DOJ civil rights probe into TJ admissions policies

[Anonymous]

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https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/21/politics/doj-thomas-jefferson-high-school-fairfax

How does this impact next year's admissions process? Should students prepare for just the essay or will they be tested in middle school math, science and English?

Maybe they could get rid of experience factors and go back to an objective test. Keeping the 1.5% seat allocation will ensure that every middle school has representation at the school every jurisdiction funds with taxes.

But bottom half of fcps schools dont have enough applicants to fill even the 1.5% seat allocation, making it difficult to get to the desired diversity chart. Experience factors and non-academic criteria like essays help get to the predetermined ethnicity mix, whether it is stem qualified or not.

True.

Experience factors =

1) Economic Disadvantage: free or reduced-price lunch (FARMs)

2) English as a Second Language (ESL): enrolled in school programs designed for non-native English speakers, and

3) Special Education Needs: Students with Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) or Section 504 plans.

Experience factors account for 40% of the TJ admission standard total.

But they are all struggling at TJ with Cs & Ds, when they could thrive at their base school with As and Bs. Why are they being used as political props to satisfy a mere diversity chart?

Ugh, none of those factors, 1,2, or 3 qualifies a student for TJ, but what proof is there that they are struggling with C's & D's? And can NAACP really get traction if kids who aren't admitted have lesser scores on objective testing, even if it appears to be disparate impact if you only take race into account?

We don't know their grades other than anecdotally. But anecdotally, kids from some schools struggle more than others, especially in math.
We also know that the kids going back to their base school tend to be more prevalent at less academically rigorous schools

FCPS has basically given up on actually helping these kids teach their potential but also don't want to feel bad about having given up on these kids. So they try to get them into TJ where they will frequently fail and call it a day.

NAACP can't actually win a lawsuit but they can make woke white people feel bad.

I see that back in the 2016-17 school year, well before the admissions changes, 25 TJ kids had left over the course of the school year through April. This year the number is 13.

It doesn't seem kids are bailing on TJ more than in the past. Maybe the curriculum has adjusted to accommodate less advanced students, but that's a different question.

Wasn’t last year 50 kids left from freshman class?

significantly higher than that. In a scramble to backfill those vacancies, there’s aggressive outreach to top feeder base schools, urging students to apply as froshmores in 10th grade. Leaving those seats unfilled would draw criticism of the non-merit essay admission process. But entering TJ in 10th is a nightmare, without having the advantage of getting acclimated as freshman.

Proof?

Aren't you the one flooding this forum pleading top feeders to apply as froshmores?

DP. I am one of the posters encouraging people to apply as froshmores. I don't care if it's they're coming from Carson or Twain, just need to backfill the classes. Funding is based on headcount and they are going to fill those spots, it would be nice if the froshmores were smart

Bigger question is why are unqualified being made freshman offers knowing well many of them quit in freshmen, and then backfill the vacancies later by soliciting qualified students to apply as froshmores in 10th while depriving them of freshman experience? Why these manipulative race based admissions games with students academics?

+1 It's okay for a competitive admissions based school to choose the best and the brightest. Of course, this presumes no "cheating" by which I define seeing the test/answers in advance or getting someone else to take the test (or write the essay) for you (a la the college admissions scandal). Studying/prepping is okay. But admission should not be based on quotas (whether geographic, racial, religious, etc) nor experience factors. It's not just about being fair to the kids who lose out to poorer students; it's also about the best use of taxpayer resources and the common good. We need to produce the best mathematicians, engineers, and scientists possible and that means vetting all the kids the same way. Otherwise, given the demographics, the US will not have the human capital it needs to compete with other countries. Then we all lose.

That depends on whether you view acceptance to TJ as an end result or a beginning. If you see it as an end result, i.e., the best and the brightest should receive acceptance solely on their current merit as assessed by a test and that is the end of the issue, than the issue seems pretty black and white. The goal is completing an admissions cohort to TJ that, in a snapshot in time of 14 year olds, proves the highest level of achievement and knowledge assessment and that is the clearest and most efficient way to achieve that goal.

However, if you view acceptance to TJ as a beginning, where students have access to an amazing public resource where those with incredible academic potential are challenged and provided with the highest level of academic resources available to them in the FCPS school system, then we need to do all we can to better identify those students who may possess this potential including identifying barriers that some students with that potential may face. And that is not always recognized by a snapshot in time where a student can score the highest on a test, when we all know that some students in this county have access to better resources to prepare them for that one snapshot in time than others. But that doesn't mean that other students would not achieve success at TJ if provided with those resources and rise to meet the challenges of its curriculum.

I'm all for taking into account multiple standardized tests/dates to alleviate the "snapshot" issue and to address a kid having a bad testing day. But there is no way that we can pretend that the lower scoring kids will have an equal chance at success at TJ. It's kind of like a PP said, the best shot that URM have may be is to have had different parents. Like being adopted by Asian parents.

Come on, the modern science is mainly developed by white scientists.
But, yes, ancient Indians created Arabic numerals. Maybe some ethical groups do have some genic advantages ? To balance this, maybe FCPS should add sports, especially basketball and football, into the admission cohort evaluation.

American Indians are helping run Microsoft, Google, IBM, Adobe, etc. What does that have to do with FCPS and TJ?

Usually American Indians means something different than Indian Americans.

Columbus created this confusion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If equity for POC was the goal, then why did white enrollment increase? it's so obvious what is going on.

White enrollment increased more than you think, since most Hispanics are white. I have no idea why non-disadvantaged middle and upper middle class white Hispanics are considered URMs.

Because the whole point of identity politics is to avoid judging people based on their individual circumstances or merit and to judge them instead as a member of an identity group.

If you are black or Hispanic you are considered disadvantaged even if your parents/family are wealthy and educated.

Meanwhile if you are white (or Asian) you are presumed to be advantaged even if your family was dirt poor and uneducated.

You missed the point. Hispanic is a vaguely defined ethnicity and not a race. About half of all hispanic people in america are just as white as everyone else. Your grandparent was born in spain? You're hispanic. Your family moved from Europe to Latin America after WWII, and then a generation later moved to the US. Now, you're hispanic, too. Any regular white European who has any times to a spanish speaking country seems to be hispanic.

Non-white hispanic kids will at least face some level of discrimination due to their skin color, even if they are higher SES. White ones are no different from any other white people, yet they can backdoor into URM programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is there any evidence that TJ graduates are genuinely pushing science innovation in the US? Are TJ grads producing patents or winning research grants at higher rates than the rest of the population? Are they creating the medical innovations extending our lives or the engineering innovations reducing greenhouse gas emissions? (I'm not sure working for Facebook counts as innovation.)

Do we really know that hothousing kids creates the innovation we are seeking? I went to an Ivy. My college classmates who came from magnet high schools have pretty much the same level of success as everyone else.

I know a few TJ, Stuyvesant, and Bronx HS for Science grads who might fit this category, but also did a quick AI inquiry. Without independently validating or proving causation, there were quite a few (more from the two NY schools which have been around much longer).

A sampling:
quite a few Nobel prize winners; Turing award winners; Godel prize winner; Fields medal winner; Carl Sagan; co-creators of computer programming languages, cryptography, etc; CEOs or founders at Reddit, BuzzFeed, HuffPost, Singularity.NET, Humanize; professors in technical fields at many of the top universities like Harvard, University of Penn, Columbia, Princeton; as wells as physicists, geneticists, string theorists, mathematicians, and the like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:TJ has been more trouble than it’s worth for a long time. Miyares doesn’t want to close TJ down. They want to use TJ as a prop to appeal to Asian voters in the fall elections. The SB should call their bluff, shut TJ down, and return TJ to use as a community school. It takes up way too much time and attention while other problems in FCPS are ignored year after year.

Seems like the only practical solution.

[Anonymous]

Agree. TJ is not serving for its original purpose. It's netter turn it into a neighborhood high school. But TJ is a governor school. Maybe the new governor, who will be a Democrat for sure, will do something about it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This won't work. If they contend the 10 percent policy isn't lawful, say goodbye to UVA for the rest of the state. They get massive boosts compared to NOVA.

UVA denies this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This won't work. If they contend the 10 percent policy isn't lawful, say goodbye to UVA for the rest of the state. They get massive boosts compared to NOVA.

Just about every college values geographic diversity.

They didn't used to. This started with holistic admissions when they were trying to keep out the Jews

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agree. TJ is not serving for its original purpose. It's netter turn it into a neighborhood high school. But TJ is a governor school. Maybe the new governor, who will be a Democrat for sure, will do something about it

Original purpose was merit based.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree. TJ is not serving for its original purpose. It's netter turn it into a neighborhood high school. But TJ is a governor school. Maybe the new governor, who will be a Democrat for sure, will do something about it

Original purpose was merit based.

I think it is still merit base.
GPA, class rank, your achievements, your passion, your EC’s that you can show on your essay writing skill .. is a merit base.
Unless your only definition of merit is pass the test than can heavily be prepped with $$$

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This won't work. If they contend the 10 percent policy isn't lawful, say goodbye to UVA for the rest of the state. They get massive boosts compared to NOVA.

Just about every college values geographic diversity.

They didn't used to. This started with holistic admissions when they were trying to keep out the Jews

They also didn’t used to admit anyone who wasn’t a white man.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Agree. TJ is not serving for its original purpose. It's netter turn it into a neighborhood high school. But TJ is a governor school. Maybe the new governor, who will be a Democrat for sure, will do something about it

Original purpose was merit based.

I think it is still merit base.
GPA, class rank, your achievements, your passion, your EC’s that you can show on your essay writing skill .. is a merit base.
Unless your only definition of merit is pass the test than can heavily be prepped with $$$

DP
Agreed, there is merit in the process.
Just the self selection involved in who applies creates a merit filter but standardized testing also measures merit. It measures more along an axis that GPA and extracurricular do not.

When they eliminated using, they intentionally removed one of the most reliable measures of merit we have in measuring academic development.

[Anonymous]

The whole reason they eliminated the test was because it created too high of a barrier for URMs. Do a quick google search for FCpS board docs and you will see that they clearly state that. They were not able to get to their desired racial makeup of the school with having an admissions test (no matter what test it was) because not enough URMs could score the 50% or 60% needed to move to the second round.

The board docs also show that they added experience factor bonus points and discussed how many points would be needed to make the desired racial makeup/FRM student number go up.

Yes, students “prepped” for the test. Literally any high achieving student prepares for tests. No prep centers had all of the questions with answers. They had study materials and past test questions they could use. This is the same for when kids prep for SOLs, SATs, admissions to Stuyavesant, etc. Amazon had prep books for $20 or less.

The fact still remains that students who scored below 50% are not the top stem students and shouldn’t be going to TJ. 3.5 GPA in middle school isn’t a very high barrier, especially considering the FCPS retake policy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The whole reason they eliminated the test was because it created too high of a barrier for URMs. Do a quick google search for FCpS board docs and you will see that they clearly state that. They were not able to get to their desired racial makeup of the school with having an admissions test (no matter what test it was) because not enough URMs could score the 50% or 60% needed to move to the second round.

The board docs also show that they added experience factor bonus points and discussed how many points would be needed to make the desired racial makeup/FRM student number go up.

Yes, students “prepped” for the test. Literally any high achieving student prepares for tests. No prep centers had all of the questions with answers. They had study materials and past test questions they could use. This is the same for when kids prep for SOLs, SATs, admissions to Stuyavesant, etc. Amazon had prep books for $20 or less.

The fact still remains that students who scored below 50% are not the top stem students and shouldn’t be going to TJ. 3.5 GPA in middle school isn’t a very high barrier, especially considering the FCPS retake policy.

The TJ application booths are wide open for anyone to apply, no entrance test required, like the STEM carnival that awaits everyone willing to put in the hardwork.

Even after removing the test, for 550 available seats, there are less than 400 URM applications, about the same as when the test was still in place.

What could be the reason for this lack of interest in STEM among URMs? Should TJ curriculum standard be lowered to make it convenient for URMs to consider TJ? In contrast, there are about 1700 asian american applicants and about 500 caucasian applicants, who somehow seem to be eager to learn STEM. What can done to encourage URMs to put in similar hardwork to prep for the difficult STEM subjects like calculus, electromagnetism, dna science, organic chemistry, machine learning, etc?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The whole reason they eliminated the test was because it created too high of a barrier for URMs. Do a quick google search for FCpS board docs and you will see that they clearly state that. They were not able to get to their desired racial makeup of the school with having an admissions test (no matter what test it was) because not enough URMs could score the 50% or 60% needed to move to the second round.

The board docs also show that they added experience factor bonus points and discussed how many points would be needed to make the desired racial makeup/FRM student number go up.

Yes, students “prepped” for the test. Literally any high achieving student prepares for tests. No prep centers had all of the questions with answers. They had study materials and past test questions they could use. This is the same for when kids prep for SOLs, SATs, admissions to Stuyavesant, etc. Amazon had prep books for $20 or less.

The fact still remains that students who scored below 50% are not the top stem students and shouldn’t be going to TJ. 3.5 GPA in middle school isn’t a very high barrier, especially considering the FCPS retake policy.

The TJ application booths are wide open for anyone to apply, no entrance test required, like the STEM carnival that awaits everyone willing to put in the hardwork.

Even after removing the test, for 550 available seats, there are less than 400 URM applications, about the same as when the test was still in place.

What could be the reason for this lack of interest in STEM among URMs? Should TJ curriculum standard be lowered to make it convenient for URMs to consider TJ? In contrast, there are about 1700 asian american applicants and about 500 caucasian applicants, who somehow seem to be eager to learn STEM. What can done to encourage URMs to put in similar hardwork to prep for the difficult STEM subjects like calculus, electromagnetism, dna science, organic chemistry, machine learning, etc?

Universal lottery system. Mix up all of the ESs/MSs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If equity for POC was the goal, then why did white enrollment increase? it's so obvious what is going on.

White enrollment increased more than you think, since most Hispanics are white. I have no idea why non-disadvantaged middle and upper middle class white Hispanics are considered URMs.

Because the whole point of identity politics is to avoid judging people based on their individual circumstances or merit and to judge them instead as a member of an identity group.

If you are black or Hispanic you are considered disadvantaged even if your parents/family are wealthy and educated.

Meanwhile if you are white (or Asian) you are presumed to be advantaged even if your family was dirt poor and uneducated.

Exactly.

Identity politics in this case involves the identity of young children. The party pushing identity politics demands we examine the child’s skin color, then place children into different baskets. Some baskets are given advantages over other baskets.

To keep public advantages from going to white children, we used to divide whites from everyone else by calling everyone else “minorities,” and just assuming that white racism disadvantaged all minorities.

But then that one party noticed certain dark skinned groups of children performed even better than whites, despite the old working theory about every white having every unearned advantage (might even say, maybe “privilege”).

So, to that certain divisive, pro-basket party, the problem became:

- how can that party keep those dark-skinned Indians and Asian children from getting into TJ? They came up with a proxy for race, and they continue to call it “experience factors.”

That party is the democrat party, of course, and they really are quite racist; they are obsessed with dividing children and tying to gain political advantage through race (as well as other “identities”).

I personally believe the democrats’ racism is un-American and it is offensive to the meritocracy this country was founded upon.

Hopefully, the courts agree.