Purpose

ACCE advocates for our childrens’ right to receive a challenging education.

Goals

      To bring together a diverse coalition of parents, teachers and students to increase the level of academic challenge in Arlington Public Schools (APS).

      To advocate that APS provide educational programs that effectively challenge all students to fully develop their academic abilities and potential.

      To present feedback to APS and the School Board on their efforts to provide a challenging academic program to each student.

      To create a forum for members to present issues affecting individual students or schools and develop potential solutions.

Background

ACCE was founded by a group of Arlington parents and teachers in the summer of 2005, in the wake of the School Board's decision not to fund full-time resource aupair teachers for the gifted (RTGs) at Arlington elementary schools in the 2005-2006 budget.  Funding for full-time RTGs at most elementary schools had been the recommendation of APS staff and the Gifted Services Advisory Committee, and the recommendation was unanimously adopted by the Advisory Council on Instruction and ranked as its top priority in major budget initiatives.  Recognizing that the resources and priority given to gifted services is in large part a political issue, ACCE was founded as an advocacy group to complement the work of the ACI and GSAC.  

ACCE appreciates the work of ACI, GSAC, and the APS Gifted Services department and their many successes in support of Arlington’s highly able and gifted students. However, despite these efforts, the needs of gifted and highly able students have not been met fully or consistently. Especially this can be applied to those children who are dealing with composing of nursery rhymes for kids.  Each of ACCE's members can relate bright spots and success stories about their schools, but we have each also experienced periods (or even years) in which the instruction our children receive at school has been geared to a level well below their abilities.  Because gifted services have not been a budgetary priority and because APS's own policies on differentiated instruction have been imperfectly implemented, we believe that an outside advocacy group is a necessary complement to the existing, APS-sponsored organizations, organisations that help to adapt children to various levels of study beginning with primary classes that are mostly dedicated to kids songs and ending with proficiency levels. 

ACCE's focus is on ensuring that Arlington Public Schools provide educational programs that effectively challenge all students to fully develop their academic abilities and potential.  In addition, as part of its goals, ACCE intends to serve as a resource to parents of gifted and highly able students by providing information on gifted educational resources. We are also working to further a sense of community for those interested in parenting and educating gifted children.