Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe in the summer, but making a kid do 30 minutes of a workbook after sitting in school for 8 hours is abnormal.

How is this any different from kids doing 30 (or more) minutes of homework assigned by the school?

DD (third grader) goes to a school with a no homework policy. On days when she doesn't have too much going on after school, she does *something* academic, and that doesn't necessarily correlate in any way to what she's doing in school. It could be an experiment, it could be collecting pinecones and seeing if they follow Fibonacci (or any other) series, it could be a book on problem solving. We'll likely continue with it at home over the summer, on weeks where she has no summer camp (which is most weeks). Heck, she might get a little more than 30 or 45 minutes of schoolwork daily, over the summer. When she was younger, she used to go to school year round, and while there were more fun activities than schoolwork, I found it really helpful when it came to retention of material she had studied during the school year.

I was the PP with the workbook. In my original post I said he did 30 minutes of workbook to earn screen time during the summer. I double checked the post and saw the word summer in front of the 30 minutes section. He is not allowed to play video games during the school week, it leads to far too much whining, especially on days that he has his sport or Cub Scouts. He is allowed to play video games on the weekends without doing anything special.

During the school year he does whatever his teachers send home and if his teacher doesn't send something home, he does something out of a work book in an area that he is a bit weaker. It takes him 5-10 minutes total and is completed after 30 minutes of play and some snack. Normally his teachers send home a math sheet, writing practice, and an instruction to read. He does that after 30 minutes of play/down time and a snack. I think he has completed a whooping 4 pages in his workbook. He spends 15 minutes tops on school work after school. No big deal.

But in the summer, he spends 30 minutes working on a work book. It comes with a map that he pulls out and adds stickers to as he completes pages. There are days that he chooses not to do it, which is fine. He doesn't play any Mario on those days. No worries.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our oldest is in high school, was in general ed in grade school. Was labelled average as the teachers fawned over the AAP kids.

Now my HS kid is besting many of the AAP kids in her classes.

In middle school, one AAP got so upset that my kid and another "gen ed" kid from grade school got a better score on a test that the teacher made this kid go sit in the hallway to calm down. As my daughter says, "They aren't as smart as everybody told them they were. It's all a sham."

Sorry but neither that *one*AAP kid nor your daughter sound well-adjusted, kind, or like model students.

+1

Are they comparing scores on tests? Someone should really be telling them grades are private.

Anonymous wrote:Our oldest is in high school, was in general ed in grade school. Was labelled average as the teachers fawned over the AAP kids.

Now my HS kid is besting many of the AAP kids in her classes.

In middle school, one AAP got so upset that my kid and another "gen ed" kid from grade school got a better score on a test that the teacher made this kid go sit in the hallway to calm down. As my daughter says, "They aren't as smart as everybody told them they were. It's all a sham."

Sorry but neither that *one*AAP kid nor your daughter sound well-adjusted, kind, or like model students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you heavily prepped your kid so that they would get a strong CoGat score, does that mean they REALLY belong in AAP? Doesn't that defeat the original purpose of AAP?

Like with driver license driving test? You are right? Nobody should prepare, either you are natural or you go. Driving is very instinct based process so if you can't pass in the first run you go. I have no idea about the CoGat Prep but I don't see any harm letting kid to do few online short sample tests so they will know what is it. Otherwise this would be unfair to them because it is very different from anything they ever did.
It is fair that teachers did demonstrate the interface for PARK and let kids to do sample tests to practice, so why would it be not fair to let a child to see the format of CoGAt and let them be comfortable with it when they see it.

I think that is fine too. Problem is that only some kids get that. There are kids who go in cold (no information on it whatsoever), kids who have been introduced to different types of problems (maybe by school or by parents), kids who got a workbook/practice test and have gone through it and kids who went to a summer long prep school/get tutoring to score better in CogAT. They can never even the playing field.

^ one AAP kid ^^

Our oldest is in high school, was in general ed in grade school. Was labelled average as the teachers fawned over the AAP kids.

Now my HS kid is besting many of the AAP kids in her classes.

In middle school, one AAP got so upset that my kid and another "gen ed" kid from grade school got a better score on a test that the teacher made this kid go sit in the hallway to calm down. As my daughter says, "They aren't as smart as everybody told them they were. It's all a sham."

And this is why the CoGAT has become absolutely worthless.

Anonymous wrote:If you heavily prepped your kid so that they would get a strong CoGat score, does that mean they REALLY belong in AAP? Doesn't that defeat the original purpose of AAP?

Like with driver license driving test? You are right? Nobody should prepare, either you are natural or you go. Driving is very instinct based process so if you can't pass in the first run you go. I have no idea about the CoGat Prep but I don't see any harm letting kid to do few online short sample tests so they will know what is it. Otherwise this would be unfair to them because it is very different from anything they ever did.
It is fair that teachers did demonstrate the interface for PARK and let kids to do sample tests to practice, so why would it be not fair to let a child to see the format of CoGAt and let them be comfortable with it when they see it.

Anonymous wrote:Maybe in the summer, but making a kid do 30 minutes of a workbook after sitting in school for 8 hours is abnormal.

How is this any different from kids doing 30 (or more) minutes of homework assigned by the school?

DD (third grader) goes to a school with a no homework policy. On days when she doesn't have too much going on after school, she does *something* academic, and that doesn't necessarily correlate in any way to what she's doing in school. It could be an experiment, it could be collecting pinecones and seeing if they follow Fibonacci (or any other) series, it could be a book on problem solving. We'll likely continue with it at home over the summer, on weeks where she has no summer camp (which is most weeks). Heck, she might get a little more than 30 or 45 minutes of schoolwork daily, over the summer. When she was younger, she used to go to school year round, and while there were more fun activities than schoolwork, I found it really helpful when it came to retention of material she had studied during the school year.

Anonymous wrote:If they don’t want to considerkids who prep for the cogat, they shouldn’t consider it.

I must be really tired because I don’t understand what you are saying.

If they don’t want to considerkids who prep for the cogat, they shouldn’t consider it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A real IQ test can be prepped, to some extent. But then it's invalid.

Anonymous wrote:I am saying they take a holistic approach and that is fine whether you like it or not. (...) What will some of you people do by the time these kids get to college where there is also going to be a holistic approach?

"Mommy, why is Kate not going to AAP? She was always good at reading and math, in fact better than I am."

"Well, DC, she worked too hard to prepare for her test, so it was invalid."

"Ah, I see. And she also looks different, with those brown eyes and black hair."

"Yes, darling. She's not holistic enough. When you grow up, you'll understand."

Ha ha ha -- this is gold! I'm going to start using this phrase.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A real IQ test can be prepped, to some extent. But then it's invalid.

Anonymous wrote:I am saying they take a holistic approach and that is fine whether you like it or not. (...) What will some of you people do by the time these kids get to college where there is also going to be a holistic approach?

"Mommy, why is Kate not going to AAP? She was always good at reading and math, in fact better than I am."

"Well, DC, she worked too hard to prepare for her test, so it was invalid."

"Ah, I see. And she also looks different, with those brown eyes and black hair."

"Yes, darling. She's not holistic enough. When you grow up, you'll understand."

“Sorry racist poster, the committee doesn’t know, or care, what Kate looks like but the program is not designed for test-taking automatons. We want lively active learning and thinking outside the box. It’s just bot for everyone.”

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A real IQ test can be prepped, to some extent. But then it's invalid.

Anonymous wrote:I am saying they take a holistic approach and that is fine whether you like it or not. (...) What will some of you people do by the time these kids get to college where there is also going to be a holistic approach?

"Mommy, why is Kate not going to AAP? She was always good at reading and math, in fact better than I am."

"Well, DC, she worked too hard to prepare for her test, so it was invalid."

"Ah, I see. And she also looks different, with those brown eyes and black hair."

"Yes, darling. She's not holistic enough. When you grow up, you'll understand."

Try again to make your point. Or rethink it.

Or maybe she didn’t have a high enough GBRS. Maybe she is just a people pleaser and really doesn’t know how to think outside the box.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A real IQ test can be prepped, to some extent. But then it's invalid.

Anonymous wrote:I am saying they take a holistic approach and that is fine whether you like it or not. (...) What will some of you people do by the time these kids get to college where there is also going to be a holistic approach?

"Mommy, why is Kate not going to AAP? She was always good at reading and math, in fact better than I am."

"Well, DC, she worked too hard to prepare for her test, so it was invalid."

"Ah, I see. And she also looks different, with those brown eyes and black hair."

"Yes, darling. She's not holistic enough. When you grow up, you'll understand."

Try again to make your point. Or rethink it.