Very few black students accepted to TJ
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| Thomas Jefferson High School is on Braddock Road in Mason District. |
Updated June 15. Of the 486 students accepted to the Class 2024 at the elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ), very few of them are African American and only 16 are Hispanic, Fairfax County Public Schools reports. [Clarification: School officials have publicly said the number of black students accepted to TJ is zero, while FCPS reports the number is too small to specify.]
TJ is often rated the top or one of the top high schools in the country. It offers a comprehensive college preparatory program emphasizing the sciences, mathematics, and technology.
The school features state-of-the art laboratories, including a technological computational center, along with opportunities for independent research and experimentation, and interaction with professionals from the scientific, technological, engineering communities.
To gain admittance, TJ, eighth-graders must pass a rigorous test. Parents in affluent areas often spend thousands of dollars on coaching and tutoring programs to prepare students for the TJ exam. Bright students from lower-income areas don’t have that advantage.
As a result, very few students from middle schools in Mason District are accepted to TJ. The middle school breakdown for the Class of 2024 isn’t available, but the breakdown for the Class of 2020 shows the following:
- 23 students applied to TJ from Holmes Middle School and none were accepted.
- 62 from Glasgow Middle School applied and just five were accepted.
- 102 Jackson Middle School applied and 11 were accepted.
- 29 students from Poe Middle School applied, and FCPS states the number accepted is “too small to report.”
Middle schools sending the most students to TJ in fall 2020 are Rachel Carson Middle School in Herndon (98), Longfellow in Falls Church (45), and Rocky Run in Chantilly (37).
Other data for the 486 students access for the TJ Class of 2024: 355 are Asian, 86 are white, and 29 are multiracial/other. More males, 283, were accepted, compared to 203 females. The vast majority, 435, attended a public school; 51 attended a private school or were home schooled.
Approximately 72 percent of the students offered admission for the 2020-21 school year live in Fairfax County. The rest are from Arlington, Loudoun, or Prince William counties or the City of Falls Church.
54 responses to “Very few black students accepted to TJ”
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Instead of having one Thomas Jefferson Technology High School in NOVA, we should be offering the science and technology focused curriculum to any students who want to pursue it at any high school – period. And, we should be offering the same advanced educational opportunities in the social sciences too to those students who gravitate and excel in those areas of study. Fairfax County Public Schools and the other school districts are in dire need to modernize their methods of teaching away from what is for all practical purposes a 1950's K-12 public education model. And, we need more full-time distance learning opportunities to support all of this.
Sounds expensive. Isn't that what AP and IB programs are already for?
How many applied?
160 black students applied and 208 Hispanics applied.
Ouch. This is not a good optic for them. I figured if very few applied you could shift some of the blame off TJ and make it more a systemic issue. Not the case I see.
What were the black students test scores in relation to the scores of the other students who were accepted?
BTW, not many white kids get in either. The school is predominately Asian. A good number of them have received private tutorings, Saturday classes (privately paid) and test prep. A large number of students are foreign born, they come here for the incredibly good FREE educationt the school provides. I know a large number of embassy kids there.
So if the Asians are studying extra on weekends and tutoring the score high then I need ro say no more. Everyone who wants to get in need to study harder and score higher the same way instead of wondering why they can't get in. Btw,Asians are only 5 to 6% of the population so that speaks for itself. My nephew is super smart and couldn't get in TJ and it's because he is Asian. They make it harder for Asians to get in TJ and prestigious colleges and universities. You don't hear us crying. We just push our kids to do better
Why would any parameter other than grades should be taken into account when accepting students to a school?
Agree.
This is not true. I heard there were six black students accepted. Show a citation for the zero black students accepted.
And six makes it better. . .
A group of white parente, mainly from Dranesville, successfully convinced the school board (I think) to end a successful program, Visions, which encouraged Black and Latino students to be interested in science and prepare for the TJ exam. That led to a precipitous drop in minority numbers.
Perhaps these same parents are complaining of the Asian American numbers.
Asians made up 76% of class 2024, while Asians only make up 19.5% of the fairfax county population.
But Asians also apply in greater numbers. They were 56% of the applicants.
If all minorities were as hard working and hard learning and less occupied about how poor and miserable they were, maybe such blog post would never been written.
@917, this has nothing to do with whether or not asians are more hardworking than blacks or hispanics — and I'll let the blatant racism just sit there you piece of garbage– and everything to do with opportunity. The chief reason these people get in has to do with their parents dumping toneladas de dinero on private tutoring to pass an extremely difficult entry exam. Now where the gray area lies is whether you should punish wealthy asian parents for having the resources (some which have come at incredible personal burden) by denying applications to worthy students to accommodate others.
@Adam you must feel really good about yourself, aren't you? the woke guilt-consumed person you are.
In my comments i stated nothing about race, nothing more than admiring the hard work of some group of students, with or without their parents help.
Opportunity is there for all to grab, some chose to spend money on tutoring, some spend money on nail polish, some chose to encourage hard work and some chose to encourage relying on welfare
i suggest you quit the bigotry of low expectation, this will not cure your while guilt.
If you're too unbelievably stupid to see how "If all minorities were as hard working and hard learning and less occupied about how poor and miserable they were" isn't racist — then you're exactly the brainless fucking twat that millions of people are protesting against. I'll try and rationalize with you here, but at this point I'd have better luck making cold fusion by banging two rocks together. Let's start here — do you think that all children are roughly equally as smart as others? black kids can be just as smart as whites, and hispanics can be just as smart as asians? If not, then I guess we can just abandon the conversation there and revert back to me calling you a racist twat and you can go back to jerking off to the confederate flag or whatever. But let's say you agree with that point. Then shouldn't the demographics of TJ reflect the actual demographics of the region? But it doesn't, and that's where things start to get complicated. Now, I don't think most black mothers are off getting their nails did rather than making sure their kids get a good education, but I do think that maybe it's tougher for certain minorities to get their kids the leg-up in terms of tutoring to get into that school. It's because I think that black/hispanic/martian kids can be JUST AS SMART as anyone else that I want to see these kids get into these schools with a little bit of assistance. Now when things start to get really tough is when that may mean that some well deserving asian kid might not make it, which seems equally shitty, right? So the tough gray area seems to be — what kind of assistance, outreach, and help can we give to ensure that super smart kids get that shot, because previously they've kind of had the short end of the stick WITHOUT giving well deserving kids the boot.
Woke boy is pissed about facts!
What a great non answer
If they are that smart, then they should've done better on the exam smh.
Maybe if the county supported schools in the eastern part of the county as well as the ones in the west, the numbers would be more equitable. My kid's elementary school didn't even have a full time AAP teacher until this year – they had to share a part-time instructor with 2 other schools.
Just about everyone who works in public education knows that how "good" any school is, including TJ, is a reflection of the demographics of the student body, primarily.
Where have school officials said the number is zero? Can you provide a link? Here is a link with an FCPS official stating the number is six. https://bluevirginia.us/2020/06/as-people-across-america-protest-racial-inequity-1-public-high-school-in-the-country-tj-in-fairfax-va-just-admitted-zero-african-americans
This page states, "The number of black students admitted in the Class of 2024 is greater than zero." https://www.fcps.edu/node/41298
I am a big fan of the Annandale Blog, and its editor does a great job covering all our local news almost single-handedly. But in this case, either the story is wrong and should be corrected, or FCPS is giving misinformation on its website. Which officials said it was zero, and where and when?
Another question for journalists to look into: Why can't the school district release the exact number? Whose privacy would it violate? Or would it just be too embarrassing?
Does it matter? zero or six?
I wonder what the stats are for all students regardless of color who did not have the money for coaching or tutoring. This appears to be a socioeconomic problem, not deliberate race discrimination. Unfortunately, many blacks and Hispanics fall into the lower income strata, which make it appear to be race discrimination. Both the county and the students and their families should work together to address this problem. The county should provide equal test preparation opportunities, and the students and their families in lower income demographics should work with the schools to find out what opportunities exist. Even if the process is improved, there is always the reality that not every child will be qualified to attend TJ.
I think you hit the nail on the head here, agree completely.
Stop assuming the Asian students who got accepted were only from rich families. There are many poor Asian families in the Fairfax County area.
This is completely true. I remember reading about a good number of these families that sacrificed everything to get their kids the tutoring they needed to get in.
Which agrees with the families priorities. They put every available cent they have into the future – tutors, schools, preps, etc. Asians value education above all else since it will lead to higher socioeconomic status. They have practically nothing, parents will go without food to make it happen.
I think it's a lazy assumption that people only got in because they had paid tutoring. My son is one of the 6 black kids that got in and did did none of such paid tutoring.
What percentage of those who got accepted paid for coaching or tutoring? Are there any surveys on this? Yes, these services exist and I'm sure they are aggressively marketed. But how much of a difference do they really make for the majority of applicants? Any numbers?
I know several TJ graduates and current students (via their parents.) I have been an engineer/developer for 30 years. These kids are really hard-working and very bright. It takes a lifetime of schooling and very hard work to succeed at TJ. Even if you are naturally bright, you'd need a solid set of skills prior to admission. I was the Valedictorian of my high school – in the dark ages – and I would have had a tough time at TJ. I'm all for improving the STEAM education for all Fairfax County schools, but I don't thing the standards of TJ should be relaxed. The bigger concern is not the TJ admission process, but the quality of education before that.
All kids have the ability to be smart and succeed. The environment they are born into usually determines whether or not education’s importance is emphasized. The debate is over why this is the case. Cultural factors cannot be ignored and there are plenty of studies showing that money is not the determining factor. This mentions examples: https://www.fredericknewspost.com/opinion/letter_to_editor/money-can-t-buy-quality-education/article_f1babd14-e0a0-54b1-9b46-1b0edc7d3f8b.html
It also looks like very few whites attend this school. If it stands to reason that there should be more African Americans and Hispanics to reflect the diversity of FCPS, and diversity is a strength, should there be more whites? African Americans have a history in the US, but is there any evidence that Hispanics face more discrimination than Asians? I remain somewhat confused at defining the problem everyone is trying to solve, especially in a school that admits students purely on merit.
I attended TJ in the early (first 5 years of admitted classes) and my recollection then : the entrance exam was basically an IQ test, you needed letter of recommendation from a teacher at your middle school, and they looked at your grades. The test was the major deciding factor. At that time the internet was not a word in common use, we only had dial-up computer modems at home, and I don't recall anyone that had an email address in high school. We used the payphone outside the gym to order pizza for afterschool events.
The goal of the school originally was to address the perceived growing gap between the US and other countries in math/science.
Now the school is viewed more as a top-notch, but free, school that will get people into a great college. Parents push children to TJ for the prestige/college factor.
This was not the original mission of the school. It makes no sense to spend taxpayer dollars to fund a college-prep program for those lucky enough to get in. Given the drift in the school's mission, why is it still funded at the expense of the other schools? It was an experiment that worked in its era; times have changed. We now have the internet, remote learning, and incredible access to resources/knowledge at our fingertips/phones – this technology can be leveraged to raise the level of math/science at all schools. Pulling the brightest children out of their respective public schools drains the environment of the public school system. A school is made of the students and having enthusiastic math/science students raises the standards for everyone.
TJ is a relic of an era that no longer exists : no need to centralize the best teachers and students to one location now that we have internet, videoconferencing, remote learning, etc. It's time to reassess and raise the everyone's privilege.
Great comment from 2:54 PM 6/16. I attended an socio-economically average high school in Arlington in the mid-1980's and got into a top-notch West Coast school anyway. We had a local community of learners who were passionate about math, science, and music but also were well-rounded as athletes. It didn't take a centralized bureaucracy, just a supportive local community of parents, teachers, and fellow students. I agree with the previous poster: it's time to de-centralize the apparatus and distribute learning back to the neighborhoods where it can grow organically at the grass roots.
Why there are so few asians in NBA, NFL, and Hollywood? Are these NBA, NFL, Hollywood stars naturally born with the abilities without costly coaching and hardwork? If it is easy for asians to become NBA, NFL or Hollywood stars, you will not see so many asians in TJ. Without the hard working kids, TJ would not be TJ, right?
I completely agree.
Well said dude!
What are you talking about? What does nba NHL or Hollywood have to do with high school admission decisions when children are in 8th grade?
TJ had a valid mission in 80s and 90s.
Now that we have technology to leverage remote learning and classrooms : there is no reason to concentrate these resources to advantage a few at the expense of the public school system. TJ was not designed to be a college prep program. TJ is a PUBLIC school and every person pays for it with taxes.
End TJ.
Stop the drainage of good students from base schools.
Every single class at TJ can be taught with online learning to advantage ANY child in FPCS that wishes to participate.
This should be an item to discuss next FCPS meeting and our representatives need to listen.
#stopTJprivilege
#STEM for all
This has nothing to do with race. Most Asians do work harder and dedicate their childhood to studying. The TJ test and grades you need to get to get into TJ make it all. TJ is predominately asian and few black, white, or hispanic people. There is a reason there are top schools such as Harvard and MIT. That comes from people who actually do the work. You shouldn't provide good schooling to people who just say they want to learn. This is complete BULLSHIT. There is no such thing as TJ privilege.
I think it's a lazy assumption that people only got in because they had paid tutoring. My son is one of the 6 black kids that got in and did none of such paid tutoring. Also I think it is unfair to students especially minority students that excel when people view them with an eye that they needed a leg-up (affirmative action) or quota to get in because they are "disadvantaged".
TJ is a PUBLICLY funded school. With modern technology there is absolutely NO reason that all of the resources should be hoarded and the best students drained from the other schools. All of the TJ classes can be taught on-line and attended by any student in the school system that wishes to be challenged. Each school will then have a diverse and representative student body. And ALL children may benefit from this PUBLIC education.
#stopTJprivilege
#STEM for all
Anonymous from 8/10/20, 11:20 AM : you wrote "This has nothing to do with race." then your next sentence was "Most Asians do work harder …"
Thank you for proving the point. It is ALL about race and the hoarding of opportunity. That era is ending and there will be equal opportunity for all.
It is a public school and the resources should be for all, not just an elite few. Every child deserves the opportunity to be challenged. One's access to education should not be ordained by a test one takes in 8th grade. A test a child takes in 8th grade should not determine what college they may attend. Every child should have equal opportunity in high school and the opportunity to be intellectually challenged and to work in a stimulating environment. Stop the brain-drain of our public schools and the hoarding of public resources for the select few.
#stopTJprivilege
#STEMforall
Anonymous8/12/20, 3:13 PM does everyone take AAP classes?
This does not have much to do with race. Who ever works hard and passes the test gets in. TJHSST is not trying to discriminate. It is no ones fault that TJ is a predominantly one race. It is not hoarding opportunity. Students need to learn that in the real world, there will be other races trying to take over jobs and opportunities. It is the survival of the fittest.
It is exactly that : the hoarding of opportunity.
Systems produce the outcomes they are designed to produce; the design may not have been intentional, but the outcomes speak for themselves.
A PUBLIC school should be representative of the public. All children in the public should be advantaged by the opportunity to participate in STEM and to be challenged. An environment that offers challenges at times sparks an interest in a child and children grown in directions they may not have chosen without that challenge and opportunity.
In this era of virtual learning, there is simply no reason to have PUBLIC resources hoarded in one location. It drains from the surrounding schools and creates an artificial environment that detracts from the surrounding schools.
"survival of the fittest" should not be a term used for 8th grade children. These are CHILDREN. They all deserve these opportunities. It is easy for those sitting in privilege to advantaged by their backgrounds to claim "survival of the fittest." Don't be blind to your privilege and advantage.
Every child deserves to have public school opportunities.
If you wish to set up a private non-diverse school then that's your right. But don't drain public school resources to do it.
TJHSST is an example of a good idea that went astray. Its namesake is apt. History is re-evaluating Thomas Jefferson. The same needs to be done for TJHSST.
TJ doesn't take anybody's opportunity to study STEM. There are so many very good public schools in the same area and you can still study STEM in these schools. WE have to admit that people are different – some people are good at STEM, some like music, and some others like arts etc. TJ was built to catch the gap of the STEM between US and the world. The gap is still there and it is even bigger. Look at the number of STEM PHD from the colleges in this county. We need TJ, we need more schools like TJ. Merit-based admission is the best and the most fair method for TJ. It is a race and income blind method. You can argue that some kids take prep classes. These classes are open to anybody and it is only about 1k. I believe any parents can afford it if you really care about education. Another fact is that a lot kids who take the prep class don't get admission. Hardworking matters the most.
Again,
it is a PUBLIC school with PUBLIC funds. All of the property owners in the district fund the school through taxes.
TJ had a very valid purpose in the late 80s and 90s. The internet was not yet widely used, everyone used AOL for dialup internet, and virtual/remote learning and video was not present. I attended TJ in the early years – it was an amazing school. But also I was surrounded by similar people and it was a hoarding of resources and opportunity. At that time, perhaps the ethical cost of that was necessary. No longer.
In this modern era with incredible technology that allows for virtual education:
-There is no reason the students at TJ can not obtain similar instruction at their base schools.
-Classes may be taught online and all who wish may take them, if able.
-What about the children that "almost" got into TJ but didn't make the cut – they should be allowed to take the classes.
-What about the children that perhaps in 8th grade were still maturing but by 9th or 10th grade discover their love of science?
-What about the inherent social value of having highschools represent the real world in terms of demographics? There is a moral value in having children from all ability spectrum and backgrounds interact together and work together.
TJ needs to be de-centralized. There should be "TJ" at every single public high school.
If a select few wish to hoard resources and opportunity – then go to private school. Stop taking PUBLIC funds from PUBLIC schools and our communities for a select few that are chosen by opaque metrics.
Won't get into the weeds of the validity of IQ tests on 8th graders, etc. Systems generate the outcomes they are designed to generate. IQ test results alias with numerous social factors and economic factors that an 8th grader has no control over. So many children would benefit from that spark of a moment when the realize "hey I can do this" and develop the confidence to follow their interests and dreams.
If "TJ" can't be done for every single public school, then it should not be done with PUBLIC funds.
Before another dollar of PUBLIC money is given to TJ:
FCPS should institute an external 3rd party review of all admissions over the past decade. It should be an open book. The data is the data.
Similarly, a gap analysis should be performed : with virtual classes, why do resources need to be hoarded at TJ?
Admission to the school is highly competitive, like anything else in life. In stead of preparing for the competition people raise irrelevant issue, such as ethnicity, economic condition, geographical location of their residences, and students' middle school. The middle schools should be made responsible for their failure to adequately prepare the students to face the competition in stead of blaming TJ for not accepting students from certain middle schools. Disclaimer: Two of my sons graduated from TJ.
Yes. The funds used on TJ should be distributed to the base schools. #STEMFORALL #ENDTJPRIVILEGE
September 23 will be meeting to discuss changing admission process for TJ. The proposal will make a more equitable system – all students with adequate GPA and algebra (and hence clearly can make it at TJ if given opportunity) will be randomized and selected from equitable geographic region. No more admissions fees. No more tests that cater to expensive prep programs. All interested should attend the meeting for comment. Together we can change TJ for the better.
#STEMFORALL #ENDTJPRIVILEGE
You change the standard and you change the student body. Instead of having the top school you will just have an average school.