Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought kids were normally not placed before 2nd grade but our kids school said there is a cohort in one class in 1st grade this year - not sure how kids would have even been identified in K last year given the way the year went…

Yes, you are correct. It takes place in 2nd grade. You have a few stay at home moms that come in and nag the teachers in K and 1 about how gifted Larlo is and get the "identified" and grandfathered in early.

lol. I mean my kid was identified in K. I didn't do anything. The teacher just sent me a letter.

I'm calling BS. I also bet you are a stay at home mom.

Anonymous wrote:More than 1/3 of students at Yorktown are identified as "gifted" in at least one subject area - that is 750 students in total.

True "gifted" should be the top 2%, not 35%.

It’s all subject areas. Some kids have a designation just for music or art or science. If you identify by individual subject, you could well have 35% of kids with one subject designation. It’s not like FCPS, where a kid gets a “gifted” label and then is accelerated in every academic subject.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What does gifted look like in Fairfax? Curious (and possibly regretting buying in Arlington)

AAP are entirely different schools for gifted students. If you have a gifted student and want their needs bet, you should sell and move.

There’s a forum just for AAP, after browsing it over the last couple years I’m content to stay in APS

Anonymous wrote:What does gifted look like in Fairfax? Curious (and possibly regretting buying in Arlington)

AAP are entirely different schools for gifted students. If you have a gifted student and want their needs bet, you should sell and move.

What does gifted look like in Fairfax? Curious (and possibly regretting buying in Arlington)

Does APS pull out for math and English in grades 4 & 5? ACPS does and it made a world of difference. The lower grade gifted services were minimal (once a week for 30 minutes etc.), but like a PP said, at that level what really matters is that they are getting some differentiation in the classroom (reading groups, harder math even if on the computer). The pull out for our kids was crucial. They found their peer group and felt challenged and engaged.

In ES my son was clustered with other kids. It was both the pull out and the push in method. The older he got the more it was push in as it seemed the kids who were not pulled out felt slighted. What the RTG said was they would have more than one level for the project. So while most of the class worked on level 1 there were kids who worked on level 2. But overall to the kids it seemed they were working on the same thing.

I remember the RTG saying that more and more they were being instructed to spend more time working with the teachers and less time with the students and they did not like that. They got into teaching to spend time with the kids.

In MS I have not really seen much either. My son was in a club where the RTG was the sponsor which he really liked. I have seen that many projects have options from easier to harder, but no one guides the kids on which one to choose. So it is up to them. Last year with remote school I was able to guide my son to the harder project option but who knows what is happening this year. However, once they are in MS there is true math differentiation. 2 levels in 6th, 3 in 7th, and I think 3 again in 8th.

Actually I believe in Reading last year the kids were guided towards books on their level. My son was able to choose books not on the list the teacher provided, as long as the teacher cleared them.

I think there is some level of clustering as my son is clustered with some of the same kids he was with in ES.

But in all honesty I would not say this is a true gifted program.

For my 3rd grader, this year the gifted teacher comes once a week and pulls the advanced kids out of math for harder problem solving. The kids who are behind in math stay in class for more practice with the teacher. The pull out group isn't just gifted kids--mine wasn't identified last year but is pulled out--but is all kids who don't need extra practice on the grade level material.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought kids were normally not placed before 2nd grade but our kids school said there is a cohort in one class in 1st grade this year - not sure how kids would have even been identified in K last year given the way the year went…

Yes, you are correct. It takes place in 2nd grade. You have a few stay at home moms that come in and nag the teachers in K and 1 about how gifted Larlo is and get the "identified" and grandfathered in early.

lol. I mean my kid was identified in K. I didn't do anything. The teacher just sent me a letter.

More than 1/3 of students at Yorktown are identified as "gifted" in at least one subject area - that is 750 students in total.

True "gifted" should be the top 2%, not 35%.

The short answer is there is NO real gifted service in APS, DC was identified in 1st grade (very early), I contacted the RTG (resource teacher for the gifted), he told me that basically he does NOT work with students at all, his service is provided to students through classroom teachers. He teaches the teachers how to provide service to gifted students. The classroom teacher has maybe 3-5 gifted students in the class, but most of the 28?! students are not gifted, many are struggling students. There is no way this fake service model does any good to anyone.

It is such a joke, we are looking to relocate to Fairfax soon.

My APS kid - who ended up going to TJ for high school - had a mishmash of gifted services, depending on his classroom teacher and the gifted resource teacher. Some years were great and a few years (especially 3rd grade, when he had a teacher who thought all he needed was more and more tedious worksheets) were pretty bad. If your child isn't getting the services he needs, then speak up and advocate, because there are people in APS who understand that differentiation is essential for highly gifted students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a nothingburger now that most are push in.

What does this mean?

It means that pp is bent out of shape that a production isn’t made now of pulling her children out of class for enrichment. Teachers just hand out slightly more challenging work.

Let me tell you as someone who’s graduated two kids from APS that your anxiety over gifted services in ES is meaningless. The kids all get there in the end.

A Production? Who exactly is bent out of shape here?

The pp is. I explained this already. If you can’t keep up, I doubt you passed along any gifted genes to your snowflakes.

An ad hominem attack, classy.

Kids leaving for gifted is hardly a production, they don't ask them all to stand and salute them as they walk out; they would just slip out just like kids do for the reading specialist or the speech therapist.

I'm sorry you didn't understand my question for who is bent out of shape was rhetorical -- it's clear from your post that YOU are bent out of shape that your kid has to watch the gifted kids leave; does your snowflake also get upset about the one on one with the speech therapist?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a nothingburger now that most are push in.

What does this mean?

It means that pp is bent out of shape that a production isn’t made now of pulling her children out of class for enrichment. Teachers just hand out slightly more challenging work.

Let me tell you as someone who’s graduated two kids from APS that your anxiety over gifted services in ES is meaningless. The kids all get there in the end.

A Production? Who exactly is bent out of shape here?

The pp is. I explained this already. If you can’t keep up, I doubt you passed along any gifted genes to your snowflakes.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought kids were normally not placed before 2nd grade but our kids school said there is a cohort in one class in 1st grade this year - not sure how kids would have even been identified in K last year given the way the year went…

Yes, you are correct. It takes place in 2nd grade. You have a few stay at home moms that come in and nag the teachers in K and 1 about how gifted Larlo is and get the "identified" and grandfathered in early.