Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It’s not a coincidence that each of Langley and McLean has more National Merit Semifinalists this year than all four of the high schools in APS combined. If you want a more challenging pyramid (and many in APS don’t), that is where you should go.
Yeah, this definitely has nothing to do with the average household income of McLean vs Arlington/SES/demographics.🙄 I’m not saying that accounts for all of the difference, but it’s not insignificant.
Yorktown is very high SES but it has only a handful of NMSF semifinalists. If your hypothesis is right it should be like Mclean
Not a direct comparison because of APS's option program. The top kids transfer to WL for IB
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:You have to supplement. Order books.
Unless you can afford to move
Yes I can afford to move. That is why I asked the question.
Why would supplementing with books do any good if the child is stuck in school all day learning nothing? They can’t use those supplements during the school day.
Anonymous wrote:We took our daughter out of Taylor after third grade. She's now at a Big 3 private and doing so much better.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It’s not a coincidence that each of Langley and McLean has more National Merit Semifinalists this year than all four of the high schools in APS combined. If you want a more challenging pyramid (and many in APS don’t), that is where you should go.
Yeah, this definitely has nothing to do with the average household income of McLean vs Arlington/SES/demographics.🙄 I’m not saying that accounts for all of the difference, but it’s not insignificant.
Yorktown is very high SES but it has only a handful of NMSF semifinalists. If your hypothesis is right it should be like Mclean
Not a direct comparison because of APS's option program. The top kids transfer to WL for IB
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It’s not a coincidence that each of Langley and McLean has more National Merit Semifinalists this year than all four of the high schools in APS combined. If you want a more challenging pyramid (and many in APS don’t), that is where you should go.
Yeah, this definitely has nothing to do with the average household income of McLean vs Arlington/SES/demographics.🙄 I’m not saying that accounts for all of the difference, but it’s not insignificant.
Yorktown is very high SES but it has only a handful of NMSF semifinalists. If your hypothesis is right it should be like Mclean
Anonymous wrote:OP here. Not going to put my kid but it’s a North Arlington school that is well regarded. If this is outside the norm then I’ll raise hell to get my kid out. Can you please let me know which school you had a good experience with that actually challenged your child?
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:It’s not a coincidence that each of Langley and McLean has more National Merit Semifinalists this year than all four of the high schools in APS combined. If you want a more challenging pyramid (and many in APS don’t), that is where you should go.
Yeah, this definitely has nothing to do with the average household income of McLean vs Arlington/SES/demographics.🙄 I’m not saying that accounts for all of the difference, but it’s not insignificant.
Anonymous wrote:It’s not a coincidence that each of Langley and McLean has more National Merit Semifinalists this year than all four of the high schools in APS combined. If you want a more challenging pyramid (and many in APS don’t), that is where you should go.
Anonymous wrote:Oh yeah, they also had the audacity to make my kids do all the work that the regular class was doing if they wanted access to the barely more difficult work that was provided by the gt specialist. The gifted work, I think, was thought of by teachers as supplemental or a reward, or something.
. Thank you. Can you give me some examples of the competition programs you’re thinking of? Or the outside providers? I will enroll in those while I start the process of getting my kid in another district/renting a place until we can buy.Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:My 3rd grade gifted kid is just being failed by this school system. No differentiation, no peers in their class that I can see, ridiculous low level instruction. Think 2-letter spelling tests. There are tears every night about how terrible school is and how they aren’t learning anything.
Please, any advice? What’s a viable option? Move to Fairfax? I hear AAP is no great thing. Are there any privates that are more challenging? Thanks for any advice or lessons learned.
Either a kid in a gifted cluster at APS is not gifted (maybe smart or mom coached) and they're literally ruining the school experience for the actually few percentage of gifted kids, or a kid is actually gifted and will get zero benefit from gifted clusters at APS. APS is terrible for gifted learners and you can see by how their policy has changed from pull out to push in, and these days, open to anyone. The superintendents (past and present) who have promoted these policies are terrible and, from our experience, they place random people to supervise the gifted programs, and they (teachers, admin, and counselors) will lie to you in the face by claiming that there are many kids that are as smart or smarter than your kid even though your kid will say that they don't do anything hard but the other kids seem to be struggling with the provided work. Like I said, I'm not sure how many actually gifted kids attend school in APS since personally I know at least a few that escaped from the district in elementary or through the TJ admission process. But if your kid is actually gifted, there actually may not be too many other kids at that level in your school/class so they won't ever teach to that level. Since they don't seem to have a dedicated specialist to teach these kids directly, I'm not even sure most elementary gen ed teachers can teach them appropriately. With that said, We know a dozen or more kids who are very smart that did AAP during primary and middle school, and then most went to TJ. We also know one or two that are really smart at local privates. Other than that, find EC that gifted kids cluster to including some sports (probably all individual), STEM teams that are competition focused, or some of the local educational companies that provide above grade level classes that are lacking at most schools. The demand is there but too bad APS is to focused on virtue signaling and not providing appropriate education.
Anonymous wrote:My 3rd grade gifted kid is just being failed by this school system. No differentiation, no peers in their class that I can see, ridiculous low level instruction. Think 2-letter spelling tests. There are tears every night about how terrible school is and how they aren’t learning anything.
Please, any advice? What’s a viable option? Move to Fairfax? I hear AAP is no great thing. Are there any privates that are more challenging? Thanks for any advice or lessons learned.