Anonymous wrote:Are there still levels? New to fcps and my kid was automatically placed in "part time aap"

Also don't see levels on the website anymore unless I looked in the wrong place.

I have a friend who is an ES Teacher and she said that there are no longer levels, full time and part time is what they are called. She is also unhappy with the new reading program and the lack of any real expansions.

They know and are kept separate at DS's elementary school. AAP does not interact with others. Maybe even recess is staggered. I won't say if I think this is a good thing or a bad thing but there is little to no interaction. I believe it will be the same in middle school.

Are there still levels? New to fcps and my kid was automatically placed in "part time aap"

Also don't see levels on the website anymore unless I looked in the wrong place.

Anonymous wrote:My kids went through AAP at a base school. In high school and middle school, most of their friends are still AAP because that is who they spent time with during the school day but they've also kept non-AAP friends from earlier grades. It just takes a little more effort to keep in touch when they are not sitting next to each other in class. I get the impression that the middle schools (or at least ours) try to disperse the elementary school AAP groups by separating them into different cohorts, but that only goes so far since they are going to be concentrated in honors classes. Our elementary school is also trying to dilute the AAP identity by mixing up the 5th and 6th grades via "houses" but again that only goes so far since the kids have to be together to be taught the AAP curriculum. For what it's worth, I think most of the AAP groups are driven by proximity rather than some sense of superiority or ill-intention. I can't speak for every family but we didn't encourage any distancing from non-AAP friends and made the effort to keep up with the families we had relationships with. For sure, there are going to be cliques around academics, just like there are around clubs, sports, ethnicities, and interests, but I don't think any of that needs to be understood as mean-spirited. You find the people you click with, and it's not going to be everyone.

I would tend to agree that it's not mean-spirited generally but...some parents are legit snobs about academics and other things and that carries over to kids' attitudes. My hope is that there are many kids within AAP who don't have parents who think having a high IQ makes them superior.

My kids went through AAP at a base school. In high school and middle school, most of their friends are still AAP because that is who they spent time with during the school day but they've also kept non-AAP friends from earlier grades. It just takes a little more effort to keep in touch when they are not sitting next to each other in class. I get the impression that the middle schools (or at least ours) try to disperse the elementary school AAP groups by separating them into different cohorts, but that only goes so far since they are going to be concentrated in honors classes. Our elementary school is also trying to dilute the AAP identity by mixing up the 5th and 6th grades via "houses" but again that only goes so far since the kids have to be together to be taught the AAP curriculum. For what it's worth, I think most of the AAP groups are driven by proximity rather than some sense of superiority or ill-intention. I can't speak for every family but we didn't encourage any distancing from non-AAP friends and made the effort to keep up with the families we had relationships with. For sure, there are going to be cliques around academics, just like there are around clubs, sports, ethnicities, and interests, but I don't think any of that needs to be understood as mean-spirited. You find the people you click with, and it's not going to be everyone.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They know because all of the AAP kids are in the same class from 3rd - 6th grade. They become friends and they drop their other friends. Their parents tell them they are special, so they think they are better than other kids. My 3rd grader is experiencing this right now, a couple of her friends have dropped her & their moms have dropped me.

We also experienced this in 3rd and 4th grade. It sucked. I do think it starts to get better as the kids get older and make more of the decisions for who they want their friends to be.

Our kids had assigned lunch tables separated by teacher. There are either 1 or 2 LLIV classes depending on the year. For years with 1 class, the kids are together from 3rd through 6th every year all day. They end up making friends with kids they see everyday. In middle school, there are fewer AAP that honors sections and the AA kids end up having a lot of the same classes together. By the time they get to high school, the friendships from second are long gone

Depending on the middle school, you will only be in classes with AAP kids except for PE and electives. My oldest only hangs out with the academic kids but he is an academic kid. My middle kid plays basketball and most of his basketball friends are not in AAP.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They know because all of the AAP kids are in the same class from 3rd - 6th grade. They become friends and they drop their other friends. Their parents tell them they are special, so they think they are better than other kids. My 3rd grader is experiencing this right now, a couple of her friends have dropped her & their moms have dropped me.

We also experienced this in 3rd and 4th grade. It sucked. I do think it starts to get better as the kids get older and make more of the decisions for who they want their friends to be.

Our kids had assigned lunch tables separated by teacher. There are either 1 or 2 LLIV classes depending on the year. For years with 1 class, the kids are together from 3rd through 6th every year all day. They end up making friends with kids they see everyday. In middle school, there are fewer AAP that honors sections and the AA kids end up having a lot of the same classes together. By the time they get to high school, the friendships from second are long gone

Anonymous wrote:They know because all of the AAP kids are in the same class from 3rd - 6th grade. They become friends and they drop their other friends. Their parents tell them they are special, so they think they are better than other kids. My 3rd grader is experiencing this right now, a couple of her friends have dropped her & their moms have dropped me.

We also experienced this in 3rd and 4th grade. It sucked. I do think it starts to get better as the kids get older and make more of the decisions for who they want their friends to be.

Of course they do. Didn't you know who was in the smart class, the average class, and what we unfortunately called the dumb class?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:20 years ago in FCPS and we definitely knew. I remember walking in the hall and the gen ed classes calling us Garbage and Trash (GT). I hope it's not as bad now. We were definitely very separate from the rest of the school.

I wonder how much this varies by school/school climate/culture.

If you have a well liked confident popular kid, your kid will continue to keep friends.

I’m sure there will be many hurt feelings when the kids get split up. Our base is the center. Our old elementary school was not a center school so it mattered less and less hurt feelings. The top 10-20 kids switched schools but most of the kids stayed at the base.

Anonymous wrote:20 years ago in FCPS and we definitely knew. I remember walking in the hall and the gen ed classes calling us Garbage and Trash (GT). I hope it's not as bad now. We were definitely very separate from the rest of the school.

I wonder how much this varies by school/school climate/culture.

Anonymous wrote:Right? Reading through some of the messages on this forum is making me reconsider whether I would even send my daughter if she is selected. She already had a friend this week telling the other kids at lunch she probably wouldn’t be at their school next year because she’d be going to the ‘smart school.’ My daughter asked what she meant because I haven’t even mentioned any of this to her. I had to explain to her that it’s just going to a school for more challenging work in some areas.

Hate to break it to some of you, but if your child is that smart they’ll be fine no matter where they end up, it’s Fairfax County. And short of the Ivy Leagues, personality and people skills often get people farther in the real world than advanced classes at seven years old. The toxicity and life or death mentality displayed on here by some (not all, but some) is truly concerning.

Ok, as someone with relevant expertise I am not sure I'd agree with you that a smart kid will be fine no matter where they end up (and I'm also not leaving that to chance with my DC)--some will and some won't. But I do agree that there's a problem and I'm almost certain it has more to do with how parents talk in the presence of their kids than it has to do with the sheer fact that kids are divided in this way. I mean, let's say there was no AAP, would all this talk about smart vs not go away?

For the record, I never tell my kid AAP is the smart class and my kid actually can distinguish between being smart vs advanced (which honestly even impressed me... maybe they belong in AAP ).

Our base school is a center and our DS is in gen Ed. About half of his good friends are in regular classes and half are level 4 AAP. They all still play on the playground together, play on the same sports teams together and celebrate birthdays together the same as they did before. If anything, his friends in AAP seem to have less “close” friends since many of their classmates are from farther away and it’s harder to meet up outside school hours to hang out.
But yes, all the kids know who the smarter ones are. No one seems to be bothered by it though.

Anonymous wrote:They know and it's evil. It ruins friendships and sibling relationships. Avoid separating your children when neither is an extreme outliner.

I'm curious to hear more. Are you basing this on personal experience? FWIW, I'm a parent of a 2nd grader who parent referred and I'm interested in AAP because I want my child to experience more academic rigor than he has already. But I am also concerned about some of the negative implications of grouping kids like this. I think differentiation is absolutely necessary when kids in the same age group are so disparate in terms of knowledge/ability, and I'm not sure in-class differentiation could ever work. Not sure if there's a better alternative to grouping kids as "AAP" vs "gen ed".

They know and it's evil. It ruins friendships and sibling relationships. Avoid separating your children when neither is an extreme outliner.