Asian Families Say Their Children Were Denied Entry Into Gifted Programs Under Guise of Diversity

When Jason Guo was in first and second grades at his Maryland public school, he says he was bored because the standard curriculum was too easy and simple for him. When he took a test to join the Montgomery County Public School System’s talented and gifted program, however, he was rejected.“I felt a little bit disappointed because at first I thought it was a problem with me. At first I thought I was the one who didn’t pass the exam or did not do well enough on it,” Mr. Guo told The New York Sun.He found out later that students scoring below him on the test were being enrolled in the program. It was because the school system — one of the largest and most academically successful school districts in the country — rewrote its magnet school admissions criteria in 2016 after a consultant’s report criticized what it considered a lack of diversity in the program. The altered admissions process moved away from a race-blind merit-based program to a system that placed a greater emphasis on social economics and equity goals. The new rules measured students against classmates at their own schools, a change that fell hardest on Asian American students, who were traditionally clustered in a handful of high-performing schools. The result was a district-wide plunge in admissions for students of Asian descent.“For many families, including my own family, admission to these programs is very, very important because it can shape a child’s educational experience, academic development, and future opportunities,” Jason’s mother, Eva Guo, told the Sun.Ms. Guo said the number of Asian students in the program dropped 20 percent the first year of the new criteria and another 20 percent the next year. The number of black students invited to the program nearly doubled during the same period. White and Hispanic admission also went up.“I began to question whether the school district’s reforms were genuinely improving fairness or whether they were creating new inequities for some students,” Ms. Guo said.Ms. Guo said she was concerned that a policy that may sound fair can produce unfair results for individual children in the program’s admissions process. “As a parent, I believe we must ask, also ask an important question here. Did these changes ensure that every child was evaluated fairly according to their individual abilities, or did they create a system, in which some academically qualified students, like my son, lost opportunities they had earned?” Ms. Guo said.Ms. Guo helped found the non-profit Association for Education Fairness with other Asian families. Parents started asking the school district for answers and when they found the responses unsatisfactory, the group filed a lawsuit in 2018 claiming the school district was unlawfully discriminating against Asian American students. “I decided to pursue this case because I believe parents have a responsibility and a right to speak up when they have serious evidence based concerns about the fairness of the public education system,” Ms. Guo said.Lower courts dismissed the suit, Association for Education Fairness v. Montgomery County Public Schools, holding that binding circuit precedent required the parents to show the policy drove Asian American admissions below the group’s share of the applicant pool — even if the policy was intended to be racially discriminatory.Ms. Guo decided to keep fighting despite the setback. “The legal process is long and difficult. I know that. Protecting equal opportunity for our children is worth fighting for, especially, when this case could set a precedent for future generations. I think this is a meaningful case,” she said.Last month, the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case to decide whether a plaintiff challenging a facially neutral admissions policy as racially discriminatory must establish that the targeted racial group suffered an aggregate disparate impact relative to its share of the applicant pool. Oral arguments are expected sometime after the new year begins.The case will be the Supreme Court’s first case concerning race in school admissions since its landmark 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. In a 6 to 3 decision authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court held that Harvard’s use of race in admissions violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision blocks universities from using race as a standalone determination for admissions.The high court’s decision could clarify whether a group’s overall admissions success can be tied to an Equal Protection challenge when members of the group say a race-neutral admissions policy intentionally disadvantages them.The Pacific Legal Foundation is representing the Association for Education Fairness. “The Constitution protects students as individuals, not as members of a racial group,” a foundation senior attorney, Chris Kieser, said in a statement. “A school district should not be able to defeat a discrimination claim by showing that its policy did not harm enough Asian American children. Every family deserves admissions rules that judge their child on their own merit.”A decision on the case is expected to be released by late June.The suit has taken so long to play out that Mr. Guo is now in college. He credits his mom seeking alternative educational help for him outside of schools for his success. He says the Supreme Court case is a step in the right direction and hopes it will change things for the future so the program is more equal to everyone.“I don’t believe having these race-based emissions for these programs are fair for everybody,” Mr. Guo said. “I personally don’t believe that we should assume that someone is given less opportunity, just based off their race, and therefore we need to compromise by accounting for that with the test scores,” he added.

Asian Families Say Their Children Were Denied Entry Into Gifted Programs Under Guise of Diversity

Asian Families Say Their Children Were Denied Entry Into Gifted Programs Under Guise of Diversity

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