Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised the anti-AAP/anti-Center poster hasn't shown up yet.

The Center model should stay for precisely this reason. There aren't enough kids at base schools to fill a class in each grade so they will either cluster and/or drop the academic threshold to include more kids in order to fill AAP seats.

Centers are not needed anymore. AAP is a joke now with the new basal. EVERYONE is getting the same LA. Adv Math should be offered at all ES at this point.

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised to learn our Fairfax County Elementary school does not have a dedicated level four classroom. When my first was in kindergarten, we kept being told that this was something that would be happening at all the schools. I’m really disappointed because for other reasons, we would not be willing to switch to a Center school, but I believe that one of my children has a good shot at AAP.
Does anyone have any backstory for why elementary schools Don’t have these classrooms as we were told they would?

Depends on the school. Some Local programs do have a designated class and others are doing cluster model. I teach at a LL4 with a designated class. The class is filled with Level 3 students or other high achieving students. Level 4 kids range from
50-80 percent from year to year.

Y’all are out of touch. It’s not called Level IV. It’s called Full-time cluster services. You keep looking and listening for the wrong term.

There’s not necessarily going to be a dedicated classroom at grades 3-6. As another poster noted, the services can easily be delivered using a cluster model where 6-8 eligible students are in a classroom.

I believe the number of schools without LLIV is really, really small now. Most schools have some form of LIV at their school. The ones without tend to be smaller schools with fewer students so it is harder to implement.

We were at Fox Mill which is a smaller school, around 80 kids per grade, and has a Japanese Immersion program. It wasn’t as simple as starting a LIV class because the JI kids had math and science in Japanese. The school was about 50/50 on JI/Regular Class. The school chose the cluster method but that is evolving. I know from speaking with friends with younger kids that there are LIV pull outs to go with the cluster model. I know my son’s Advanced Math class in JI had 25 or so kids in it, there were 7 kids in the other Advanced Math class. I am under the impression that many of the kids in the regular program move to the Center. I know of two bus stops for the Center school and see about 7 kids at those stops. Normally the JI kids stay at Fox Mill.

The schools that have implemented LLIV since COVID are schools were the Principal did not want LLIV at their school and have been forced to add the program. There was some level of hesitancy to adding the program and the implementation is not great because the leadership at the school doesn’t believe in the program or their is a large enough group of people in the school that don’t believe in the program.

Anonymous wrote:
Does anyone have any backstory for why elementary schools Don’t have these classrooms as we were told they would?

DEI and logistical issues, but primarily DEI. As a parent of a non-AAP AND AAP students (both likely borderline and almost equivalent in skills), I both love the clustering model and hate it at the same time. For my non AAP child it provides an opportunity for my child to have peers to look up to, and the teacher provides the "extra" aspects to all students who can handle it such as my child. However, the program seemed watered down (maybe it's just my expectations as I don't have an example of a full time program), and the teacher was still spending the majority of the time with underperforming children, while the higher end of the class was largely learning independently or from eachother. For example, my child consistently says that when he asked for help, he's directed to another student because she is too busy with other children. Not a BAD approach, but I'd not think it's optimal for learning either, and feel bad for the 3-4 students who are constantly being asked to teach instead of learning.

When I was looking at buying a house, I emailed one school that wasn't yet on the LLIV list. They told me they didn't have the physical building capacity to implement it though they were trying to figure it out (huh?). Bought elsewhere.

I'm surprised the anti-AAP/anti-Center poster hasn't shown up yet.

The Center model should stay for precisely this reason. There aren't enough kids at base schools to fill a class in each grade so they will either cluster and/or drop the academic threshold to include more kids in order to fill AAP seats.

There is no such thing as Level 4 for kindergarten.

Some schools teach level 4 to everyone for Social Studies and Science, so they mix the students for those subjects as well as for all the Specials. It makes for better relationships across the board.

It has nothing to do with size at our base school. They had over 30 riding 3rd graders qualify my son’s year, but they decided to implement a cluster model and put 4-5 of them in every 3rd grade classroom instead. Admin claimed it was better for everyone that way.

As a teacher, I knew it wouldn’t be better for anyone. We had planned to keep him at the base school but once they said “cluster” we were out of there. They initially kept 23 LIV kids for 3rd grade, but by 4th they were down to 7 as more families jumped over to the center.

Anonymous wrote:I was surprised to learn our Fairfax County Elementary school does not have a dedicated level four classroom. When my first was in kindergarten, we kept being told that this was something that would be happening at all the schools. I’m really disappointed because for other reasons, we would not be willing to switch to a Center school, but I believe that one of my children has a good shot at AAP.
Does anyone have any backstory for why elementary schools Don’t have these classrooms as we were told they would?

There aren’t enough kids at every grade level in every FCPS elementary to fill a classroom.

Our base school - along with a handful of others -doesn't have *any* LLIV services yet.

They’ll only have that at centers, or at larger LLIV schools (4+ classes per grade level) where the program has been established for many years and where lots of kids stay at the local school. Other than that, the schools have a lot of leeway to do whatever.

A dedicated classroom requires enough kids to fill a class. Clustering is more common now

I was surprised to learn our Fairfax County Elementary school does not have a dedicated level four classroom. When my first was in kindergarten, we kept being told that this was something that would be happening at all the schools. I’m really disappointed because for other reasons, we would not be willing to switch to a Center school, but I believe that one of my children has a good shot at AAP.
Does anyone have any backstory for why elementary schools Don’t have these classrooms as we were told they would?