Is AAP race blind? Are there quotas?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At my school in western Fairfax, a lot of teachers have their own kids with them. Most - a large majority - of those kids are not in AAP. It's actually kind of surprising.

I'm in Western Fairfax and work at an ES. One of my kids attends the center, the others go to my school/our neighborhood school. There's no principal placement at the center or LLIV at the base, so either you make it in or you don't. Most of the teachers' children don't attend the center.

[Anonymous]

There is a somewhat flexible cap. Approximately 7% of the kids are accepted. This 7% is county wide. Perhaps individual schools adjust accordingly. This comes informaly from the AAP office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Board has been clear they take race into consideration.

It's on the front page of the application as is address school name and languages spoken.

They have goals to admit certain percentages and have discussed it in public meetings.

OMG. Do you even know who “the board” is? It’s 200 teachers that volunteer and get a sub day and spend the whole day at Willow Oaks reading packets. They rotate through over the course of 5 days. I’m an ESOL teacher and I’ve done it every year for 5 years. We aren’t specially trained and we look at the whole package and not just those test scores. We also are told to disregard parent work submitted because it’s often done by them or with a lot of help. We never look at the identifying info. Honestly after reading several hundred, no one cares if it’s a boy or girl, age, grade, etc. it’s draining. You can surmise all you want about the system but I’m here to tell you it’s a complete crapshoot. It has to get 4 yes or 4 no to be completed. Sometimes 3 people say yes, one says no, and then it goes to another reader. It’s a botched system. After completing the packet, your best chance it just to pray. All depends on who reads it and if they are feeling the love. There are also no limited spots (the only time that may come into play is during appeals since classes have been formed by then). Basically, have good scores and make sure the teacher likes your kid for good GBRS. Other than that pray and wait. 🙄

I am one of those teachers as well. Over the years, have sat next to teachers who accepted everyone to be inclusive, and one time sat next to a teacher who rejected everyone out of spite. Clearly a very sophisticated process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's hard to know who is right. The report doesn't explain the methodology and data tables well.

Anyone with an iota of common sense recognizes that many kids get in who are "below threshold." PP honestly thinks that kids getting in with scores below 132 are quite rare. Just by sheer math, only 1400 kids are in pool, but 2200 get into AAP in each year. The PP won't address that point, though, since it doesn't fit her worldview that almost all kids in AAP have top 2% scores on the CogAT.

I find this whole thread amusing. A few years ago, I commented on a post saying that the majority of my AA students scored between 105 and 135, with an average of 115. I was called a liar and troll. I'm happy to see that people are looking at the data!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OMG. Do you even know who “the board” is? It’s 200 teachers that volunteer and get a sub day and spend the whole day at Willow Oaks reading packets. They rotate through over the course of 5 days. I’m an ESOL teacher and I’ve done it every year for 5 years. We aren’t specially trained and we look at the whole package and not just those test scores. We also are told to disregard parent work submitted because it’s often done by them or with a lot of help. We never look at the identifying info. Honestly after reading several hundred, no one cares if it’s a boy or girl, age, grade, etc. it’s draining. You can surmise all you want about the system but I’m here to tell you it’s a complete crapshoot. It has to get 4 yes or 4 no to be completed. Sometimes 3 people say yes, one says no, and then it goes to another reader. It’s a botched system. After completing the packet, your best chance it just to pray. All depends on who reads it and if they are feeling the love. There are also no limited spots (the only time that may come into play is during appeals since classes have been formed by then). Basically, have good scores and make sure the teacher likes your kid for good GBRS. Other than that pray and wait. 🙄

If this is true, then the school work samples are probably the single most important thing. Untrained people are unlikely to appreciate the significance of test scores or gifted traits. The main thing that will leap out at them is neatly done work samples with nice handwriting, good spelling, and pretty artwork. Sloppy work is likely to stick out in a negative way.

What happens to the packages after the 4 'yes' marks? What happens if only a handful of Hispanic or African American students get a 4? What happens if a center school ends up with 2 additional classes because of the reviewers marked too many applicants for 'yes'? The above seems unreasonable given all the ways that it can go wrong and not work out. What the ESOL teacher is probably not aware of is what happens after the packages leave her lap. Like in most other competitive admissions processes, there is probably an executive committee that meets to massage the number of entrants into the program in terms of race, capacity and other factors whether it be for the better or worse for any given individual.

They essentially go through a "verification" phase. For example, why was as high scorer not accepted? or an especially low one accepted?

[Anonymous]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/justice-department-accuses-yale-of-illegal-bias-against-white-asian-american-applicants-in-admissions/2020/08/13/d99a7376-dda5-11ea-8051-d5f887d73381_story.html

There’s a strong inference to what the definition of the term “holistic” means midway through the article.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hindsight! What was that movie in the 80s where the actor checks off a different ethnicity to get into Harvard?! I'm joking ... but reading that other thread, I'm thinking people may be creatively applying the ethnic profile on themselves and their kids.

Soul Man

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The thing that really bothers me about racial quotas is that they're lumping groups together in a way that absolves them from including Latinx and AAs. In my kid's AAP classes, most of the Hispanic kids are white kids of Spanish origin and not Latinx. Likewise, most of the black kids are African immigrants and not African Americans. In both cases, it's kids from generally privileged groups taking spots that are nominally intended for underprivileged groups.

There is no quota in AAP, so there are no spots nominally intended for underprivileged kids. Also, my kid is black not AA and was in pool, but I'm sure people like you assumed she was filling some quota. Many of the kids of African immigrants at my kid's school are far from privileged. They live in apartment building wil other low income families. You really are making way too many assumptions.

[Anonymous]

^^^with not wil.

[Anonymous]

AAP should be abolished if blacks do not make up 20%.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:AAP should be abolished if blacks do not make up 20%.

Wrong, we will not rest until it is 199% black

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:AAP should be abolished if blacks do not make up 20%.

Wrong, we will not rest until it is 199% black

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Reading the appeals decisions thread about insane wisc scores getting denied makes me wonder if there is more to the story at FCPS AAP this year.

Does anyone know if race is now being taken into consideration?

Well the Principal can make the decision and if the Principal doesn’t like Black kids, she may discriminate against them when the initial pool goes out. For example, the old Principal of McNair and now Principal of McNair Upper has a history of keeping Black kids out of the pool even when they have test scores high enough and even teacher recommendations. When this sort of thing happens a group becomes underrepresented, then when they get called out, they may try to suddenly get as many Black kids in the program as possible to seem as though they are being inclusive. When it gets to that point they may not care if they are picking the best kids for the program. White Supremacy just doesn’t produce the best outcome for everyone.