The Changing Face of a Top High School
The Washington Post has written about an interesting development at our reigning America's Best High School. This fall, the freshman class at Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia will be predominantly Asian-American for the first time in the magnet school's history. The incoming class is 45 percent Asian-American and 42 percent white.
The news further fuels the debate about how magnet schools pick their students and whether such schools are obligated to be representative of the communities that fund them. In Fairfax County, the suburban Washington, D.C., neighborhood where "TJ" is located, people of Asian descent make up only 16 percent of the population, according to census data.
Tags: high schools | race
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Reader Comments
The School is for the Best
The name of the high school is Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (http://www.tjhsst.edu). The school is supposed to be for the best and brightest in science and technology. Admission should not be determined by race or representation of a population. Admission should be strictly determined by who shows the greatest potential at excelling in the program. If that means more Asians, so be it. Being admitted to a top school is not a right, it should be earned.
race?
race should not be a restricting factor. so what if Asians make up the majority of the class, if they are qualified, they should be able to be admitted.
"best and brightest"
so how do you decide who is the "best and brightest" at age 14? maybe there is something wrong with the admission process not with the race of the child.
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