Anonymous
Post 10/24/2011 09:22     Subject: will the teacher tell you which ability group my kid is in during the coming conf meeting?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:

Most importantly, I'm not sure why it matters. Assuming your son is doing well and you don't feel that the groups he is in are too advanced for him, I would leave it alone.



What's wrong with parents wanting to know more about their kids?


The issue is that it's not just about your own kid. If you know what group your child is in, you also know which children are on his or her level, and you can usually figure out which of the other groups are which. Now all of a sudden you know how each kid in the class ranks, and that is just not your business.

The teacher should be able to tell you whether your child is working below, at, or above grade level. But I would never ask them to tell me how they rank among their specific class.


Anonymous
Post 10/24/2011 09:06     Subject: will the teacher tell you which ability group my kid is in during the coming conf meeting?
Anonymous wrote:

Most importantly, I'm not sure why it matters. Assuming your son is doing well and you don't feel that the groups he is in are too advanced for him, I would leave it alone.



What's wrong with parents wanting to know more about their kids?
Anonymous
Post 10/23/2011 07:19     Subject: Re:will the teacher tell you which ability group my kid is in during the coming conf meeting?
Anonymous wrote:
I totally agree with the prior poster. Teachers have enough on their plates without having to justify which grouping your little snowflake is falling into at the moment. These groupings are fluid and exist so that the teacher can differentiate without the interference or second-guessing of PITA parents. Just. Back. Off.


In 2nd grade our daughter who really loves reading was placed in the lowest reading group in her class with marginal students one of whom could not read at all. We sent the teacher a polite email describing the books that our daughter read during the summer, etc. and asked the teacher to re-evaluate our daughter’s reading abilities. The teacher agreed to retest and ended up moving our daughter to an accelerated reading group. No histrionics or tiger mom whips and chains, just one polite email and our daughter went from bored and frustrated to happy and enjoying school again.


Same thing happened to us when my DD was in second grade. We even had a higher test score from another school the previous year that our school said was irrelevant. I really had to fight to get them to retest DD, but they finally did and moved her up.
Anonymous
Post 10/23/2011 00:25     Subject: Re:will the teacher tell you which ability group my kid is in during the coming conf meeting?
I totally agree with the prior poster. Teachers have enough on their plates without having to justify which grouping your little snowflake is falling into at the moment. These groupings are fluid and exist so that the teacher can differentiate without the interference or second-guessing of PITA parents. Just. Back. Off.


In 2nd grade our daughter who really loves reading was placed in the lowest reading group in her class with marginal students one of whom could not read at all. We sent the teacher a polite email describing the books that our daughter read during the summer, etc. and asked the teacher to re-evaluate our daughter’s reading abilities. The teacher agreed to retest and ended up moving our daughter to an accelerated reading group. No histrionics or tiger mom whips and chains, just one polite email and our daughter went from bored and frustrated to happy and enjoying school again.
Anonymous
Post 10/23/2011 00:23     Subject: will the teacher tell you which ability group my kid is in during the coming conf meeting?
I don't agree. I think a parent has every right to know what level math grouping their child is in. Why the secrecy? Is it so we can all be politically correct and not offend the lower groups? very silly. our school keeps this a 'secret' and it drives the parents crazy. It just becomes something for all the moms to talk about and figure out. If they just come out and tell parents then -no questions and no gossip and no dcum posts.
Anonymous
Post 10/22/2011 22:04     Subject: Re:will the teacher tell you which ability group my kid is in during the coming conf meeting?
Anonymous wrote:I totally agree with the prior poster. Teachers have enough on their plates without having to justify which grouping your little snowflake is falling into at the moment. These groupings are fluid and exist so that the teacher can differentiate without the interference or second-guessing of PITA parents. Just. Back. Off.



I love this! The "little snowflake" and the punctuated. sentence. trick. all in one short post. This is classic DCUM! Thank you poster (and I agree.)
Anonymous
Post 10/22/2011 21:14     Subject: Re:will the teacher tell you which ability group my kid is in during the coming conf meeting?
These days, it is all based on the standards. If you child just meets them, they will probably be assigned to the on grade level group. If they exceed them, they will be in the above grade level group. Etc. If you are at a high SES school with educated, involved parents, more kids will be in the above grade level group. Or they may even be more than 1 of those groups. You can ask the teacher about your child's score on whatever testing they did to group the students. They might have used DIEBELS, QRI or some other assessment to arrive at their decision. If you really need to know what group they are in, volunteer in the classroom and you will figure it out.
Anonymous
Post 10/22/2011 20:31     Subject: Re:will the teacher tell you which ability group my kid is in during the coming conf meeting?
I totally agree with the prior poster. Teachers have enough on their plates without having to justify which grouping your little snowflake is falling into at the moment. These groupings are fluid and exist so that the teacher can differentiate without the interference or second-guessing of PITA parents. Just. Back. Off.
Anonymous
Post 10/22/2011 19:47     Subject: Re:will the teacher tell you which ability group my kid is in during the coming conf meeting?
Anonymous wrote:what's wrong with the tiger mom? everyone has her/his own parenting skills, and I am not judging. but I do think that I have the right to know where my kid is standing among his peers. and I would think that parent-teacher conf is my chance to get some insight/details. so I would know which area the kid should work harder. I dont have the resources or spirits needed to be a tiger mom.


Actually, that isn't a right and it isn't your business. You only need to know what your child's scores are and how he personally is doing, not how he compares to other kids in the class.
Anonymous
Post 10/21/2011 18:05     Subject: will the teacher tell you which ability group my kid is in during the coming conf meeting?
My aap kid is in regular non aap word study group. Somewhere along the way, he did not learn to spell, especially while writing. But happy he is learning now.
Anonymous
Post 10/21/2011 13:33     Subject: will the teacher tell you which ability group my kid is in during the coming conf meeting?
If you are talking about Word Study - that's what we called spelling in the olden days. From what I understand and our own kids confirm it, spelling generally has little correlation with high scores on the verbal section of tests.
Anonymous
Post 10/21/2011 13:33     Subject: Re:will the teacher tell you which ability group my kid is in during the coming conf meeting?
Anonymous wrote:herer is OP -- I know where his math is since he is very good at it. what surprised me is his Word group. he told me that he is currently in the group with several kids who dont even speak that much English. of course we simply joked it away. no big deal! but then I was wondering how it happened -- my son's verbal section in his AAP test was 1 wrong, and he has amazing vocabulary and reading skills. this is why I plan to ask the teacher during the conf. -- maybe he knows something that I dont know.

I agree with you that you pretty much could figure out where your kid is at by his peer groups. I also realize that AAP is more challenging than his regular school. and this is why we chose to be there. but if my boy's word is at the bottom of the pack, he must have an excellent body of classmates/peers and we should feel lucky.


b.s.