FCPS potential changes to AAP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:AAP is biased against whites, not minorities.

that’s BS, the program is run by white supremacists. We can see who is underrepresented and that is who they hate the most. They are just mad because the ones the consider honorary whites have happened to fair better than they have when it comes to getting admitted into to the program

Ok. There is a bunch of craziness on this thread. The program isn't run by white supremacist, the under representation is largely due to lower test scores of URM students and the lack of knowledge about the parent referral and appeals process by their parents. While there might be bias in the GBRS, the larger issues are the scores and the lack of knowledge of the process. Most of the URM parents I know assume the teacher will decide, based on in class performance, whether their kids get in or they assume that if the scores don't meet the benchmarks it's not worth applying. They also are much less likely to know about prep materials. Asians are more aware and start prepping early. They even sell prep materials at at least one Asian market I'm familiar with. Honestly, if you're a URM and want improved numbers, figure out a way to get the word out to your community. To paraphrase Barack Obama's "don't boo, vote," don't whine, take action.

[Anonymous]

The burden should not be placed on people who are perhaps lower SES, working multiple jobs, or don't speak English very well to attain appropriate educational placement for their kids. If the statistics show that a much larger percentage of Asian or white parents with kids scoring between 120 and 131 submit parent referrals than black or Hispanic parents with kids in the same score range, then the referral system needs to be fixed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:AAP is biased against whites, not minorities.

How is it biased against whites? My kids attended a Title I school where many white kids with all scores below the benchmarks were given very high GBRS and found eligible for level IV. I think the teachers helping to inflate the GBRS were trying to "save" those kids from the gen Ed population. My DC was in the immersion program and when I said I was considering removing DC from the immersion, the teacher specifically said that I shouldn't do that because then my kid would be with only underperforming kids. There is no bias against white kids, get a grip. You're really going to start whining when your white kid has to compete against Asian kids for college spots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The burden should not be placed on people who are perhaps lower SES, working multiple jobs, or don't speak English very well to attain appropriate educational placement for their kids. If the statistics show that a much larger percentage of Asian or white parents with kids scoring between 120 and 131 submit parent referrals than black or Hispanic parents with kids in the same score range, then the referral system needs to be fixed.

How? There are many information meetings with translation available. At some point personal responsibility needs to come into play.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The burden should not be placed on people who are perhaps lower SES, working multiple jobs, or don't speak English very well to attain appropriate educational placement for their kids. If the statistics show that a much larger percentage of Asian or white parents with kids scoring between 120 and 131 submit parent referrals than black or Hispanic parents with kids in the same score range, then the referral system needs to be fixed.

How? There are many information meetings with translation available. At some point personal responsibility needs to come into play.

Many times those meetings are at times that are hard for parents who work to attend. I am lucky that I have a job that is flexible enough that I can take off to attend meetings and the like but not every parent can do that. Or parents don’t have enough understand ing of the system to know why they should attend a meeting or why a program like AAP is important for their child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've seen the board docs and they show the current AAP participation rates for 4 categories: Asian 40%, White 30%, and Black and Hispanic, as I think 15% each. If you want the groups to be even, then the first two groups participation rates would have to down unless they expanded the local level 4 or other levels to include more URMs.

It makes sense to me since a lot of the testing and the process selecting kids for the program is biased against blacks.

Haha yeah math is bias

It’s not the math. In most cases it’s the teachers giving and grading the DRA’s, COGAT’s, etc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The burden should not be placed on people who are perhaps lower SES, working multiple jobs, or don't speak English very well to attain appropriate educational placement for their kids. If the statistics show that a much larger percentage of Asian or white parents with kids scoring between 120 and 131 submit parent referrals than black or Hispanic parents with kids in the same score range, then the referral system needs to be fixed.

How? There are many information meetings with translation available. At some point personal responsibility needs to come into play.

If the vast majority of white and Asian parents refer kids who score in the 120s, then the school committee should automatically consider any kid who scores in the 120s. Or at least, they should do so for URMs or lower SES kids. Similarly, schools rarely submit school referrals for Level IV, but they have the right to do so. If schools were encouraged to refer any URMs who seem bright, have reasonably high test scores, but perhaps have parents who don't know the system, it could go a long way toward fixing the problem. After all, the main issue isn't that URMs are being rejected at high rates by the AAP selection committee. It's that parents aren't referring, so the selection committee isn't evaluating these children at all.

Likewise, if the majority of white and Asian kids are receiving some sort of CogAT prep, then the same should be provided for URMs through Young Scholars. Affluence and parental involvement are not supposed to influence who is found eligible for AAP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are they planning to lump all Asians together, or will they separate by group? There already seem to be huge differences in AAP representation based on country of origin for Asians, such that some Asian ethnicities are effectively URMs, while others are very over-represented.

Also, when they try to look at SES-based representation, are they planning to just have it be FARMS vs. not-FARMS, or will there be a little more granularity? People who are not poor enough to be FARMS, but are not much above that threshold are probably more demographically similar to FARMS kids than they are to high SES kids.

If you’re worried about that, go to a school board meeting and stress that 25% of each of students from those Asian countries you are speaking oh are represented

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought quotas were unconstitutional?

It’s complicated.

With the caveat that I have not seen the FCPS exact phrasing— quotas are generally unconstitutional. But, in holistic admissions, like AAP, URM status as a “plus factor”— one consideration out of several— is okay. And targets or goals that might or might not be reached are fine. So, if FCPS is trying to put systems in place to help reach enrollment goals for URMs, it could be fine. Especially if the goals are aspirational, rather than actual quotas. “We hope that there will be enough qualified URMs” is different than “we will take unqualified URMs is we must to hit a certain number. It’s like Harvard aggressively recruiting URMs and giving URM status special weight. Fine, as long as being a URM is not the deciding factor.

But— a lot of this law is in the context of college admissions, where there a set number of seats. AAP is different, because every qualified kid is supposed to be admitted. Unlike Harvard, a URM getting admission does not take a seat from some other, possibly more qualified kid. Your UMC white kid will still be admitted, whether or not the YS model is used to identify additional URM kids. So, I would think FCPS would get additional flexibility.

No idea if what you say is accurate or not, but there’s no reason this couldn’t be applied to TJ admissions too. It’s time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought quotas were unconstitutional?

It’s complicated.

With the caveat that I have not seen the FCPS exact phrasing— quotas are generally unconstitutional. But, in holistic admissions, like AAP, URM status as a “plus factor”— one consideration out of several— is okay. And targets or goals that might or might not be reached are fine. So, if FCPS is trying to put systems in place to help reach enrollment goals for URMs, it could be fine. Especially if the goals are aspirational, rather than actual quotas. “We hope that there will be enough qualified URMs” is different than “we will take unqualified URMs is we must to hit a certain number. It’s like Harvard aggressively recruiting URMs and giving URM status special weight. Fine, as long as being a URM is not the deciding factor.

But— a lot of this law is in the context of college admissions, where there a set number of seats. AAP is different, because every qualified kid is supposed to be admitted. Unlike Harvard, a URM getting admission does not take a seat from some other, possibly more qualified kid. Your UMC white kid will still be admitted, whether or not the YS model is used to identify additional URM kids. So, I would think FCPS would get additional flexibility.

No idea if what you say is accurate or not, but there’s no reason this couldn’t be applied to TJ admissions too. It’s time.

TJ has a limited number of seats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The burden should not be placed on people who are perhaps lower SES, working multiple jobs, or don't speak English very well to attain appropriate educational placement for their kids. If the statistics show that a much larger percentage of Asian or white parents with kids scoring between 120 and 131 submit parent referrals than black or Hispanic parents with kids in the same score range, then the referral system needs to be fixed.

How? There are many information meetings with translation available. At some point personal responsibility needs to come into play.

If the vast majority of white and Asian parents refer kids who score in the 120s, then the school committee should automatically consider any kid who scores in the 120s. Or at least, they should do so for URMs or lower SES kids. Similarly, schools rarely submit school referrals for Level IV, but they have the right to do so. If schools were encouraged to refer any URMs who seem bright, have reasonably high test scores, but perhaps have parents who don't know the system, it could go a long way toward fixing the problem. After all, the main issue isn't that URMs are being rejected at high rates by the AAP selection committee. It's that parents aren't referring, so the selection committee isn't evaluating these children at all.

Likewise, if the majority of white and Asian kids are receiving some sort of CogAT prep, then the same should be provided for URMs through Young Scholars. Affluence and parental involvement are not supposed to influence who is found eligible for AAP.

I'm in a Republican and I support all of this. In my view they should give one test to everyone and change it up every year so you can't prep for it.

Also there should be 0 appeals period

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought quotas were unconstitutional?

It’s complicated.

With the caveat that I have not seen the FCPS exact phrasing— quotas are generally unconstitutional. But, in holistic admissions, like AAP, URM status as a “plus factor”— one consideration out of several— is okay. And targets or goals that might or might not be reached are fine. So, if FCPS is trying to put systems in place to help reach enrollment goals for URMs, it could be fine. Especially if the goals are aspirational, rather than actual quotas. “We hope that there will be enough qualified URMs” is different than “we will take unqualified URMs is we must to hit a certain number. It’s like Harvard aggressively recruiting URMs and giving URM status special weight. Fine, as long as being a URM is not the deciding factor.

But— a lot of this law is in the context of college admissions, where there a set number of seats. AAP is different, because every qualified kid is supposed to be admitted. Unlike Harvard, a URM getting admission does not take a seat from some other, possibly more qualified kid. Your UMC white kid will still be admitted, whether or not the YS model is used to identify additional URM kids. So, I would think FCPS would get additional flexibility.

No idea if what you say is accurate or not, but there’s no reason this couldn’t be applied to TJ admissions too. It’s time.

TJ has a limited number of seats.

They tried it before at TJ with disastrous results. Too many kids had to take remedial classes. The point of TJ is for the best to be surrounded by the best. If you don't agree with that attack TJ as a whole. Honestly most of the TJ kids would be just as successful at their base schools so it's an argument I can at least follow

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of people would support that you need to have scores above a specific level and no appeals. Set it at what ever the 85% mark is for the region on the NNAT and the CogAT. Teacher evals for anyone who hit one score but not the other.

But I suspect that would cause people to freak out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think a lot of people would support that you need to have scores above a specific level and no appeals. Set it at what ever the 85% mark is for the region on the NNAT and the CogAT. Teacher evals for anyone who hit one score but not the other.

But I suspect that would cause people to freak out.

WISC given by GMU should always be an option. But it should be cut and dried. 130+ FSIQ and you're in. Less than that, and you're not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The burden should not be placed on people who are perhaps lower SES, working multiple jobs, or don't speak English very well to attain appropriate educational placement for their kids. If the statistics show that a much larger percentage of Asian or white parents with kids scoring between 120 and 131 submit parent referrals than black or Hispanic parents with kids in the same score range, then the referral system needs to be fixed.

How? There are many information meetings with translation available. At some point personal responsibility needs to come into play.

Many times those meetings are at times that are hard for parents who work to attend. I am lucky that I have a job that is flexible enough that I can take off to attend meetings and the like but not every parent can do that. Or parents don’t have enough understand ing of the system to know why they should attend a meeting or why a program like AAP is important for their child.

Young Scholars and teacher referrals are ways kids with uninvolved parents can be referred into the program. Of course, it falls on the backs of the teachers to prepare packets, but parents ultimately need to approve admission to AAP. Some parents don't want their child at a different school from their siblings. Others don't want to support homework. Based on what I've seen, FCPS is working to eliminate homework from AAP to accommodate this.