pettifogger wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a 5th grader and a 7th grader, both in Algebra I Honors in FCPS. The 7th grader is a normal, smart kid who is similar to all of the other smart kids in FCPS. The 5th grader is way beyond that and is bored in the Algebra class. Kids who are more than one year by FCPS are pretty rare, since FCPS doesn't like skipping kids.

That’s not saying much.

Yes. If FCPS is accepting the top 25 percent of a general population. Less than 10 percent of those kids accepted are even actually gifted (top 2 percent) statistically speaking. So maybe 9 kids out of every 100 aap kids. Sometimes will do stand out.

That's the point, though. People have been arguing about whether kids need to sit in a classroom every day to learn Algebra I Honors, and whether a class like AoPS could cover all of the same material. The normal, smart kids, who are the vast majority of AAP kids, probably need to be in that classroom every day taking FCPS Algebra. AoPS would move too quickly, not give enough repetition, and make too many intuitive leaps for the regular bright kids. It still might be valuable supplementation, but couldn't stand alone for these kids.

The small fraction of kids who are at the top of AAP would be fine with just the AoPS class. FCPS will still make those kids sit in a classroom for FCPS Algebra, but it won't benefit the kid in any way. It's just another bureaucratic hoop that the kids will need to jump through. I bet the AoPS teacher posting here can tell the difference between the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders in Algebra who are highly gifted and will always be far ahead of the FCPS curriculum vs. the ones who just have pushy parents and are only ahead from all of the hothousing.

sorry to bring this thread back from the dead. I am a parent looking into AoPS for my kids because I think the other program we are using (Mathnasium) is burning them out with drilling and not enough instruction. My kids are in advanced math in FCPS but by no means are math geniuses. Would AoPS work for them? It appeals to me because it teaches problem solving/critical thinking.

Yes, this is exactly right. In general I've seen that the really young kids in our classrooms tend to outperform and/or be near the top in our classes. (Not always, but most of the time). And these are exactly the kids who wouldn't be allowed to take the equivalent class in school at the same time because of age. By the time they would let them, it would be a ridiculous waste of time for them and likely even hurt their motivation (it would be fine of course if they actually alowed them to work at their own level and pace in class but sometimes they refuse to do that due to logistics, strict rules, no computers/internet allowed, etc.) We've also regularly noticed that more frequently the kids a lot older than the average in our class do NOT do as well as expected (often they even struggle sometimes, which indicates they may possibly be struggling in school, or are just being pushed by parents against their own will). But most kids fall in the middle, i.e they're taking the same class both in school and ours. This is a common scenario and good approach since they are likely to do well (they get the basics in school) then get deeper exposure to problem solving in our class. We also have the kids who "double up" (i.e do one class in school such as algebra, and then take our geometry course at the same time). This can work, but in my experience I've found that they stretch themselves too thin and cannot handle performing well enough in our class because the two subjects do not complement each other much (and in this specific case, our geometry class is MUCH more challenging than our algebra class).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:AAP has many problems and is not perfect, but I am glad that FCPS is providing this program for those "gifted" or "advanced" students. My DC has >140 CogAT/WISC-V and was in general edu class for 3rd grade. It was miserable for him - especially the math. Now he is in 4th grade AAP and it is so much better, he is actually learning something! The pace is still slow but I could not imagine the situation if there is no AAP at all.

In terms of enrichment, if the kids want/need/enjoy it and the family can afford it, I would say why not give it a try? just think of it similar as baseball/soccer or any other extra curriculum sports practice.

Op here. This is a great perspective. I always want my kids to at least try something out to see if they like it or not. Guess it won’t hurt to check it out and try.

DS said the most advanced kid in his class is from South Korea. The kid said American math is so easy to what he learned in Korea.

I have no idea what the other advanced kids are learning in their more advanced groups. I am pretty sure that all the kids in 3rd and 5th grade AAP take the identical test at the end of a unit.

I do know a handful of kids in 5th grade go to the 6th grade AAP math class. I don’t know how many, just that some do so they must be 2-3 grades above grade level instead of 1 above the grade level.

Anonymous wrote:AAP has many problems and is not perfect, but I am glad that FCPS is providing this program for those "gifted" or "advanced" students. My DC has >140 CogAT/WISC-V and was in general edu class for 3rd grade. It was miserable for him - especially the math. Now he is in 4th grade AAP and it is so much better, he is actually learning something! The pace is still slow but I could not imagine the situation if there is no AAP at all.

In terms of enrichment, if the kids want/need/enjoy it and the family can afford it, I would say why not give it a try? just think of it similar as baseball/soccer or any other extra curriculum sports practice.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are about 4 million kids in your child’s grade. Even if he is in the top 99.9 in math there are thousands in his grade like him. it’s not like it’s special. It’s good to be but not worthy of needing special radical acceleration. He should be just fine in the regular public school sequence with normal acceleration. but here is where having a fun enrichment class comes into play.

Only in NoVa are people like, "99.9th percentile. Meh."

Well, it’s better than thinking “99.9th percentile. That’s 2 standard deviations above everybody. The 90th percentile math track will waste my child’s life!”

Cmon. A 1 in a thousand kid is great. Tell the grandparents. But it’s not going to get your kid special considerations. We live in a country where most districts don’t even have a gifted program for the 99th percentile kids. Thousands of kids are 99.9 kids in regular classrooms.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are about 4 million kids in your child’s grade. Even if he is in the top 99.9 in math there are thousands in his grade like him. it’s not like it’s special. It’s good to be but not worthy of needing special radical acceleration. He should be just fine in the regular public school sequence with normal acceleration. but here is where having a fun enrichment class comes into play.

Only in NoVa are people like, "99.9th percentile. Meh."

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a 5th grader and a 7th grader, both in Algebra I Honors in FCPS. The 7th grader is a normal, smart kid who is similar to all of the other smart kids in FCPS. The 5th grader is way beyond that and is bored in the Algebra class. Kids who are more than one year by FCPS are pretty rare, since FCPS doesn't like skipping kids.

That’s not saying much.

Yes. If FCPS is accepting the top 25 percent of a general population. Less than 10 percent of those kids accepted are even actually gifted (top 2 percent) statistically speaking. So maybe 9 kids out of every 100 aap kids. Sometimes will do stand out.

That's the point, though. People have been arguing about whether kids need to sit in a classroom every day to learn Algebra I Honors, and whether a class like AoPS could cover all of the same material. The normal, smart kids, who are the vast majority of AAP kids, probably need to be in that classroom every day taking FCPS Algebra. AoPS would move too quickly, not give enough repetition, and make too many intuitive leaps for the regular bright kids. It still might be valuable supplementation, but couldn't stand alone for these kids.

The small fraction of kids who are at the top of AAP would be fine with just the AoPS class. FCPS will still make those kids sit in a classroom for FCPS Algebra, but it won't benefit the kid in any way. It's just another bureaucratic hoop that the kids will need to jump through. I bet the AoPS teacher posting here can tell the difference between the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders in Algebra who are highly gifted and will always be far ahead of the FCPS curriculum vs. the ones who just have pushy parents and are only ahead from all of the hothousing.

Op here. My kids both scored 99th percentile on the Cogat and have always been good at math. I’m not sure if my children are highly gifted but I do think they belong in AAP. The third grader that my OP is based on recently got all questions correct on his math test. This is the unit where he was upset that he had a low score on his pretest. So his teacher seems to be teaching him and he is getting it. Ds does not struggle in math. As I mentioned in the OP, he gets 4s in math.

I keep changing my mind on whether we should send DS to math enrichment. Perhaps I will send him over the summer.

My 5th grader is not interested in going to mathnasium. He seems content. He gets good grades. He is busy with science Olympiad and sports right now.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a 5th grader and a 7th grader, both in Algebra I Honors in FCPS. The 7th grader is a normal, smart kid who is similar to all of the other smart kids in FCPS. The 5th grader is way beyond that and is bored in the Algebra class. Kids who are more than one year by FCPS are pretty rare, since FCPS doesn't like skipping kids.

That’s not saying much.

Yes. If FCPS is accepting the top 25 percent of a general population. Less than 10 percent of those kids accepted are even actually gifted (top 2 percent) statistically speaking. So maybe 9 kids out of every 100 aap kids. Sometimes will do stand out.

That's the point, though. People have been arguing about whether kids need to sit in a classroom every day to learn Algebra I Honors, and whether a class like AoPS could cover all of the same material. The normal, smart kids, who are the vast majority of AAP kids, probably need to be in that classroom every day taking FCPS Algebra. AoPS would move too quickly, not give enough repetition, and make too many intuitive leaps for the regular bright kids. It still might be valuable supplementation, but couldn't stand alone for these kids.

The small fraction of kids who are at the top of AAP would be fine with just the AoPS class. FCPS will still make those kids sit in a classroom for FCPS Algebra, but it won't benefit the kid in any way. It's just another bureaucratic hoop that the kids will need to jump through. I bet the AoPS teacher posting here can tell the difference between the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders in Algebra who are highly gifted and will always be far ahead of the FCPS curriculum vs. the ones who just have pushy parents and are only ahead from all of the hothousing.

Anonymous wrote:There are about 4 million kids in your child’s grade. Even if he is in the top 99.9 in math there are thousands in his grade like him. it’s not like it’s special. It’s good to be but not worthy of needing special radical acceleration. He should be just fine in the regular public school sequence with normal acceleration. but here is where having a fun enrichment class comes into play.

Anonymous wrote:
My point was that a kid shining in aap math is no great yardstick. A kid with a marginally gifted IQ would shine in AAP. But having even a 145 IQ (profoundly gifted) doesn’t make a kid a math genius. And taking the aops algebra class in 5th grade isn’t proof of mathematical genius either. We are still talking normal, garden variety gifted kids. There are about 4 million kids in your child’s grade. Even if he is in the top 99.9 in math there are thousands in his grade like him. it’s not like it’s special. It’s good to be but not worthy of needing special radical acceleration. He should be just fine in the regular public school sequence with normal acceleration. but here is where having a fun enrichment class comes into play.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a 5th grader and a 7th grader, both in Algebra I Honors in FCPS. The 7th grader is a normal, smart kid who is similar to all of the other smart kids in FCPS. The 5th grader is way beyond that and is bored in the Algebra class. Kids who are more than one year by FCPS are pretty rare, since FCPS doesn't like skipping kids.

That’s not saying much.

Yes. If FCPS is accepting the top 25 percent of a general population. Less than 10 percent of those kids accepted are even actually gifted (top 2 percent) statistically speaking. So maybe 9 kids out of every 100 aap kids. Sometimes will do stand out.

That's the point, though. People have been arguing about whether kids need to sit in a classroom every day to learn Algebra I Honors, and whether a class like AoPS could cover all of the same material. The normal, smart kids, who are the vast majority of AAP kids, probably need to be in that classroom every day taking FCPS Algebra. AoPS would move too quickly, not give enough repetition, and make too many intuitive leaps for the regular bright kids. It still might be valuable supplementation, but couldn't stand alone for these kids.

The small fraction of kids who are at the top of AAP would be fine with just the AoPS class. FCPS will still make those kids sit in a classroom for FCPS Algebra, but it won't benefit the kid in any way. It's just another bureaucratic hoop that the kids will need to jump through. I bet the AoPS teacher posting here can tell the difference between the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders in Algebra who are highly gifted and will always be far ahead of the FCPS curriculum vs. the ones who just have pushy parents and are only ahead from all of the hothousing.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a 5th grader and a 7th grader, both in Algebra I Honors in FCPS. The 7th grader is a normal, smart kid who is similar to all of the other smart kids in FCPS. The 5th grader is way beyond that and is bored in the Algebra class. Kids who are more than one year by FCPS are pretty rare, since FCPS doesn't like skipping kids.

That’s not saying much.

Yes. If FCPS is accepting the top 25 percent of a general population. Less than 10 percent of those kids accepted are even actually gifted (top 2 percent) statistically speaking. So maybe 9 kids out of every 100 aap kids. Sometimes will do stand out.

That's the point, though. People have been arguing about whether kids need to sit in a classroom every day to learn Algebra I Honors, and whether a class like AoPS could cover all of the same material. The normal, smart kids, who are the vast majority of AAP kids, probably need to be in that classroom every day taking FCPS Algebra. AoPS would move too quickly, not give enough repetition, and make too many intuitive leaps for the regular bright kids. It still might be valuable supplementation, but couldn't stand alone for these kids.

The small fraction of kids who are at the top of AAP would be fine with just the AoPS class. FCPS will still make those kids sit in a classroom for FCPS Algebra, but it won't benefit the kid in any way. It's just another bureaucratic hoop that the kids will need to jump through. I bet the AoPS teacher posting here can tell the difference between the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders in Algebra who are highly gifted and will always be far ahead of the FCPS curriculum vs. the ones who just have pushy parents and are only ahead from all of the hothousing.