Reply to S/o: brief factual history of TJ admissions and race (from Wikipedia)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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.

[/quote]

Broadly speaking, what you’ve posted here is correct and factual. The only quarrel I have is with the assertion - critically, one of the only parts of the history that does NOT carry a citation - that the changes to the admissions process “were meant to increase the ratio” of Black and Hispanic students at TJ.

They were not, and there exists no evidence that the process that was eventually adopted had race as an explicit goal.

[b]There is absolutely evidence to suggest that the goal was to improve access for students from disadvantaged economic backgrounds. [/b]The fact that, especially in Northern Virginia, race and socioeconomic status track relatively well is not the fault of FCPS. Improving access to advanced educational opportunities more broadly, and especially beyond just TJ, should help to mitigate that reality and make such efforts needless.[/quote]

Plus kids who don’t go to feeder MSs with tons of extra resources, clubs, etc.

Group who benefited the most: Asian students from economically-disadvantaged families. 
[/quote]

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