I am Asian and do not like either Sunshine or Curie. These have become marketing machines and a huge waste of effort. All they are doing is pre-teaching what they would be learning in their schools anyway. Yes, they add a little, tiny, tiny bit of additional harder questions in their tests to be able to say we are more rigorous or teach at a much more advanced level than FCPS, etc. But that is complete nonsense.

What they do is alleviate guilt that parents is not doing everything they can to give a child a leg up. You are enrolling to get rid of this feeling. That is what these guys are preying on.

https://casetext.com/case/riverside-publg-co-v-mercer-publg-llc-1

The "identical" test came from another publisher. There is a lawsuit filed between Cogat and the other publisher. If anyone was accused of stealing, it was not sunshine.

"The sole example she provides is that an unnamed person or persons at Virginia's Fairfax County Public School District "complained that Mercer's practice exams were strikingly similar to Riverside's exams," and that it "belie[ved] that Mercer's practice exams defeated the integrity of Riverside's CogAT exams." Id. Riverside provided no evidence from anyone at the Fairfax school district or any other school district. Ms. Barrett states that "several" customers had similar complaints, but there is no evidence of how many, and there is no evidence of how many customers had no complaints. "

Anonymous wrote:Isn't this one of those Asian test cheat camps?

“Creative Problem Solving in School Mathematics” by Lenchner is what my rising 7th grader was taught in this summer’s camp. I’m sorry idiot PP and your children who miss out, but kids in Sunshine do learn.

I went to the camp a few years ago and honestly, I learned nothing from it. The teachers sort of expect you to know everything. I had this writing teacher who wasn't helpful at all, she just watched her phone all day and would yell at everyone and make people feel bad about their writing. She wouldn't even try to help people improve. But maybe she doesn't teach at sunshine anymore now. Im pretty sure that the camp is around 7 hours long, which is pretty long in my opinion.

Also:

"Anonymous wrote:
Asian - Yes; They do have a sign out front that says "Dumbasses and bigots not welcome"

well that isn't true at all. I've been going to sunshine summer camps since 2nd grade and every year I take sunshine math classes on Saturday and Sunday mornings and I have never ever seen anything that says "Dumbasses and bigots not welcome". All my time at sunshine i've never ever seen or heard the words "Dumbasses" or "bigots". I'm almost CERTAIN that the founders/leaders of Sunshine Academy dont even know that words like that even EXIST.

No wonder AAP is such a joke. Very glad to be almost done with FCPS in general.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We attended last summer, mostly east and south asian with a few white kids.

Classes were great. Kids memorized about 40 vocab words a night for 2nd grade, did logic puzzles and above grade level math. Teachers were current FCPS teachers, I think most worked in AAP classrooms.

Kids also did chess matches every other day or so. My son loved it.

Seriously? There are FCPS teachers working there and were party to the test stealing scandal?

Not sure if there "are". Looks like there "were" according to the PP. Not verified though. Would like to see a news article or something along those lines to validate.

Anonymous wrote:We attended last summer, mostly east and south asian with a few white kids.

Classes were great. Kids memorized about 40 vocab words a night for 2nd grade, did logic puzzles and above grade level math. Teachers were current FCPS teachers, I think most worked in AAP classrooms.

Kids also did chess matches every other day or so. My son loved it.

Seriously? There are FCPS teachers working there and were party to the test stealing scandal?

Yep, the teacher stealing the test cost fairfax a fortune because they had to develop their own secret version of the test.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is the school that caused FCPS to have to make up its own cogat test-an FCPS teacher who either worked or knew the owners stole copies of the test to "teach to the test". That was the year where a ton of kids scored really high.

Did they fire the teacher, throw her in jail and suspend her pension?

What year was this? I wonder why it only happened once since the school is still in business and many kids go to the AAP prep all the time.

It was 2011. In 2012, the Fxat was used instead of the Cogat.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is the school that caused FCPS to have to make up its own cogat test-an FCPS teacher who either worked or knew the owners stole copies of the test to "teach to the test". That was the year where a ton of kids scored really high.

Did they fire the teacher, throw her in jail and suspend her pension?

What year was this? I wonder why it only happened once since the school is still in business and many kids go to the AAP prep all the time.

We attended last summer, mostly east and south asian with a few white kids.

Classes were great. Kids memorized about 40 vocab words a night for 2nd grade, did logic puzzles and above grade level math. Teachers were current FCPS teachers, I think most worked in AAP classrooms.

Kids also did chess matches every other day or so. My son loved it.

Anonymous wrote:Isn't this one of those Asian test cheat camps?

Ha ha ha! It is "test cheat camp" if run by Asians. "Elite preparedness camps" if run by a white person like Kate Dalby. Moron!

OP - We are not Chinese so take this from that perspective.. The management and staff are chinese. Most of the kids are as well but the teachers for the most part are not, especially for the TJ prep and higher level classes. We have had our kids attend them for at least two years - One for TJ prep and the other for summer school. Both had a great time. I guess it's probably no different from any other camp out there except that here you get to learn math and english while you get to play at some of the others. Your choice..

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Isn't this one of those Asian test cheat camps?

Asian - Yes; They do have a sign out front that says "Dumbasses and bigots not welcome"

Ha! I believe that's in their signature line as well.

We had our kids in there for one summer. In the end we were around for the last two weeks but it was still useful. If you've ever put your kids in a summer soccer camp, or anything really where they just get more of something, then this is it for math. I think it's a great service. It isn't high pressure, your kid will get out of it what he/she puts into it effort wise. Lots of experienced teachers in there. Seems like on this thread preparing for anything, and this is exactly that, is frowned upon for some reason.

www.inquisiminds.com is another option for academic enrichment camps this summer in the Burke/Springfield area.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It got my kid into AAP so I'd give it a thumbs up! She breezed through the CoGAT test because she had worked on an identical one at Sunshine Academy. She is thriving in 7th grade AAP center now. Go for it!

Low IQ ANTI-Asian troll. With the idiocy exhibited by you, I doubt your child could get into AAP even if she had previously worked on an identical test. Too bad she inherited the dumb gene (hopefully she isn't an asshole like you).

Haha!

1. Joking
2. Asian
3. All three of my kids are in AAP