http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0612/thomasson_dan.php3Quota system would dilute school's quality
By Dan K. Thomasson
Jewish World Review
One of the nation's top-ranked public high schools has run into a problem it probably never thought it would have to deal with, and many educators believe it portends some difficult times ahead for efforts to promote the nation's best and brightest students.
After several decades of rewarding excellence, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology finds itself with a third of its entering class facing remedial instruction in the very things for which they were supposed to be selected: math and related subjects. The culprit seems to be none other than political correctness, stemming from pressures to achieve diversity in its enrollment.
More on Thomas Jefferson High School admissions:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...issions/2012/07/19/gJQAL011wW_story.htmlFairfax school board debates Thomas Jefferson High admissions
by Emma Brown
Washington Post
July 19, 2012
A majority of Fairfax County School Board members said Thursday they would favor changing admission policies for the prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, addressing a perennial concern about underrepresented minority groups and more recent consternation about a spike in the number of students struggling to meet the school’s rigorous academic demands.
“We seem to have the worst of both worlds, unfortunately,” said Sandy Evans (Mason), speaking before a standing-room-only crowd at the school system’s headquarters in Falls Church. “We’ve got students being admitted now who are not prepared to do the work, and we also have not increased diversity.”
Seven out of 11 present members said they favored considering making some degree of change as early as this year. Many said some measures — such as middle-school grades and scores on the TJ math admission test — should count for more than they do now, while essays should count for less.
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Partially in response to school board's deliberations, the NAACP has sued:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...alleges/2012/07/23/gJQAPOIO5W_story.htmlThomas Jefferson H.S., Fairfax schools shut out blacks and Latinos, complaint alleges
by Emma Brown
Washington Post
July 23, 2012
The disproportionately low number of black and Latino students admitted to Fairfax County’s prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology — long a subject of debate — has triggered a federal civil rights complaint.
The 17-page complaint was filed with the U.S. Department of Education on Monday by the Coalition of The Silence, an advocacy group led by former county School Board member Tina Hone, and the Fairfax chapter of the NAACP.
The complaint alleges that black and Latino students, as well as students with disabilities, are being shut out of Thomas Jefferson, or TJ, long before they apply in eighth grade because of Fairfax County Public Schools’ systematic failure to identify them for gifted-education programs that begin in elementary school.
Fairfax school officials could not comment because they had not had a chance to review the complaint, said spokesman John Torre.
The school system does not have numerical targets for minority enrollment at TJ. But officials have tried in recent years to increase the number of members of underrepresented student groups at the school.
Admissions experts visit every middle school to encourage and help prospective applicants; teachers are required in their recommendation letters to explain how students would contribute to diversity at the school; and the admissions process has been tweaked several times in an effort to capture the full range of students’ abilities. Some promising minority students are tapped for math and science enrichment programs.
Even so, the admissions gap persists.
Hone said she and others decided to file the complaint partly because they felt longstanding concerns about diversity at TJ have been drowned out in recent months by a new worry: that the admissions process is failing to identify the brightest math and science students.
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It is not the job of the government to equalize results.
