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Disappointed with lack of diversity at a top school
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Anonymous
Where do you live? There is little or no diversity in my suburban public schools. |
Anonymous
Yes, PP where do you live? Does your school include a magnet program that is balanced racially? Are the children and parents of the majority befriending those from more diverse backgrounds? Or is the school filled with cliques aplenty? |
Anonymous
Out of curiosity, I checked the stats for Thomas Jefferson (http://schoolprofiles.fcps.edu/schlprfl/f?p=108:13:3912673738807507:::  0_CURRENT_SCHOOL_ID:300). Not nearly as diverse as I would have guessed. 1-2% AA, 2-3% Hispanic, 1-2% reduced-price lunches.
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Anonymous
| 42% Asian or Pacific Islander...but of course, we don't count. |
Anonymous
Fair enough, but a surprising lack of diversity in other respects. So TJ is essentially half white and half Asian -- not sure if that's really "diverse." If any one of the area private schools were claiming a 45% diversity rate with those same statistics, I'm suspect the DCUM community would sneer. Indeed, in looking for these statistics, I saw several articles about how the local school board has recognized that TJ lacks diversity and is trying to find ways to increase applications from AA and Hispanic students. |
Anonymous
| bringing us back to a point made earlier, which is, "diversity" in DCUM-land and probably greater Washington is code for "African American" and darker skinned Hispanics who are not from Argentina/Colombia/Spain |
Anonymous
| What bothered me (somewhat, not to enraging levels) was that you didn't even mention this statistic, thereby bolstering the sense that when we talk about ethnic or racial "diversity," that's really code for inclusion of African-American and to a lesser degree, Hispanic students. |
Anonymous
| Maybe some think "diversity" is code for AA+Hispanic, but not me. I'd think "diversity" would mean roughly representative of the surrounding community from which the school draws applicants. By that measure, TJ does not come close. I'm not knocking TJ -- it's a great school -- but it just doesn't meet the "diversity test" people seem to want to apply to some schools. |
Anonymous
Fair enough, but my goal was not to paint a demographic portrait of the school, but just to point out that it's not "diverse" (in the sense that it's not at all representative of the DC/VA/MD region, or even of NoVA). There were several statistics I did not cite (e.g., gender imbalance), but I did link to the statistics page so everyone can look at the complete picture themselves. Sorry if I bothered you. |
Anonymous
people from Spain, Argentina, Venezula, etc who are recent immigrants through x+ generations Born in The USA and are known to check Hispanic on the boxes. Same for middle to upper class Cubans. Now if someone is Portugese originally and has been in South America for decades, they also go for the check Hispanic. But if from Portugal and an immigrant? TJ admitted more than 50% Asian. It also has a high percentage of non-Asian from India, etc. So for DCUM definition of white [European] TJ isn't 50%. |
Anonymous
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A Director of Diversity once explained to me that diversity stats can only be compiled from parent apps. Many parents choose not to identify their nationality. She had also told me that some groups do not believe in identifying themselves and are vastly unrepresented in reports. Therefore, conceivably, some percentages we see may be lower than they actually are.
I will also mention that given the huge increase in other ethnic groups marrying into the Caucasion group, we can no longer go by a visual check of any school. Case in point - my sister married a Latino and their children, while claiming a Latino heritage, do not visually look the part. If you saw her at Holton, you would not think she was a minority. |
Anonymous
Good point. The Fairfax County school system helpfully provides those stats too: http://www.fcps.edu/statis.htm (follow the "Demographics" link). Countywide, 6% identify themselves as multiracial, and 0.4% did not designate. The countywide numbers for those two categories are roughly the same as at TJ. |
Anonymous
This is frankly very surprising. Only 1-2% African American and 1-2% reduced lunch (ie. poor)??? Given that TJ is generally considered one of, if not the best, schools in the country - what does this tell us? I did a quick check of Fairfax County's demographics, and the households are about 9.3% African American and 13.3% Hispanic. Why the underrepresentation at TJ? Could it be (1) there is large contingent of bright and talented AA and Hispanic kids that are just not making their way into these programs, or perhaps (2) it's the case that only a very low % of AA and Hispanic kids can qualify for admission on TJ's standards. If it's #1 - is the problem with parents in the AA and Hispanic communities not encouraging their kids to apply to these schools? If it's #2 - should TJ adopt a more aggressive affirmative action program, and, if they did, would they lose their "best school in the nation" status? I'd love to understand this issue better - as it probably has broader implications to our overall national public education system. |
Anonymous
| Is there diversity among the teachers at private schools? |
Anonymous
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Short answer is work to lessen the achievement gap before high school. Focus not only on raising the floor, but also on identifying and mentoring bright kids at low-performing schools and putting them in a position where they can compete with kids from schools/families where more resources are devoted to education. Do outreach to schools where parents aren't likely to have college educations, much less jobs in the sciences, and show kids those kinds of careers and workplaces.
If you don't do these things, smart poor kids in substandard public elementary and middle schools won't ever be able to compete with smart middle and upper middle class kids from exceptional public schools at the level necessary to get into a school like TJ. |