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Jewish World Review June 1, 2012/ 11 Sivan, 5772 Quota system would dilute school's quality By Dan K. Thomasson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
One of the nation's top-ranked public high schools has run into a problem it probably never thought it would have to deal with, and many educators believe it portends some difficult times ahead for efforts to promote the nation's best and brightest students.
After several decades of rewarding excellence, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology finds itself with a third of its entering class facing remedial instruction in the very things for which they were supposed to be selected: math and related subjects. The culprit seems to be none other than political correctness, stemming from pressures to achieve diversity in its enrollment.
Administrators at the school in Alexandria, Va. -- appalled by the sudden rise of remedial instruction from just under 8 percent to 30 percent -- have rushed back to the chalkboard to find a solution to what many teachers, parents and national educators see as severely damaging the institution's elite status. It's usually ranked at or near the top by ratings agencies -- No. 2 this year by U.S. News and World Report -- and wealthy Chinese families reportedly search for ways to send their children to Northern Virginia for an opportunity to go to TJ, as it's known.
The magnet school's enrollment lacks ethnic diversity, with over 50 percent of its students of Asian extraction and only a relative handful of Hispanic and African Americans. But it was never meant to be a normal high school. Racial diversity wasn't a factor in deciding 30 years ago to create TJ, at the time merely a good secondary school in a string of them in the central part of the county. It was a roaring success because it was built on an admissions policy based solely on merit without consideration for gender or race. Going there meant a rigorous application process, followed by more rigorous classroom demands that frightened even some of the most gifted students.
But those who graduated from TJ found themselves courted by the nation's elite colleges and universities, from the Ivies to the West Coast. Harvard, it is said, has a quota on how many it will take. Is that an example worth saving and promoting across the country? Of course. And while TJ's mental giants still are being sought after and fought over, the new statistics have raised an element of doubt about how good it really is or will continue to be. If that is the case, it is a tragedy for a nation struggling to meet future needs in strategic areas.
Those who want to see this model of perfection diluted by a push to make it more representative of the county or region are doing themselves and their children and grandchildren a major disservice. Sociological concerns have no place in this experiment. No one should be admitted who does not meet its standards of excellence. There should be no quota system here.
This is a school that has turned down hundreds, if not thousands, of scholars who would qualify for any other institution in America. I know several with extraordinary grades through middle school, in every discipline, who missed the cut for TJ. One I know well shrugged it off to attend a top 100 school and ended her high school career with a 4.6 average and an International Baccalaureate degree. She never had less than an A in K through 12 and still hasn't in her first two years of college.
But TJ is supposed to be a clearinghouse for only the brightest, and if that meant not being able to take them all, so be it.
The school authorities now have seen what it means to consider any other criteria but academics in their admissions policy. Caving in to political correctness is not the course they should have even contemplated under the circumstances, and to have done so is bad precedent for the school's many imitators all of which are seeking to improve the country's disappointing 26th standing in math and science.
They are now scrambling to do something about it. One can only hope that they succeed in repairing any damage to TJ's mission.
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