why, in my opinion, schools that have over a certain percentage of ESL/ FRMS kids should have a full-time AART on staff.

As an aside, one of my kid's friends missed the cutoff narrowly. Parents don't speak much English, which is fine because I speak their language and offered to help the mom navigate the appeals process and set up a test at GMU. Everyone was very nice there, but they could not guarantee a bilingual tester (which the kid most likely will not need) or translator to help interpret results (parents WILL need that, and I'll probably just do it myself or see if our parent liaison could take a look). I called and scheduled the appointment myself, because there was no one available to translate when the mom called. Getting a test there is obviously voluntary and they're not required to provide translation services, but I mentioned being somewhat surprised they don't, based on the # of kids in FCPS who use their services and have parents who don't speak great English, and the lady said they hear comments about it all day long. My guess is that this is another piece of why some URM kids aren't even trying to appeal. When we took my kid, whose first language is not English, we went to a tester who was bilingual and it was a very good experience, but it was quite expensive and not very close to home. We could afford it, but there are a lot of parents (like my kid's friend) who are a bit too well-off to receive the fee waiver through the county, but can't come up with more than Mason charges. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics