Attorney general announces Thomas Jefferson high school investigations

Jared Foretek

January 4, 2023, 2:38 PM

This article was written by WTOP’s news partner InsideNoVa.com and republished with permission. Sign up for InsideNoVa.com’s free email subscription today.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced two investigations into Thomas Jefferson High School and Technology Wednesday, one into the withholding of National Merit commendations from students and another into whether changes to the school’s admissions policy violated state law. ... Miyares said there was possibly reason to believe that the withholding of the commendations was based on race or ethnicity, though he declined to share any evidence for that claim.

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In 2020, as concerns over the lack of racial diversity in the school’s student body rose, the Fairfax County School Board adopted a new policy that granted admissions to top-achieving students in every middle school in Thomas Jefferson’s feeder area. It also eliminated standardized tests from the admissions process and capped the number of students that could come from each school. In the following years, the percentage of Asian students at the school has decreased while the number of Black and Hispanic students has risen.

In September, a U.S Appeals Court heard arguments in a lawsuit from parents challenging that the admissions standards violate the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment equal protection clause. The policy was initially stopped in district court before the appeals court reversed the decision and allowed it to proceed while deciding the case. Parents appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, but their petition for an emergency ruling was denied. Miyares said that while the federal courts have yet to find that the policy violated federal law, his office will investigate whether it violates state law.

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Last month, parents at the school alleged that the National Merit commendations had been deliberately withheld from students even as they prepared college applications. The allegations made the rounds on several conservative media outlets over the holidays and on Tuesday, Gov. Glenn Youngkin sent a letter to Miyares calling for an investigation.

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National Merit awards are given to students who score among the top roughly 50,000 students in the nation on the PSAT. Of those 50,000 recipients, only about 16,000 are considered semi-finalists who can go on to compete for scholarships through the program. The other 34,000 are considered “commended students.” Their scores are not high enough to qualify as semi-finalists, but some college admissions sites recommend noting the commendation on college applications.

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National Merit Award semi-finalists were notified of their qualification by the school and Fairfax County Public Schools, which operates the magnet school. But according to the parents, students who received commendations were not notified by the school before early applications to colleges and universities went out. ... Last month, a spokesperson for Fairfax schools told InsideNoVa that the division was working to correct the situation.

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