Shining the spotlight on discrimination at the top public high school in the nation
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CounterCurrent:
Racial Engineering at America’s Top STEM High School
Shining the spotlight on discrimination at the top public high school in the nation
CounterCurrent is the National Association of Scholars’ weekly newsletter, bringing you the biggest issues in academia and our responses to them.
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Category: Racial Preferences; Reading Time: ~2 minutes
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** Featured Article - Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board: The Shape of Things to Come? by Louis K. Bonham ([link removed])
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Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has developed a fondness for the public spotlight. Routinely ranked the top public high school ([link removed]) in the country, Thomas Jefferson High School (TJ) is known for its rigorous STEM curriculum and boasts a 100% pass rate for Advanced Placement (AP) exams. Until recently, the school was also known for its notoriously difficult entrance exam, which guaranteed that the students who were accepted into the school were prepared for its rigor.
With such bright students, it should be no surprise that TJ often enjoys the attention of the academic world. But lately, TJ has been in the news for another reason entirely: its blatant and aggressive discrimination against Asian-American students.
Let’s rewind two years and start from the beginning.
Following the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, TJ joined the flood of schools scrambling to issue statements showcasing their support for racial equity. In a message to TJ students and families ([link removed]) , Principal Ann Bonitatibus declared that the school had a responsibility to “take actions that counter racism and discrimination” and expressed her regret that TJ’s student body “did not reflect the racial composition in [the Fairfax County Public School district].” Just three months later, the FCPS board unveiled its plan for a new “holistic” admissions system, which removed the long-standing test requirement and instead considered “experience factors” to identify and boost the applications of disadvantaged students.
To be clear, Thomas Jefferson High School has long been a majority-minority school: during the 2020-2021 school year, the student body was 72% Asian ([link removed]) . But unfortunately for Asian-American students who hope to attend TJ, the school board doesn’t believe their experiences contribute sufficiently to the diversity of the school.
The “holistic,” test-blind admissions system enabled TJ administrators to drastically decrease the percentage of Asian students in its effort to achieve racial balancing. For the 2021-2022 school year, the percentage of Asian students admitted dropped to 54% ([link removed]) —and based on the school’s own stated purpose ([link removed]) , the percentage will drop every year the holistic admissions system is in place.
The discrimination at Thomas Jefferson High School has not gone unchallenged. Armed with shockingly incriminatory messages ([link removed]) from school board members involved in revising the admissions process, a group of TJ students, parents, and alumni formed the Coalition for TJ ([link removed]) to challenge the discrimination in court. At the end of February, U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton ruled in their favor ([link removed]) and declared that the policy change constituted an illegal act of racial balancing.
In this week’s featured article ([link removed]) , MTC columnist and long-time lawyer Louis K. Bonham argues that the case was an easy one. The school board’s actions were blatantly discriminatory, and Judge Hilton was right to strike down their ill-conceived admissions policy:
As is exhaustively shown in the opinion, the Board’s rationale and statements show that they simply bought into the Kendian concept that over- or under-representation of any particular identity group is a sufficient justification for racial “balancing,” even if that requires discriminating against another group. …
The Court thus recognized what [commentators] have been saying for years: the Kendian concept of viewing every racial “imbalance” as sufficient justification for positive discrimination to achieve “balance” or “equity” is illegal under very well settled law. To me, the Court’s decision in this case was easy, and I hope it will inspire others to file similar challenges against DEI programs.
The battle isn’t over yet. Just a few days ago, FCPS requested a stay ([link removed]) of the judge’s ruling and asked that the school be allowed to keep using the holistic admissions system for the rest of the year. In reality, of course, the school board hopes to keep the discriminatory system in place long enough to appeal the decision—and then indefinitely after that.
The past two years have shown us that the Coalition for TJ is more than prepared for the next stage of the fight. Let’s hope that Judge Hilton’s initial verdict against TJ’s racial engineering is a sign of the victory to come.
Until next week.
Marina Ziemnick
Communications Associate
National Association of Scholars
Read More ([link removed])
For more on racial preferences and higher education:
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January 25, 2022
** We’ll See You in Court, After All ([link removed])
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Marina Ziemnick
The Supreme Court has propped up racial discrimination in this country for over four decades. It’s time for a new ruling to turn the tide.
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January 24, 2022
** [MTC] Anti-Asian Discrimination at the Heart of the Progressive Education Agenda ([link removed])
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Wenyuan Wu
A glaring skeleton in the closet of American education is its intentional and long-established discrimination against Asian Americans.
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November 17, 2020
** Surprise! Americans Oppose Discrimination ([link removed])
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John Rosenberg
When you spell out what "affirmative action" actually entails, Americans of every stripe vote against it. Race and sex preferences only pass when lawmakers obfuscate their true meaning.
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May 26, 2020
** Testing Affirmative Action ([link removed])
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George W. Dent and Hal R. Arkes
The Supreme Court has held that courts must strictly scrutinize systems that give preferences to people based on their race. Judges need to insist on disaggregated data and evidence that a university has truly proven that “diverse” classrooms lead to better education.
** About the NAS
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