Federal civil rights officials will investigate a complaint filed by a parents group against Gwinnett County Public Schools, alleging the system's contract with the state to improve student performance is discriminatory.
The Gwinnett Parent Coalition to Dismantle the School to Prison Pipeline filed the complaint in July, charging that Gwinnett schools set lower goals for most minorities than whites in the contract.
Gwinnett school system officials had to set student performance benchmarks for African-Americans, Asians, Hispanics, students with disabilities and those still learning English as part of a contract with the state to get more freedom from mandates over local districts.
To meet reading/language arts goals for third- to fifth-graders at J.A. Alford Elementary in Gwinnett, for example, 39.6 percent of white students needed to exceed standards compared with 38.4 percent of Asians, 24.9 percent of African-Americans, 17 percent of Hispanics, 13.7 percent of students with disabilities and 10.2 percent of English language learners.
The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights decided it had the jurisdiction to investigate Gwinnett's Investing in Educational Excellence or IE2 contract.
An OCR document said the office has the authority and "responsibility for enforcing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin by recipients of federal financial assistance by the Department."
"We are pleased that they accepted it," said Jennifer Falk, co-founder of the parent group. "It is important to have an independent set of eyes look at the IE2 contract. You've got students being compared by race to set performance standards. In one school, you have Caucasian students expected to improve and black students are expected to maintain or possibly even decrease their performance. Isn't every student getting the same education?"
Gwinnett school system officials say the complaint is without merit.
"Anyone can file a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights alleging discrimination, and if OCR feels the allegation falls under its purview, it will investigate it," said Sloan Roach, school system spokeswoman.
"The important thing to remember," she said, "is that the opening of a complaint for investigation in no way implies that the complaint has merit. This complaint is not supported by facts ... and we are confident OCR will agree once they have looked into the matter."
Gwinnett is one of Georgia's first districts to enter into an IE2 contract with the state. The IE2 initiative gives districts freedom from several state requirements such as required instructional time and class size, like charter schools. Participating schools must meet targets for three consecutive years of the five-year contract.
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