A complaint filed Monday by two local advocacy groups alleges Fairfax County Public Schools is perpetuating discrimination against black, Latino and disabled students through the admission process for Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST).
The Coalition of the Silence (COTS), a group former school board member Tina Hone founded to seek equity for all students within FCPS, and the Fairfax branch of the NAACP filed the discrimination complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights, asserting FCPS has committed "clear violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."
At press time, FCPS had not yet had time to review the complaint, spokesman John Torre said.
While black and Hispanic students make up about 10 percent and 22 percent of the FCPS student body, respectively, they make up 1.5 percent and 2.7 percent of the TJHSST student body, the complaint says.
The complaint, written by Hone and NAACP-Fairfax County's Education Chair Charisse Espy Glassman, comes two business days after a Fairfax County School Board . At the work session, the board discussed both the lack of diversity and the declining math scores at the the Governor's School for science and technology in recent years. The board has charged FCPS staff to begin researching how to improve in both areas.
But the work session did not satisfy those who argue the process is discriminatory long before a student chooses to apply to the prestigious school, which recently earned No. 2 on U.S. News and World Report's annual ranking of U.S. high schools.
Sixty-four percent of students admitted to TJHSST attend middle schools with Level 4 Advanced Academic Middle School Centers. Most of the centers have limited diversity, carrying minority populations that don't reflect the county's demographic makeup, the complaint says.
"In essence, Fairfax County operates a separate and unequal 'sub' school system within its overarching taxpayer-funded, public school system," the complaint reads. "That separate and unequal subsystem is comprised of a network of level 4 advanced academic centers where Black and Latino students are grossly underrepresented."
More than half of students admitted to TJHSST's class of 2016 : Carson, Longfellow, Rocky Run and Kilmer. Black and Latino student populations at all four schools are far smaller than the percentage of black (10.4 percent) and Latino (20.6) students across the county's school system.
"In a room that was packed to capacity primarily by TJ parents and staff, the conversation almost immediately veered away from concerns regarding the underrepresentation of African American and Latino students at TJ and towards discussion about how to ensure the 'right' FCPS students would get into TJ," the complaint reads, referring to the July 19 work session on the admissions process.
At the session, board members and TJHSST officials said an increasing number of admitted students are struggling with their math courses — a sign that the application process is selecting students not ready for the rigorous TJHSST courses.
In the complaint, Hone and Glassman argue that adjusting the admissions criteria to weigh test scores more heavily will only lead to similar disproportionate numbers at TJHSST.
"Test scores — without additional context and balance — are not a reliable predictor of future success," the complaint reads. "On information and belief, FCPS has never been able to produce longitudinal data supporting the myth that test scores have predictive value."
The Office of Civil Rights can choose to open an investigation after it reads the complaint, but is not obligated to follow up on the document, Hone said in a Monday phone interview with Patch. An investigation would reveal data that to date has largely been unavailable, Hone said, along with a much deeper look at the admissions process and issues associated with it.
"We felt it was our responsibility to sort of lay out with as much clarity as we could what we think the actual problem is ... a lot of the conversation has been around the edges but there's something much bigger going on that we have to deal with," Hone said. "We'll see what happens. I'm hopeful."
Vienna Patch Editor contributed reporting for this story.
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Now, if asking that question gets me branded by you as a racist, then I see your approach in what is called the sociology of knowledge. You'd be surprised at the kind of work I do and what a "lefty" I am. I also think for myself. You say the fact that blacks are also good at long-distance running it blows my fast-twitch muscle point "to smithereens." Why can't blacks be superior at both long-distance running and sprinting? I expect you know that certain regions of Africa are known for producing many of the best at one or the other kind of running athlete -- fast or slow. Bouchard's study didn't look at athletes. It looked at black and white and fast-twitch muscles. You say there's nothing beyond that. Perhaps because of folks like you. Your approach would be to look no further. I haven't jumped into this conversation to try to prove that blacks are intellectually inferior. I did so because you're so full of......uh, yourself. You acknowledge that fast-twitch muscles are found at "a higher rate" in the black population, but that this is "an individual genetic trait not a racial trait." So you're saying this is a trait present in a greater percentage of people in a particular race. Do you ever notice when you go way out there on that logical limb that it gets thinner and starts to bend downward a lot? Your debating opponent is yourself, not me.
And one cannot debate oneself by taking a consistent position, which is exactly what I have done. You are also wrong about Dr. Bouchard's work, which I imagine you have not read, He does in fact address runners, not race. Apparently you are too slow to understand why fast twitch and slow twitch muscles cannot both be racial traits. One may predominate in one place and one in another, but these are people of the same race, so it cannot be a racial trait. Certain diseases, for example, may be called racial traits, because there are genes found in a particular race (or in some other particular population) linked to that disease but genes that are spread throughout all races but simply found more commonly in certain races are not racial traits. And you still have not explained what any of this has to do with your original comment about basketball. Finally, while I answer to Jeff among friends, you may call me Eric
How about the the native people of Australia, their skin pigment is far darker than most sub-Sahara Afircans? If you believe that race exists, which scientists say it doesn't, are those two ethnic groups included in the "black race?" How about the Ine (sp?) of northern Japan and the Turkmen of Central Asia? Are their genotypes the same? What's the comparative percentage of fast twitch muscles between Mende, Hutsi and Tutut? It's so easy for Americans of European heritage to believe they can make fine distinctions and generalizations between people of Nordic versus Mediterranean versus Slavic heritage and than lump everyone from Africa into one group and everyone from Asia into another. That's the fundamental fiction of racism. It's a dead end. Is FCPS a segregated school system? Bet your anatomy it is.
Because the only one out there for the rest of us right now concerns Bouchards taking muscle samples from two groups of students: French-Canadian and West-African. He did not test athletes per se. No doubt some of the subjects had athletic backgrounds, but that's was not part of the study. Bouchard found that the West-African students had significantly more large fast-twitch muscles. Eric, if you would, please provide a cite to Bouchard's more recent work concerning runners so I can get up to speed with you.
French-Canadians are representative of a "race" that includes Slavs, Celts, Hungarians, Finns and Russ. West Africans?! What the h*ll is a West African? Do you know how many different tribes exist in West Africa? Do you know that West Africans are among the most genetically diverse group of people on the planet?
Perhaps some of our issues are semantic. It is obvious that fast twitch muscles are not a racial trait, as even apart from their broad distribution among all races and populations, they are concentrated only in certain African populations. Thus, even if you could attribute the trait to a group, it would be to a population -- West African blacks. Kenyans, for example, have a very different muscle pattern. There was research done by a Swede, the name of whom escapes me, in which he found that Kenyan school kids could routinely beat Swedish top runners at middle to long distances -- whether in Kenya or in Sweden. He found that both had similar fiber compositions, but there were small differences in shape and processing that appeared to make a difference. I am not sure this was really genetic or environmental, though.
The comments you make do not further this discussion/debate. Your arguments are weak because you fail to hold yourself to the same rigorous standards of evidence and proof to which you expect everyone else to meet.
About the “studies” you posted, I have to agree with Eric – what a load of crap. You might as well have posted some studies written by the KKK. I noticed “Council of Conservative Citizens” organization which published one of the studies, has several organizational “principals,” one which of is that they believe that “the American people and government should remain European in their composition and character.”
http://www.amren.com/news/2012/07/those-unmentionable-asians/ For those who don't know, Mr. Taylor happens to live in Fairfax County.
http://www.amren.com/news/2012/07/those-unmentionable-asians/ For those who don't know, Mr. Taylor lives in Fairfax County.
No one is saying test scores alone are indicative of success, and the admissions process does not consider those scores alone. However, test scores are needed to be able to place a cutoff after which other factors can be considered. TJ is not just a normal school with some smart students sprinkled in; it moves at a much different and much faster pace, and plainly put if you can not hold your own in math and science you will fail behind, be unable to catch up, and very likely get discouraged at a young age as a result. Because of that, an objective way (specifically test scores and math/science grades) are needed to make sure any student who makes it through the first cut can at least survive at the school. At the next round it is important to pick students who are well-rounded mentally and academically, so you end up with a school with a much richer academic environment. You do not want the final cut to just be the top 400 student in tests, but it is of the utmost importance that those 400 be able to hold their own once in.
Why is it that "...People of color don't stand a chance applying there for work.?" Does it have anything to do with adequate qualifications? Tell us please.