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Rallying to Protect Admissions Standards at America’s Best Public High School
by Asra Q. Nomani and Glenn Miller
Quillette
September 23, 2020

This week, a group of about 200 students, parents, alumni, and concerned local residents flooded the sidewalk in front of America’s number-one-ranked public high school—Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia. This was no back-to-school event. It was a rally to save the soul of the school itself.

The parents included Norma Muñoz, a Peruvian immigrant who told us she was there to “fight for TJ” (as the school is known locally). Other parents were from China, India, and South Korea. They stepped forward, one by one, to describe their families’ journeys—from marching in Tiananmen Square decades ago to arriving in the United States with only dollars in their pockets.

“I came here for freedom,” said Yuyan Zhou, a Chinese-American woman who’s spent eight years as a TJ parent. “Moral courage is the only solution for this madness. Stand up for your rights. Stand up for your values. Fight for the future of our students!”

And what is this “madness” Ms. Zhou describes? Since early June, a small but vocal group of TJ alumni have worked with activist school-board members, state education officials, politicians, and even TJ’s principal, to undermine the school’s selective admissions process. Their language consistently channels fashionable academic doctrines such as critical race theory (popularly known as CRT), which presuppose that all of society’s institutions are embedded with implicit forms of white supremacy.

The result is a proposal to replace the existing race-blind, merit-based TJ admissions system of standardized tests, grade rankings, essays, and teacher recommendations with a process based on random selection from among applicants who have a core class GPA of 3.5 or greater (and are currently enrolled in algebra). Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) Superintendent Scott Brabrand has branded this proposed new system a “merit lottery.”

Twenty years ago, 70 percent of TJ students were white. Today, 79 percent are minority, mostly from immigrant Asian families, many of whom fled persecution and economic privation. This shift in TJ’s student body has included a large drop in white students, who now account for only 19 percent of total admissions; while black and Hispanic admissions have remained relatively unchanged, at about two percent and three percent respectively. The activists seeking to eliminate TJ’s meritocratic admissions systems attribute this latter result to systemic racism.

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Thank you for sharing another compelling article, Bostonian.
If I understand correctly, there are groups both in favor of lottery-based admissions, and opposed to the lottery.
Some want admissions to be based on merit, others on demographic quotas.

After reading the article, I was curious for more information, and clicked through the list of links to related articles.
This one on educational equity especially caught my eye:

Look Who’s Talking About Educational Equity
by Lyell Asher
August 12, 2020
Quillette

Who's talking about educational equity?
College Presidents.
This is some of what is being said...
The roots of today's critical race theory (CRT) and approach to achieving equity were documented by Manning Johnson in 1958.
In Chapter 7, pages 47-50 are focused on education. A brief snippet follows.
His whistle-blowing book can be accessed and read online.

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UPDATE: As of March 2022, Manning Johnson's website is no longer active, however it has been archived many times over the years.
1) Read his book online, FREE:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220205041255/http://manningjohnson.org/book/CCCS_Contents.html
Reprints of his book are also widely available.

2) Listen to his farewell address posted online:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220206095915/http://manningjohnson.org/speech/Manning_Johnson--Farewell_Address-32k.mp3 (36:18)

3) Follow along with transcript of Manning Johnson's "Farewell Address"
https://web.archive.org/web/20210731144351/http://www.manningjohnson.org/speech/transcript.html
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DD's school is similar. Decades ago, mostly white, now about 80% Chinese, a few other asian groups and then white about 12%. Hunter, in NYC is about the same, Styvescant, where Harvard takes about 25 students out of 700, is about the same. All exam based admissions. In NYC, the elementary level gifted are choice based on scores, so that DD's school was all 99% percentile in score. The pace was a certain way. When we moved to Toronto in 4th grade, the gifted was just a class at the local school and I think anyone over 90% percentile and the class was much different. TJ is going to be a certain way because of the exam based entrance. If your kid cannot get in, he/she shouldn't be there. It will be too hard. Even with exam based admissions, but most of the kids come in 7th grade, the science and math are accelerated, some kids start to have some math issues by 9th grade if they are not at a certain level. There is no fall back lower math until data in 11th grade. Why don't parents see that if you lower the standards, the school loses its cache as a strong math/science school?

Trying to remedy inequality in STEM at that point is often too late; that's why BEAM exists. It provides math enrichment, support, and advising for low-income and underrepresented minority students so that they have the background to access better schools and colleges.

I wish it was available in more areas.

AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) is a program also intended to help students maximize their education.

Thanks for the BEAM link. I agree with you. In this digital era, it should be possible to cater for every student in every school, to learn at the appropriate pace for them. DS didn’t want to travel hours per day to attend one of the top selective schools, so we convinced our local school (which caters for students with a wide range of abilities) to implement digital resources which support individualised learning. It’s been great - if he were at the top selective school, I doubt he would be doing any better and he has plenty of free time to delve into any topic of interest to him (full disclosure - we’ve never supported the idea of coaching colleges but earlier this year, we did privately engage a postgrad maths scholar as an online tutor and he is now doing some third year Uni maths).

ETA: Maths Online is available to schools in our Australian state at a cost of $12 per annum for each student. The STAR literacy program costs even less.

Yes, thanks for bringing BEAM to our attention. I notice it is a collaborative project with AoPS and quite a number of big players in STEM industry, education and nonprofits.

This same thing came up 8 years ago! See link to this story: Thomas Jefferson HS and remediation.

Also see this story in the Washington Post: Remediation at TJ HS

They must have changed their admissions system back to test-only and now want to change it again (?).

The thing that bothers me the most about the lottery approach to selective high schools is that it 1) takes away slots from kids who've earned them and 2) provides slots to a very few kids in the target groups while ignoring the vast majority of other kids in the same group. All the kids in a disadvantaged may be suffering from problems that can affect their achievement, but the majority of them seem to get ignored when the discussion focuses on schools with highly selective admissions.

Personally, I prefer the idea of Middle College as a high school option. Middle College is a dual enrollment program, typically with a community college and typically free. Two of my kids took this route as part of the local school district. It has a ton of advantages: free college (one of mine got a free AS), being able to take college classes while still in an environment where people will help you adapt to the demands of college and etc. etc. Not to mention being taught by people who tend to be highly qualified.

I like the middle college/early college high school model a lot too. We have a similar option in my school, which is heavily populated with families without college experience, and many students who don't perceive themselves as academic. Any student 10th grade and up can elect to take a course, starting with one entry-level course paired with a support course, proceedinig potentially to a full course load of core academics in 11th and 12th grades (electives still at the high school), typically in a high school-aged cohort, which then results in an AA degree. There are DE coordinators at both the college and the high school tracking all of these students, and a support class run by the high school throughout the process.

This has huge advantages especially for first-generation college students, who both don't have the benefit of prior college experience coming from their families, and also often don't have the financial resources to start college without working at the same time. Plus, in our state, an AA or AS degree from a CC, with a minimum GPA, guarantees admission with full transfer of credits to at least one of the state four years, typically at reduced tuition.