Seems that my old high school is been in the news for lack of diversity and admission bias leading to underrepresentation by minorities.
There are a couple of troubling quotes including:
"We need a different method of identifying students for Thomas Jefferson," she said at a luncheon of the Enterprises for Hispanic Youth Foundation. "Helping our youth is going to make their intellectual level competitive with their peers."
Until 1998, Jefferson admitted some black and Latino students who didn’t make it to the semifinal round but came very close and seemed otherwise qualified.
Last year, Fairfax County Schools Superintendent Daniel A. Domenech proposed allowing 30 additional students into Jefferson from "underrepresented" middle schools — those in less affluent and minority neighborhoods that typically send fewer students to Thomas Jefferson. Preferential treatment for minority students might not be allowed, he reasoned, but the law says nothing about geography.
Great! Please, make sure that there’s always room to doubt whether a hispanic at TJ is there because of merit or tokenism. Every year, approximately 3000 students apply to be one of 400 students in each class. Has anyone checked how representative the application pool itself is of the wider community? Maybe a solution is NOT to ACCEPT more minority students by lowering standards but instead to get more minority students to APPLY in the first place?