We previously discussed the lowering of admission standards at Virginia’s elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology to achieve diversity goals. Now the school is again under fire for waiting roughly a month to distribute National Merit certificates in the name of equity. The decision meant that students could not report the awards on their college applications before the passage of the October 31 deadline.
Journalist and advocate Asra Nomani alleges that the delay was due to Thomas Jefferson’s equity efforts, and its new “equal outcomes for every student, without exception” strategy. She also alleges that the most impacted (due to their higher percentage among recipients) were Asian students — an analogous claim to the alleged anti-Asian discrimination in the two Supreme Court admissions cases now pending.
Nomani’s report appeared in the New York Post.
Nomani claims that Thomas Jefferson’s principal, Ann Bonitaibus, told a concerned parent in an email that the school had received the National Merit certificates in mid-October, and that she had signed them within 48 hours.
However, the awards were not distributed by teachers until November 14. She claims that Brandon Kosatka, the director of student services, admitted on a call with another parent that the delay was based on a desire “to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements.”
Nomani revealed emails from parents objecting to equity concerns overriding academic achievement when these students needed to include the recognition in their college applications. Whatever the reason for the delay, these students missed an important credential for inclusion in applications to highly competitive colleges.
Bonitatibus has pushed for equity-based policies at Thomas Jefferson and to move away from its tradition of focusing solely on academic achievement. That tradition had made the school the number one ranked high school in the nation.
The new policies have led to an effort to limit the number of Asian Americans to achieve “racial diversity.”
It is possible to achieve diversity in these programs without racial discrimination or criteria, but it is not as easy — or as fast — as just leveling down entry standards or delaying recognitions. We can focus on underperforming public schools to better prepare minority students. However, with continuing dismal performances of public educators in major cities, that’s not a welcomed approach for many in education. It’s easier to reduce entry standards than it is to elevate performance rates.
What is striking about these controversies is that neither parents nor the public appear to support the new policies. Thomas Jefferson has always been a point of pride for many of us in Fairfax County, even if your kids did not go to the school. It was meant to be a school that was reserved for brilliant students who are able to take extremely advanced courses and perform university-level research.
The policies under Bonitatibus should be the subject of outside review in how they are impacting a school that has long been the gold standard nationally. Public schools are subject to public standards set with the input of the board and the parents. The parental input has clearly not carried much weight with Bonitatibus. It is time for a more public debate over the future of “TJ.”
There’s more to this story than just a delay in announcing the awards. According to other news sources, the school intentionally failed to notify National Merit recipients for the last FIVE YEARS. All past winners from the last five years never knew they were finalists/commended/etc. This year’s awards were announced late only because the school was caught in the act of withholding them. If a parent hadn’t accidentally found out about their child’s award, this year’s class would also still be in the dark and who knows how many more years the ruse would have continued.
Atrocious behavior, the exact opposite of fostering education.
Could those intent on arguing “equity” possibly have it both backwards and upside down? With regard to the former, one does not achieve equity by “leveling” outcome, but “leveling” opportunity. As to the latter, one does not accomplish a goal by focusing on process to the exclusion of the goal.
Equity is unachievable.
Whenever anyone talks of equity they are with near certainty preparing to act immorally.
Would you therefore, of necessity, conclude, Mr. Say, that (equal) rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are immoral?
In what world are equity and equal rights the same ?
Equity is always immoral because it always requires taking from some and/or giving to others.
We are not born equal.
We were not endowed by our creator, or nature or whatever you wish to label the source for rights,
with equal intelligence, equal creativeness, equality in any human attribute.
We are born with equal rights. Nor does assuring equality of rights impose any cost on others.
My arguments are rarely my own. They are rarely arguments that have not involved centuries sometimes millennia to resolve. That have not been subject to examination. critique, revision, correction thousands of times before I was born.
Why would you think fly by night ideas from the past few years, Frequently from those with little of no knowledge of 7 millennia of human development are going to prove superior ?
Worse still quite often the “new” ideas. are just old ideas that failed centuries ago, that ignorance of the past deprives their modern authors knowledge of.
Regardless, equity remains on the wrong side of morality.
Kurt Vonnegut comes true:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
“In the year 2081, the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments to the Constitution dictate that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. The Handicapper General’s agents enforce the equality laws, forcing citizens to wear “handicaps”: masks for those who are too beautiful, loud radios that disrupt thoughts inside the ears of intelligent people, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic.
One April, 14-year-old Harrison Bergeron, an intelligent, athletic, and good-looking teenager, is taken away from his parents, George and Hazel Bergeron, by the government. They are barely aware of the tragedy, as Hazel has “average” intelligence (contextually meaning stupidity), and George has a handicap radio installed by the government to regulate his above-average intelligence.
Hazel and George watch ballet on television. They comment on the dancers, who are weighed down to counteract their gracefulness and masked to hide their attractiveness. George’s thoughts are continually interrupted by the different noises emitted by his handicap radio, which piques Hazel’s curiosity and imagination regarding handicaps. Noticing his exhaustion, Hazel urges George to lie down and rest his “handicap bag”, 47 pounds (21 kg) of weights locked around George’s neck. She suggests taking a few of the weights out of the bag, but George resists, aware of the illegality of such an action.
On television, a news reporter struggles to read the bulletin and hands it to the ballerina wearing the most grotesque mask and heaviest weights. She begins reading in her unacceptably natural, beautiful voice, then apologizes before switching to a more unpleasant voice. Harrison’s escape from prison is announced, and a full-body photograph of Harrison is shown, indicating that he is seven feet (2.1 m) tall and burdened by three hundred pounds (140 kg) of handicaps.
George recognizes his son for a moment, before having the thought eliminated by his radio. Harrison himself then storms the television studio in an attempt to overthrow the government. He calls himself the Emperor and rips off all of his handicaps, along with the handicaps of a ballerina, whom he proclaims his “Empress”. He orders the musicians to play, promising them nobility if they do their best. Unhappy with their initial attempt, Harrison takes control for a short while, and the music improves. After listening and being moved by the music, Harrison and his Empress dance while flying to the ceiling, then pause in mid-air to kiss.
Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, enters the studio with a ten-gauge double-barreled shotgun and kills Harrison and the Empress. She threatens the musicians at gunpoint to put on their handicaps again, but the television goes dark. George, unaware of the televised incident, returns from the kitchen and asks Hazel why she was crying, to which she replies that something sad happened on television that she cannot remember. He comforts her and they return to their average lives.”
AT THOMAS JEFFERSON OUR GOAL IS MEDIOCRITY!
AND WE DELIVER!
Parents need to wake up to how wokeism is damaging their children.
Parents need to form their own private schools, hire top rate teachers, and get back to teaching the basics and then focus on real world education, STEM, critical thinking.
These students who graduate from such schools with a good education will be highly sought after by industry.
To evade outrageous college debt and wokeism indoctrination, industry should offer paid internships, that also educate the interns in real world working of their chosen fields. Set up a system that accredits the intern, not the school.
After two or so years, then offer the intern a position in the company, or they are free to explore other options, but allows them to take their accreditation with them.
“Brandon Kosatka, the director of student services, admitted on a call with another parent that the delay was based on a desire “to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements.”
Can anyone explain to me the necessity for a school to recognize people as individuals, what makes a school necessary for that function? A school has a unique ability to recognize _students_, who are recognized by their achievements. You’d think the director of _student services_ would understand that.
Imagine having to live in that NoVA shiathole and having to think at least your kids will get a good education for all this money in housing and property tax I’m paying, then you read this kind of crap. LOL.
One hopes that there will survive, a subset of parents who will never be swept up and drowned in the torrent of ‘wokeism’. That they will forever explore the best avenues of endeavor and achievement based upon the abilities and motivations of their offspring.to succeed. Within this subset will be those who are financially advantaged to the extent that said explorations will find fulfillment in the halls of learning and the likeminded, The end result being that there will always be some animals more equal than others,the levelers of the playing field notwithstanding.
To reinforce the views of other commenters, I believe this administrator must be destroyed both professionally and financially. She unilaterally took it upon herself to hinder the opportunity of her students to gain entrance into the college of their choice. That is despicable and immoral. The families should start a class action suit against the perpetrator and render it impossible for the woman to ever be employed in an educational institution again. Otherwise her comrades will continue doing what she has done in other institutions.
The actions of this school are awful. They help reinforce the perception that We Blacks are unable to compete, academically with other students. The admission standards were lowered to allow the unprepared and unfit access to this school in the name of diversity. I wonder if those responsible for this, allowed entry to whites that had less than acceptable admission scores. W.E . Debois said that 10% of every group are destined to be the doctors, engineers, lawyers extra. MLK did not demand “special” treatment, but rather Equal treatment. As an “Elite” school you should be seeking the Ben Carson’s among us, not
LeBron James. We can do more than sing, play ball and entertain White folks.
Your actions shame yourself, and wound us without cause.
Solvermn, I couldn’t agree with you more and I am not a member of a minority community. I think the problem is that people in the Black community do not speak up about the issue. Equality was supposed to be about equal treatment and opportunity not equal outcomes. There is no such thing unless it is ‘managed’ as in the current educational environment. I have been disgusted for decades with the low rate of education in minority neighborhoods and I feel that until school systems are funded by something other than the property taxes of a given geographic district and the best teachers, not the most Woke, are hired, and the best instructional materials are given to ALL schools, things will not change. Children will still be left behind.
It’s the living embodiment of what Danial Patrick Moynihan referred to as “The soft bigotry of low expectations”.
The problem with wokesters is they level down, never up. The woke want everyone to be equally stupid and ignorant so they can be controlled and manipulated. Like the woke are themselves, in fact.
The solution is obvious: fire the woke administrator and get rid of staff that support woke nonsense. The education system is not “theirs” to do with what they choose; the children are not “theirs” to program as they see fit. The public pays for the schools and parents provide the children, administrators and teachers have the same status as custodial staff and the same obligations – do the job or find another one.
Nothing in the schools will change until wokeism becomes a firing offense.
For some students,“academic achievement” is “who they are.” What then?
When we start reducing our great country to the lowest COMMON denominator, -UNcommon and laudable achievement—-once the goal we all aimed for—ceases to become a goal. We all become tribal commoners–the largest and loudest class that will always win…
Mr Platypus should be fired. Parents should sue for the net present value of the lost cash flow their children will suffer. BS litigation? Of course it is. But it’s as valid as the absurd “equity” goals of these bureaucrats. Life is unfair. Get used to it. Ask anyone who has ever lost a child.
What’s next ????????
Why do the supporters of “Diversity, Inclusion, & Equity”, otherwise forming the acronym DIE, shy away from
this presentation of their cherished belief? Because when DIE’s loudly championed, that’s what happens. It’s Glyphosate for schooling. Kills everything on which it’s sprayed.
If for no other reason, these administrators should be removed (or rotated) due to wasting the resources given to the school by the fed DoEd and the County. They are wasting the program for personal philosophical reasons. I am confident that this issue will not be dropped.
“When the motivation is unclear, look at the outcome, and infer the motivation from that” – Jordan Peterson. Thomas Jefferson High School officials will do ANYTHING to prevent White and Asian students from being accepted to universities. That’s their motivation. Purely racist.
I agree. Totally racist. They knew when the college applications had to be in but delayed it deliberately to damage their own students. That’s like giving an award that gives you a chance at a scholarship but you only get the award after the date the scholarship has to applied for which means you got nothing. Happened to me and still rankles decades later. Seems to me there is a class action lawsuit lurking in there somewhere.
The common thread in so many of Turley’s comments, is the ruthless willingness of educators, policy makers, and media to damage people’s lives in furtherance of lefty objectives.
These people have have taken that old adage about omelettes and breaking eggs to heart.
Unfortunately, it is always someone else’s eggs that get broken.
It should be clear by now that “equity” — assuring equal outcomes — boils down to assuring all students achieve the equivalent of the lowest common denominator. Pulling down the best so as not to “hurt the feelings” of the poorest students is the essence of equity. Schools who pursue the “equity” goal are derelict in their duties, and their administrators should be fired. If schools do not focus on student achievements, they are useless.
GioCon: I apologize. I did not read through the comments before posting my own about “lowest common denominators.” If I had, I simply would have noted that your comment was better than what I was trying to say….