Thomas Jefferson High School Drops Out of Top Ten Nationwide After Adopting “Equity” Admissions Policy
“TJ for the first time dropped out of the top 10 of the US News list of top US high schools, falling from being number 1 2020-2022, to 5 in 2023, to now 14 in 2024”
The Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (also known as “TJ”) is one of the highest-ranking high schools in the country.
Unfortunately, several years ago, the Fairfax County, Virginia, school board ditched traditional standardized tests and admission selections based on the best students available and moved to an “equity” formula designed to boost admissions for middle school students identifying as racial minorities.
This caused the percentage of Asian students to drop precipitously, leading to federal court litigation asserting a violation of the United States Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause.
From our first post on the case back in March 2021: Lawsuit Alleges Anti-Asian Discrimination In Admissions Change At Top-Ranked Virginia High School:
[Equity-based admissions] practices at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (“TJ”) has now resulted in a lawsuit filed by the Pacific Legal Foundation. AP reports:
Located in the suburbs of the nation’s capital, the school is frequently ranked as the best in the country, and families plan for years to try to help their children gain admission.
The student body is 70% Asian American, with minuscule numbers of Black and Hispanic students.
The Fairfax County school board voted last year to revise the admissions process and eliminate a standardized test that had been a key part of the evaluation process. It also set aside a specific number of slots for students at each of the middle schools in the county.
Board members have said they hope the new process increases Black and Hispanic representation in the student body.
The lawsuit, though, alleges that the set-asides will end up hurting Asian American families that are clustered in a handful of middle schools that currently send large numbers of students to “TJ,” as the school is known.
Erin Wilcox, a lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation, said at a press conference Wednesday that the policies themselves are discriminatory, but the intent is made even more clear by statements from board members who said they want the changes to result in a student body with a racial makeup that matches the county’s demographics.
“The discriminatory intent they’ve shown is intertwined and an inseparable part of the policies they put in place,” Wilcox said.
Fortunately, the district, or trial-level, federal court agreed that TJ’s new admissions practices violated the U.S. Constitution and enjoined it: “The American dream won!” Virginia Anti-Asian School Admission Scheme Halted By Federal Judge.
Unfortunately, the School Committee immediately appealed the decision (of course), and a divided panel of the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the injunction in a 2-1 decision: Virginia High School Admissions Changes That Severely Reduced Asian Student Enrollment Upheld By Appeals Court.
So the parents applied to the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping to have the Fourth Circuit’s decision thrown out, and the Equal Protection Project (EPP) filed an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court,” brief supporting the parents: Equal Protection Project Files SCOTUS Brief Supporting Asian Students in Coalition for TJ Case.
Unfortunately (again), SCOTUS declined to review the case. However, Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, issued a rare and blistering dissent: SCOTUS Refuses to Take “Race-Neutral” School Discrimination Case – Justices Alito and Thomas Blast Decision.
From Alito’s dissent:
The Court of Appeals’ decision in this case is based on a patently incorrect and dangerous understanding of what a plaintiff must show to prove intentional race discrimination….What the Fourth Circuit majority held, in essence, is that intentional racial discrimination is constitutional so long as it is not too severe. This reasoning is indefensible, and it cries out for correction….The holding below effectively licenses official actors to discriminate against any racial group with impunity….That is indefensible [and it] defies law and logic….The Fourth Circuit’s decision is based on a theory that is flagrantly wrong and should not be allowed to stand….The Court’s willingness to swallow the aberrant decision below is hard to understand. We should wipe the decision off the books, and because the Court refuses to do so, I must respectfully dissent.
Well, now we see the unholy fruits of “equity” admissions:
TJ for the first time dropped out of the top 10 of the US News list of top US high schools, falling from being number 1 2020-2022, to 5 in 2023, to now 14 in 2024 as its college readiness score and state test assessment scores fell dramatically. https://t.co/5VSumhBKIU
— Coalition for TJ #FightingForMerit (@coalitionforTJ) April 23, 2024
Did you catch that? TJ used to be the #1 ranked high school in the country. Not anymore.
Of course, the local mainstream news media tries to spin it as a good thing: What DC-area school is ranked as one of the best in the nation:
U.S. News & World Report released its latest rankings of the nation’s best high schools and one well-known school from the D.C. region remains part of the list.
Following controversial changes to its admissions policy in 2021 to boost diversity, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia remains the top ranked school in the D.C. region and 14th in the nation, slipping from the top 10….
Schools that emphasized graduation rates received higher consideration for the list of best schools, according to LaMont Jones, managing editor of education at U.S. News & World Report. He added that the top schools in the D.C. region also represent some of the best students from underrepresented demographic groups based on race and income.
“They are pretty much firing on all of those cylinders,” Jones said.
I’m not so sure TJ’s parents and the parents of students who are objectively superior but denied admission would agree:
Terrible. If the ultimate goal was to make this competitive school less attractive to future potential students, families, then the school board has achieved its goal.
— Atse (@atse12345) April 23, 2024
Sad to see jealousy, pettiness and desire for social media stardom among local officials lead to the decline of what was the best high school in America for generations. Sadly, this will only get worse as Dem politicians double down on bad ideas.
— Joe Capra (@JoeCapra) April 23, 2024
Such is the result of “equity” admissions.
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Comments
Rename school after Malcom X? Race based admissions quotas? No grade less than B?
Because “equity”.
It means getting a share of the fail. Gratz.
What a joke. Glad my son graduated from the Fairfax system before it completes its race to the bottom.
The Catholic Schools( K-12) are over-subscribed in Northern Virginia. The Diocese keeps raising tuition, in hopes of deterring applicants, but parents want out of the public schools in both Loudoun and Fairfax counties. Parents want a return to normal; a traditional education. In some cases, enrolled students professing to be of non-catholic denominations or not affiliated is as high as 20% of total enrollment.
“Board members have said they hope the new process increases Black and Hispanic representation in the student body.”
Why? Would forcing them into the school change their focus, work ethic, study habits, pre-requisite grades, test scores, home environment, or dare I ask, IQ?
Or is this just another example of identifying a respected institution, killing it, gutting it and wearing its carcass as a suit, while demanding the respect it had formerly earned?
Soon a diploma from TJHS will be as worthless as one from any other inner city D.C. school. A certificate of survival, not proof of education attained.
DEI
Didn’t
Earn
It
Hey, TJ, how’s that pet negro thing working out?
The ones worst off are the Negroes who actually DO have what it takes to get good grades, be they at Jefferson or at other high-ranked schools.
They will forever be seen as quota admissions, and quota-hires.
You are absolutely right. It will hurt all three or four of them.
As predicted by Amy Wax.
Guess who selected the SCOTUS judges who made the difference in this decision? Hint: The same person who selected Sessions, Rosenstein, Barr and Wray. (ACB will turn out to be a suitable replacement for RBG before too long.)
There you go, blaspheming The Savior again.
Thomas Jefferson High School’s trajectory is clear. This happened in cities all over America.
At the time I attended HS it was rated top in the country, that school district is now one of the worst in the country, all because of busing and and an influx of mostly morons. Just one unruly student is enough to decrease quality of a class, more than that makes learning nearly impossible.
Busing killed Fairfax High in Los Angeles as well. When it was just students from its assigned geographic territory, it took tons of scholarships, fights and other problems were VERY rare as were pregnancies, and we had the worst athletic teams in the Los Angeles City School District, and we took a perverse sense of pride in that. Grade averages were very high, and proficiency scores were through the roof.
Within about five or ten years after I left (class of ’67), Fairfax had safe zones and combat zones. Constant fights, vandalism, teen pregnancies, and the floor fell out from underneath performance measurements. But, the athletic teams got far better.
I referred to scholarships we took. They were academic ones, not ones issued to proficient tacklers and ball bouncers.
Those who can, teach. Those who cannot teach become coaches and then administrators.
What is happening at Thomas Jefferson is shameful. Thanks, Randi Weingarten.
Whoa! Didn’t see that coming!! /sarc Fairfax county contains the blue spillover (read it: sewage) from DC, and is mostly responsible for turning VA “blue,”
Merit is the only accurate indicator of intelligence and ability. Anything else is tacit admission that “protected races” are underperforming because they can’t compete.
The soft bigotry of low expectations rears its ugly DEI head again. The Democrats are responsible for this actual systemic racism.
Equality rejects racism; “equity” demands it.
The law ought to require tossing 20 straight heads in a row to be as probable as tossing 10 heads in 20 tosses. Then blacks would have the equal proportions in elite schools.
As it is, the blacks admitted on merit are 5-sigma blacks, really really rare if amazing.
Of course the left is winning–
Unfortunately, several years ago, the Fairfax County, Virginia, school board ditched traditional standardized tests and admission selections based on the best students available and moved to an “equity” formula designed to boost admissions for middle school students identifying as racial minorities.
Identifying as?
Can you say DEI infiltration?
Stop using their language.
I wrote that on purpose because one of the dirty little secrets of admissions is that you can claim to be whatever you want and schools don’t check. So you can get a major bump and not even be what you claim to be.
You mean like Liawatha/Fauxahauntis did?
Why can’t Fairfax County, VA meet the market demands of its student population by creating one or more additional science-tech focused high schools among its many county high schools in order for these additional well-qualified students to receive this type of education that they value?
A simple, but glaring case of market failure … !
Pretending that any program run by the government and funded with money extracted indiscriminately from the general public under threat of force is a “market-responsive” program is the first of perhaps roughly a dozen irrefutable explanations.
merit has been defined,,by lefty,,as a white mans construct
(obviously except when it comes to sports)
so our continued kneeling to the left ( especially by the gop ) is only leading to a more and more solidified 3rd world country status that the elites strive towards
Enjoy all that new diversity-fueled strength, assholes.
LOL.
“of those cylinders” … That’s not the expression, LaMont. Sheesh.
LaMont – MANAGING EDITOR OF EDUCATION at US News and World Report …
US News and World Report should have let you stay quietly in the background collecting your residuals from reruns of Sanford And Son rather than giving you editorial duties that you are, obviously, unqualified for.
There’s some chemical in the water . . . I think it’s cowardice covalently bound to stupidity. It’s lethal.
From Alito’s dissent: [Q]What the Fourth Circuit majority held, in essence, is that intentional racial discrimination is constitutional so long as it is not too severe.[/Q]
John Kerry, 2015.[Q] “We will be able to hold Bashar Assad accountable without engaging in troops on the ground, or any other prolonged kind of effort, in a very limited, very targeted, very short-term effort,” Kerry said. He further emphasized that it would be an “unbelievably small, limited kind of effort.” [/Q]
Joe Biden 2022: [Q] President Joe Biden’s prediction that Russia will invade Ukraine and his suggestion that the West’s response could be more muted for a “minor” incursion drew swift criticism from Washington to Kyiv, with some accusing him of giving Russia the green light to attack. [/Q]
How …. unexpected.
Excellence in anything that is not a criminal activity is now considered heresy in this country, as it goes downhill.
Subotai Bahadur
Forget it, Jake. It’s a government school.
So far, the only commenter here who seems to “get it” is venril.
Nuclear Realist suggests that the government bureaucracy, “meet the market demands of its student population”. When has a government bureaucracy met market demands?
The culprits here are parents and churches who expect government bureaucracies to meet their children’s needs.
Oh, the bureaucracy always meets its market demand. It’s just that its market is only occasionally
the voters
If the parents can get enough money together, they could try a home school project by stealing the better teachers from TJ.
It’d be really funny if TJ dropped to 3,000th.
So, if the goal is to get more black people into TJ High, why aren’t they taking the best and brightest in the black school community and giving them special classes to get them up to the same level and the students now getting into the school, without fudging the requirements? I know the simple answer, politicians want black people to believe they’re doing something for them, when in truth, they’re just holding them back and dragging everyone else down.
The Biden Department of Education makes it clear to public school districts. Do you want funding, from the US? Then, you will employ every policy and engage in every directive that we give you or lose the funding.
Reminds me of the (undoubtedly apocryphal) story of this bakery that prided itself on the quality of its products, so much so that it ground its own flour from wheat it specially procured from one farmer.
One day the shipment of wheat came in contaminated with rat droppings. The bakery wrote back to the farmer, “We were surprised to find in your latest shipment a significant quantity of rat droppings mixed with the wheat. If this was accidental, we would ask that you give more attention to quality control of your shipments.
“If, however, you have decided that we must accept a certain amount of rat droppings along with your quality grain, we would ask that you package the rat droppings separately and we will determine what mix is satisfactory.”