S/o: brief factual history of TJ admissions and race (from Wikipedia)
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Anonymous
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Wiki presents a concise factual history of the demographics of TJ admissions and the related controversies, with attributions to reliable sources.
From the Wikipedia.org page on TJ: The admissions process and the demographics of the student body it produces, in particular the under-representation of black and Hispanic students relative to the school system overall, have been a source of controversy throughout the school's history. After the school's early graduating classes included relatively few black and Hispanic students, FCPS created a race-based affirmative action program to admit more black and Hispanic students.[33] The program was in effect for the admissions process for the graduating classes of 1997 through 2002; the county ended it because of legal challenges to similar programs.[33] Following the end of this program, the share of black and Hispanic students at the school decreased from 9.4 percent in 1997–98 to 3.5 percent in 2003–04.[33] Black and Hispanic students remained significantly under-represented at the school through the 2000s and 2010s.[34][35] In 2012, a civil rights complaint against the school was filed with the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights by Coalition of the Silence, an advocacy group led by former county School Board member Tina Hone, and the Fairfax chapter of the NAACP, alleging that it discriminated against black, Hispanic, and disabled students.[36][37] In response, the Office of Civil Rights, in September 2012, opened an investigation.[38][39] In 2020, the school board made a number of significant changes to the admissions process meant to increase the ratio of black and Hispanic students admitted. These included the elimination of the application fee; the increase of the number of admitted students from around 480 to 550; the elimination of an entrance exam; the allocation of seats to each middle school equal to 1.5% of their 8th grade student population; and the addition of "experience factors" including whether students are economically disadvantaged, English language learners, or special education students.[40] Following these changes, the proportion of black and Hispanic students admitted increased from 4.52% to 18.36% while the proportion of Asian Americans decreased from 73.05% to 54.36%.[29] The proportion of female students admitted also increased, from 41.80% to 46.00%,[29] and to 55.45% the next year.[30] In March 2021, the Coalition for TJ, an advocacy group opposed to the changes and represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, sued the Fairfax County school board, alleging that the 2020 changes to the admissions process discriminated against Asian Americans.[41] In February 2022, judge Claude M. Hilton of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board in the Coalition for TJ's favor and ordered the school to return to the previous admissions process.[42] The school board appealed the decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and in March 2022 that court issued a stay on the order that allowed the school to continue the new admissions process while the case was pending.[43] The Supreme Court of the United States rejected a request to vacate the stay in April 2022.[44] The case was heard in the court of appeals on September 16, 2022, and decided on May 23, 2023.[45] The Fourth Circuit, by a 2 to 1 vote, reversed the district court and restored the new admission plan. The Fourth Circuit's decision was appealed to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court rejected to review the case on February 20, 2024 with Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito dissenting from the denial.[46] “ Link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_High_School_for_Science_and_Technology I am well aware some will criticize Wiki as unreliable as many editors have access and could alter a Wiki page. The attributions through endnotes render this criticism meaningless IMO. Anyway,hope this information from Wiki reduces some of the confusion, mistakes, and misinformation which inevitably pops up in every DCUM topic about admission to TJ. |
Anonymous
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More data:
The number of Asian students enrolled at TJ has not decreased. If you look at the four years before the admissions change and the four years after, there are on average MORE Asian students at TJ today. 
It wasn't about reducing the number of Asian students; it was about adding others. It wasn't zero sum - they added seats to open up access to kids from across the county. There are just as many Asian students there today as there were before. NO DISCRIMINATION. |
Anonymous
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If you want the actual history of TJ's admissions process and every nuance, lawsuit, and change, please read the law review article of Professor George from Georgetown Univ. Law School that was published in the Fordam law review. A really interesting and factual read with footnotes and cites for every statement. The TJ discussion starts on page 1103.
https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2889&context=ulj |
Anonymous
PP, your premise (in all caps) of "no discrimination" is based solely on raw numbers. Your argument disregards the following Wiki section from the original post, above: " In 2020, the school board made a number of significant changes to the admissions process. . . Following these changes, the proportion of black and Hispanic students admitted increased from 4.52% to 18.36% while the proportion of Asian Americans decreased from 73.05% to 54.36%.[29] " In either case, other recent posts here suggest the advocacy group mentioned in the Wiki entry, (Coalition for TJ), may lodge another challenge to the 2020 admissions changes. However, that is speculative, and beyond the scope of the original poster's thread. |
Anonymous
Thanks PP! The factual history section, beginning on p. 1103 as you noted, adds depth and additional detail. I appreciate that; thx again. I am the OP. The initial premise of the published work, however, relies on several highly debatable premises, which badly taint the article. |
Anonymous
Is there Myth of Merit in NBA too? |
Anonymous
| OP, do you not have a life outside of TJ bashing? |
Anonymous
I have no dog in this fight as I live in MD, but saw nothing in OP’s post that could reasonably be considered “TJ bashing.” |
Anonymous
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TJ bashing or not, it doesnt matter.
FCPS has made it clear that Asian students overwhelmingly have the stem talent needed for TJ. This remains to be the fact before and after admissions change. prepping, wealthy feeders, test buying, etc... false accusations dont matter to FCPS. |
Anonymous
Thanks - I am OP, and I do not bash TJ; if any other TJ parent are reading this, I just got off the boosters call (my child is a freshman at TJ). I find the constant bickering here annoying, particularly when people in threads post opposing facts, which obviously cannot both be true. It is often so confusing. I simply wanted to post a starting point for some factual information and Wiki was a first step (albeit a basic one). Hopefully, future discussions regarding TJ admissions can take the high road without people resorting to posting distortions of the truth. |
Anonymous
When you create new seats and they are open to everyone but asians, that's discrimination. |
Anonymous
Where are you getting these numbers, they are incorrect. |
Anonymous
it's a law review article, these things cannot be written from any other perspective and hope to be published. |
Anonymous
Well, some people are deliberately trying to confuse you. |
Anonymous
Your chart shows the Discrimination and race based manipulation. Asian students were excluded from participating in expanded seat quota, while the others count went from 506 to 833. |