Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Quota system would dilute school's quality

More on Thomas Jefferson High School admissions:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...issions/2012/07/19/gJQAL011wW_story.html
Fairfax 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.

...

Partially in response to school board's deliberations, the NAACP has sued:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local...alleges/2012/07/23/gJQAPOIO5W_story.html
Thomas 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.

************************************

It is not the job of the government to equalize results.

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/08/aa_at_tj_redux.html
AUGUST 20, 2012
AA at TJ Redux
Bryan Caplan

Remember how GMU law professor Lloyd Cohen used the Freedom of Information Act to test for the extent of affirmative action at Thomas Jefferson High School? Nine years after Cohen filed an official complaint, the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights finally got back to him. They find his case unconvincing.

**********************************************

More at the site, and statistical data on admissions is at

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/12/how_much_aa_at.html
DECEMBER 13, 2007
How Much AA at TJ?
Bryan Caplan

Two essays by Cohen on TJ admissions are

http://www.albanylawreview.org/archives/67/1/strawmenfibsandotheracademicsins.pdf
Straw Men, Fibs, And Other Academic Sins

and

http://mason.gmu.edu/~lcohen2/Cohen%20Final%20Final.doc
A Study Of Invidious Racial Discrimination In Admissions At Thomas Jefferson High School For Science And Technology: Monty Python And Franz Kafka Meet A Probit Regression

If you try too hard to push healthy food that people don't like to eat, it just gets thrown away, as this article describes. Furthermore, what's healthy depends on the individual.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/nyregion/healthier-school-lunches-face-student-rejection.html
No Appetite for Good-for-You School Lunches
By VIVIAN YEE
New York Times
October 5, 2012

...

They are high school students, and their complaint is about lunch — healthier, smaller and more expensive than ever.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which required public schools to follow new nutritional guidelines this academic year to receive extra federal lunch aid, has created a nationwide version of the age-old parental challenge: persuading children to eat what is good for them.

Because the lunches must now include fruits and vegetables, those who clamor for more cheese-laden nachos may find string beans and a peach cup instead. Because of limits on fat and sodium, some of those who crave French fries get baked sweet-potato wedges. Because of calorie restrictions, meat and carbohydrate portions are smaller. Gone is 2-percent chocolate milk, replaced by skim.

“Before, there was no taste and no flavor,” said Malik Barrows, a senior at Automotive High School in Brooklyn, who likes fruit but said his classmates threw away their mandatory helpings on the cafeteria floor. “Now there’s no taste, no flavor and it’s healthy, which makes it taste even worse.”