Reply to Coalition of the Silence/NAACP Fairfax County Branch cannot endorse AAP Expansion Proposal

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Reply to "Coalition of the Silence/NAACP Fairfax County Branch cannot endorse AAP Expansion Proposal"

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[quote=Anonymous]December 10, 2012

Dear School Board Members:
 
Today, you will receive recommendations regarding a proposed redesign of the Fairfax County Public School’s Advanced Academic/Gifted and Talented Program (AAP/GTP).   According to statements by your staff, at least part of the motivation for the recommendation to open new level IV AAP/GTP centers in every middle school and in at least one elementary school per cluster is the desire to increase access to AAP/GTP for underrepresented minority students.  Your staff has asserted – without providing any data – that many poor, Black and/or Latino students choose not to receive level IV AAP/GTP services because they do not wish to leave their base school. 
 
As you know, based on the Complaint we filed with the US Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights, both the Coalition of The Silence (COTS) and the Fairfax County Branch of the NAACP (Fairfax NAACP) are deeply committed to equitable access to advanced academic programming for Black and Latino students across this county.  However, we do not believe a plan that essentially amounts to “if we build them, they will come” is a meaningful plan for such equitable access.  On the contrary, we believe it is nothing more than proverbial “window dressing.”
 
Bona fide access to AAP/GTP in FCPS is about far more than geography.  There are undeniable disparities and distortions in the identification of Black and Latino students for eligibility to these programs.   FCPS can build all the AAP/GTP centers in the world.  But until the disparities in the identification of Black and Latino students as eligible for AAP/GTP is remedied, these centers will likely be nothing more than yet another example of a segregated sub-school within a school or worse, an under-populated, substandard center with a level 4 label but without genuine level 4 curriculum offered in it.     
 
COTS and the Fairfax NAACP cannot accept “window dressing” and thus cannot endorse this plan.  Before any changes to AAP/GTP are made, we expect FCPS to confront the many hard questions that must be addressed in order to overcome the institutional barriers and biases that are undeniably contributing to the under-identification Black and Latino students as eligible for AAP/GTP – wherever they might be offered.   
 
Respectfully,
 
Martina A. Hone
Founder & Chair
Coalition of The Silence

Owen Shortt
President
NAACP, Fairfax County Branch

cc:  US Department of Education, Office of Civil Rights[/quote]

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