This isn’t the case with my child, but I am aware of 1 child who goes a grade ahead for AAP math at our rarely-discussed-on-this-board center school.

One thing to keep in mind is that the math blocks aren’t at the same time for the different grades, so it’s not as easy as moving to a different classroom for math. The kid misses some other stuff, so it’s not ideal.

I think overall the parent still feels it’s worth it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Beast Academy at home

This never made sense to me.

“My kid is ahead of everyone in math, he’s super bored”

“Do this thing that will make him ever farther ahead of everyone and even more bored!”

Sometimes kids in school are bored. Mine were, and part of what we did was teach them that it’s okay to be bored, how to deal with boredom without being distracting.

Instead of teaching your kid new math concepts at home, why don’t you do different uses of the concepts? Teach him games that utilize math skills. Have him use his skills to measure and build something cool. Teach him to cook since it’s a heavy use of fractions.

Except that's not what Beast Academy is.

I agree 100% if you were talking about Khan, or IXL, or other things that mimic grade level curriculum. Often times, kids use these to "get ahead" of the curriculum, and it results in kids who move faster but not deeper, and just increases boredom.

But Beast Academy takes grade level content and goes deeper, not faster. It's not really appropriate for kids who are below or on grade level. For most kids who are somewhat above grade level, the best thing is to actually do Beast a grade level below, so that in 3rd grade math they're learning multiplication and division, and in 2nd grade beast they're taking what they learned last year, so place value and advanced addition and subtraction, and applies it to novel problems. For kids who are well above grade level, it makes sense to do grade level math and grade level Beast at the same time.

There are other things that expand on grade level curriculum instead of going faster -- strategy games, Singapore's challenging word problem curriculum, competition programs like Math Kangaroo. All of those things are better than just going straight ahead IMO.

*couldnt*

Mine did the skip from 4th grade AAP math to 6th grade AAP math in 5th and the Algebra 1 in 6th at the MS. He was the only one his year to do it but there had been others before him.

I just wanted him to get math instruction at school that matched his ability. The tricky part was getting him from middle school to elementary school in the morning (we had my MIL living with us who was willing to drive hm over).

Then in the 12th grade he ran out of math to take at the high school and we could get online or in college Differential Equations to work this year so he took AP stats and AP physics C this year with no math class.

Annoying but I’ve heard that the are going to be starting that class at McLean next year I think.

You need to think about the whole path ahead for your kid and all the logistics before deciding to do this.

All in all I think it was worth it. He’s going to continue his studies in math and physics next year at college.

These are the schools that had kids participate in 6th grade Algebra in at least 2 of the last 3 years (from VDOE SOL chart):
-Churchill Road
-Colvin Run
-Forestville
-Haycock
-Kent Gardens
-Lemon Rd.
-Mosaic
-Navy
-Stenwood
-Westbriar

There are several more schools that appear on the table, but the SOL taking kid might be a one-off or a transfer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone successfully been able to have their child moved up a level in math and if so, what did you do? Student is in fourth grade AAP

Probably a bad idea, but acceleration is available at the wealthier schools

acceleration is available at all schools including the worst performing fcps schools, except there is not much interest in math as much as sports. Bottom performing schools are also wealthy when it comes to sports interests.

Strange, our child checked all of the boxes for acceleration to be able to take Algebra in 6th grade and no one from the school talked to us about it. We choose not to pursue it, we did not think he needed to be three years ahead in math, but no one at the school mentioned it was even a possibility. We were at a school with about 10% FARMs rate.

FCPS does not actively promote advanced math as an option at most schools. I am sure there are a few schools where it happens frequently enough that the parents there think it is commonly available but even those schools are under 10 students, I would guess that there might be an occasional school with 5 kids in Algebra 1 in 6th grade.

There were 40 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL in 2021
There were 22 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL in 2022
There were 31 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL in 2023
There were 25 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL last year.

This is not a regular path.

And every 6th grader I've ever had in my algebra 1 class has had some blip in their elementary sequence--a private school stint where the school let the family pick where to put the kid, homeschool where the kid did 5 years of math in 3 years, out of country transfer from where the sequence is different.

While I am sure there are a handful of FCPS-grown 6th graders in algebra 1, I'd wager many (most?) of them come from outside the system to get that far ahead. FCPS is not proactively accelerating kids to algebra 1 in elementary.

--MS algebra teacher

Sorry, but you're definitely wrong. Several AAP centers actively follow the FCPS program to skip ahead kids who had a 145+ Quant score on their CogAT and a 575 4th grade SOL score. My kid's AAP center (Mosaic) absolutely followed the program and had around 6 kids per year jump from 4th grade AAP math in 4th to 6th grade AAP math in 5th grade.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone successfully been able to have their child moved up a level in math and if so, what did you do? Student is in fourth grade AAP

Probably a bad idea, but acceleration is available at the wealthier schools

acceleration is available at all schools including the worst performing fcps schools, except there is not much interest in math as much as sports. Bottom performing schools are also wealthy when it comes to sports interests.

Strange, our child checked all of the boxes for acceleration to be able to take Algebra in 6th grade and no one from the school talked to us about it. We choose not to pursue it, we did not think he needed to be three years ahead in math, but no one at the school mentioned it was even a possibility. We were at a school with about 10% FARMs rate.

FCPS does not actively promote advanced math as an option at most schools. I am sure there are a few schools where it happens frequently enough that the parents there think it is commonly available but even those schools are under 10 students, I would guess that there might be an occasional school with 5 kids in Algebra 1 in 6th grade.

There were 40 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL in 2021
There were 22 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL in 2022
There were 31 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL in 2023
There were 25 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL last year.

This is not a regular path.

The biggest factor is whether the principal will allow acceleration. If you look at the VDOE results for the last 5 years, you can get a pretty good idea of which schools allow 6th graders to take Algebra and which ones don't. If a school has a large AAP population and is higher SES, but had no Algebra I 6th graders in the last 5 years, then the principal most likely doesn't allow anyone to skip ahead.

Squeezing in Geometry as an elective or summer class (plus private enrichment school) is much more common than Alg 1 in 6th, in FCPS. There are more 8th Alg 2 SOLs an 6th grade Alg 1 SOLs.


Maryland has more 6th graders in Alg 1 because 6th grade is middle school in MD.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone successfully been able to have their child moved up a level in math and if so, what did you do? Student is in fourth grade AAP

Probably a bad idea, but acceleration is available at the wealthier schools

acceleration is available at all schools including the worst performing fcps schools, except there is not much interest in math as much as sports. Bottom performing schools are also wealthy when it comes to sports interests.

Strange, our child checked all of the boxes for acceleration to be able to take Algebra in 6th grade and no one from the school talked to us about it. We choose not to pursue it, we did not think he needed to be three years ahead in math, but no one at the school mentioned it was even a possibility. We were at a school with about 10% FARMs rate.

FCPS does not actively promote advanced math as an option at most schools. I am sure there are a few schools where it happens frequently enough that the parents there think it is commonly available but even those schools are under 10 students, I would guess that there might be an occasional school with 5 kids in Algebra 1 in 6th grade.

There were 40 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL in 2021
There were 22 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL in 2022
There were 31 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL in 2023
There were 25 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL last year.

This is not a regular path.

And every 6th grader I've ever had in my algebra 1 class has had some blip in their elementary sequence--a private school stint where the school let the family pick where to put the kid, homeschool where the kid did 5 years of math in 3 years, out of country transfer from where the sequence is different.

While I am sure there are a handful of FCPS-grown 6th graders in algebra 1, I'd wager many (most?) of them come from outside the system to get that far ahead. FCPS is not proactively accelerating kids to algebra 1 in elementary.

--MS algebra teacher

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone successfully been able to have their child moved up a level in math and if so, what did you do? Student is in fourth grade AAP

Probably a bad idea, but acceleration is available at the wealthier schools

acceleration is available at all schools including the worst performing fcps schools, except there is not much interest in math as much as sports. Bottom performing schools are also wealthy when it comes to sports interests.

Strange, our child checked all of the boxes for acceleration to be able to take Algebra in 6th grade and no one from the school talked to us about it. We choose not to pursue it, we did not think he needed to be three years ahead in math, but no one at the school mentioned it was even a possibility. We were at a school with about 10% FARMs rate.

FCPS does not actively promote advanced math as an option at most schools. I am sure there are a few schools where it happens frequently enough that the parents there think it is commonly available but even those schools are under 10 students, I would guess that there might be an occasional school with 5 kids in Algebra 1 in 6th grade.

There were 40 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL in 2021
There were 22 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL in 2022
There were 31 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL in 2023
There were 25 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL last year.

This is not a regular path.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just tell child to get used to it and put more effort into other subjects that are less easy at this stage.

Explain to your child that he/she/they simply need to “go deeper” into the math material presented by the school.

And put the Beast Academy book in their backpack.

If OP is determined to have their kid in Algebra II in 8th, then it would be much better to push for a skip into the 6th grade Algebra track now than it would be to take summer geometry between 7th and 8th.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone successfully been able to have their child moved up a level in math and if so, what did you do? Student is in fourth grade AAP

Probably a bad idea, but acceleration is available at the wealthier schools

acceleration is available at all schools including the worst performing fcps schools, except there is not much interest in math as much as sports. Bottom performing schools are also wealthy when it comes to sports interests.

LOL sure it is NOT!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here. Thanks for the advice. We already do this at home. And DC is doing supplemental math outside of school but I’d rather not do that next year if there’s an option to place them at their level in school. But I’m trying to find out from others here who may have been successful if that’s even an option

We let public school teach to the lowest denominator, and use outside enrichment to provide the right challenge. And we are on track to finish Algebra 2 end of 8th grade, along with a few hundred other fcps students at top performing schools.

FCPS provides the acceleration path for advanced learners.

Most of those kids taking Algebra 2 in 8th grade took Geometry over the summer, they were not tracked into Algebra 1 in 6th grade. If you look at the Algebra 1 SOLs there are about 30-40 6th graders who took the Algebra 1 SOL. If you consider taking an entire math class as a legit path for acceleration, then sure. And most of the kids who took Geometry in the summer did some form of Curie, AoPS, or RSM so that Geometry in 6 weeks wasn't hard, just a lot of work during the summer. We see kids dropping summer Geometry every year because they are surprised at how much work it is and how hard it is or they end up expunging the grade and taking geometry in 8th grade.

Anonymous wrote:Op here. Thanks for the advice. We already do this at home. And DC is doing supplemental math outside of school but I’d rather not do that next year if there’s an option to place them at their level in school. But I’m trying to find out from others here who may have been successful if that’s even an option

We let public school teach to the lowest denominator, and use outside enrichment to provide the right challenge. And we are on track to finish Algebra 2 end of 8th grade, along with a few hundred other fcps students at top performing schools.

FCPS provides the acceleration path for advanced learners.