Anonymous wrote:FCPS AAP is highly overrated. Our HHI was negative and we are very poor. If we could afford, we will choose Nysmith over FCPS or even APS for which we have no experience and yet we know that a student to teacher ratio makes a massive difference.

I can identify. I can’t speak for all of fcps, but anywhere would be better than the experience we had at McNair

Anonymous wrote:Nysmith is a fantastic program but it’s so hard to compare it to the AAP. So manny of the families are targeting private school for high school which is a different demographic than AAP which has a much small percent. Over 50% of the 8th grade heads for TJ from Nysmith as well. You might as well consider Basis too.

Cite for over 50% head for TJ, please. Some years they don’t have enough kids attend for the number to be reported. Is their entire 8th grade class a15 kids?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nysmith's curriculum is by far superior to AAP.

Says...who? Again, I’m sure it’s better in some things and not in others and vice versa. As for the awards, look at this hyped up example: http://www.nysmith.com/nysmith-team-wins-highest-honors-in-wordmasters-challenge/

Fcps does wordmasters as well and scores very high, but doesn’t put blow by blows in the connection newspaper

You are just JEALOUS. 2 kids from Nysmith getting the perfect score out of 22 kids in the whole of US is awesome !! What is hyped up in this and which FCPS school has such results.

Uh, not jealous. Look at the results released yesterday. Nysmith ranked in ONE grade. Louise Archer did it in every grade. That’s one Fcps. So does that mean nysmith has tiny pockets of really bright kids and Fcps is more balanced? This past result is a perfect example bc Louise Archer is a single school as is nysmith.

FCPS AAP is highly overrated. Our HHI was negative and we are very poor. If we could afford, we will choose Nysmith over FCPS or even APS for which we have no experience and yet we know that a student to teacher ratio makes a massive difference.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nysmith's curriculum is by far superior to AAP.

Says...who? Again, I’m sure it’s better in some things and not in others and vice versa. As for the awards, look at this hyped up example: http://www.nysmith.com/nysmith-team-wins-highest-honors-in-wordmasters-challenge/

Fcps does wordmasters as well and scores very high, but doesn’t put blow by blows in the connection newspaper

You are just JEALOUS. 2 kids from Nysmith getting the perfect score out of 22 kids in the whole of US is awesome !! What is hyped up in this and which FCPS school has such results.

Any school could have that result if they were allowed to 100% choose their students and remove the students that were not performing at that level. FCPS has a good number of kids who have a good deal of success in those competitions but FCPS does not have the option to teach or not teach a child. And FCPS does not have the student to teacher ratio that any private school has.

So great work by the kids but lets not pretend that Nysmith, and every private school out there, benefts greatly from being able to pick and choose their students.

Yes but the STUDENTS benefit from that also. Waiting waiting waiting for the slow learners to catch up. There is a big difference between WISC 125 and WISC 150. There just is.

Just curious about WISC as I am new to this forum. Do all AAP kids get tested with WISC and have the score submitted? If not, then how do you compare AAP kids and private school kids based on WISC?

People who are worried about their kids not getting into AAP will sometimes have their kids take the WISC so that it is ready for an appeal. A WISC in the 130’s will sometimes help a child who wass not acccepted on the first round be admited on an appeal. So a good WISC for a student not accepted into AAP might be used to get into Nysmith or some other private school.

So there are parents who prefer AAP to Nysmith, posssibly because of the cost and possibly the programs rigors. If they don’t get into AAP they will choose a private school for their kids, to include Nysmith.

Nysmith is a fantastic program but it’s so hard to compare it to the AAP. So manny of the families are targeting private school for high school which is a different demographic than AAP which has a much small percent. Over 50% of the 8th grade heads for TJ from Nysmith as well. You might as well consider Basis too.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nysmith's curriculum is by far superior to AAP.

Says...who? Again, I’m sure it’s better in some things and not in others and vice versa. As for the awards, look at this hyped up example: http://www.nysmith.com/nysmith-team-wins-highest-honors-in-wordmasters-challenge/

Fcps does wordmasters as well and scores very high, but doesn’t put blow by blows in the connection newspaper

You are just JEALOUS. 2 kids from Nysmith getting the perfect score out of 22 kids in the whole of US is awesome !! What is hyped up in this and which FCPS school has such results.

Any school could have that result if they were allowed to 100% choose their students and remove the students that were not performing at that level. FCPS has a good number of kids who have a good deal of success in those competitions but FCPS does not have the option to teach or not teach a child. And FCPS does not have the student to teacher ratio that any private school has.

So great work by the kids but lets not pretend that Nysmith, and every private school out there, benefts greatly from being able to pick and choose their students.

Yes but the STUDENTS benefit from that also. Waiting waiting waiting for the slow learners to catch up. There is a big difference between WISC 125 and WISC 150. There just is.

Just curious about WISC as I am new to this forum. Do all AAP kids get tested with WISC and have the score submitted? If not, then how do you compare AAP kids and private school kids based on WISC?

Anonymous wrote:Nysmith is where the AAP rejects go

This. My kids had never come up against them in academic competition until middle school debate. And they were in the bottom 2-3 schools in every competition. We’ve since seen them places like FLL and they are really mediocre. The FCPS ES and Ms AAP Centers wipe the floor with them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nysmith's curriculum is by far superior to AAP.

Says...who? Again, I’m sure it’s better in some things and not in others and vice versa. As for the awards, look at this hyped up example: http://www.nysmith.com/nysmith-team-wins-highest-honors-in-wordmasters-challenge/

Fcps does wordmasters as well and scores very high, but doesn’t put blow by blows in the connection newspaper

You are just JEALOUS. 2 kids from Nysmith getting the perfect score out of 22 kids in the whole of US is awesome !! What is hyped up in this and which FCPS school has such results.

Any school could have that result if they were allowed to 100% choose their students and remove the students that were not performing at that level. FCPS has a good number of kids who have a good deal of success in those competitions but FCPS does not have the option to teach or not teach a child. And FCPS does not have the student to teacher ratio that any private school has.

So great work by the kids but lets not pretend that Nysmith, and every private school out there, benefts greatly from being able to pick and choose their students.

Yes but the STUDENTS benefit from that also. Waiting waiting waiting for the slow learners to catch up. There is a big difference between WISC 125 and WISC 150. There just is.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nysmith's curriculum is by far superior to AAP.

Says...who? Again, I’m sure it’s better in some things and not in others and vice versa. As for the awards, look at this hyped up example: http://www.nysmith.com/nysmith-team-wins-highest-honors-in-wordmasters-challenge/

Fcps does wordmasters as well and scores very high, but doesn’t put blow by blows in the connection newspaper

You are just JEALOUS. 2 kids from Nysmith getting the perfect score out of 22 kids in the whole of US is awesome !! What is hyped up in this and which FCPS school has such results.

Any school could have that result if they were allowed to 100% choose their students and remove the students that were not performing at that level. FCPS has a good number of kids who have a good deal of success in those competitions but FCPS does not have the option to teach or not teach a child. And FCPS does not have the student to teacher ratio that any private school has.

So great work by the kids but lets not pretend that Nysmith, and every private school out there, benefts greatly from being able to pick and choose their students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nysmith's curriculum is by far superior to AAP.

Says...who? Again, I’m sure it’s better in some things and not in others and vice versa. As for the awards, look at this hyped up example: http://www.nysmith.com/nysmith-team-wins-highest-honors-in-wordmasters-challenge/

Fcps does wordmasters as well and scores very high, but doesn’t put blow by blows in the connection newspaper

You are just JEALOUS. 2 kids from Nysmith getting the perfect score out of 22 kids in the whole of US is awesome !! What is hyped up in this and which FCPS school has such results.

Those class sizes are too small, socially. Elementary school is about more than just math class, even for gifted kids, especially for gifted kids. Class sizes should be at least 15, preferably larger.

I used to teach at Nysmith. There was always a large number of kids who left in third grade because they were admitted to AAP. I would estimate that the guidance counselor filled out referral packets for about 1/2 of the second grade class, especially because I was working there at a time when the economy was shaky. Usually there were vacancies in third grade because of kids leaving for AAP. Those slots were mostly filled either by families new to the area who'd missed the AAP testing timeline or by kids who were not accepted to AAP but had scores very close to the cutoff. It is indeed a lovely school and the curriculum is solid. It's also for-profit and there are very, very few teachers who stay there as long as many public school teachers, because it's a business and there aren't step increases, unless that's been implemented recently. The benefits aren't great, so most of the teachers, and probably 100% of the co-teachers, are secondary earners. This is probably the same case in the public schools around here, though. I only knew a handful of teachers there who had teaching licenses.

Because it's a private school, they can, and do, counsel kids out who can't hack the academics or have behavior issues. However, this becomes a lot trickier when a family has multiple children enrolled; I saw more than a few cases where kids were allowed to stay even though they were really struggling or misbehaving. The threat of close to $100k in tuition money being yanked was not something the administration wanted to mess with.

AAP can be a dumping ground for quirky and difficult kids that are smart but have problems. We didn’t see that much at private school.

FCPS suffers tremendously from over crowding. Maybe your kid will get a good education in AAP but maybe not. At least at Nysmith there is some individual attention.