At Magnet School, An Asian Plurality

[BigDaddy44]

Source: Washington Post

Asian American students will outnumber white classmates for the first time in the freshman class at the region's most prestigious public magnet school this fall, a milestone reached as the number of African Americans and Hispanics has remained low and the Fairfax County School Board prepares to review the school's admission policy.

At Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in the Alexandria area this year, more than 2,500 applicants vied for 485 seats. Asian American students got 219, or 45 percent of the total, while white students got 205, or 42 percent. About 38 percent of the school's students were Asian American in the past school year.

T.J., as the school is known, draws students from several Northern Virginia jurisdictions. It ranks among the nation's top public schools in some surveys because of its rigorous curriculum and high-achieving students. Its average combined SAT score in 2007 was 2155, compared with 1639 countywide. More than 150 of its students that year were semifinalists for National Merit scholarships.

A plurality of Asian American students in a high school class would be an anomaly in the Washington region, where fewer than one in 10 residents is Asian American. In Fairfax, which supplies most of the school's students, people of Asian descent account for 16 percent of the population, census data show. That percentage has doubled since 1990 and is the highest in the area.


Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/06/AR2008070602343.html?hpid=topnews

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Should the school board review the school's admission policy?

[WriteDown]

1. No...

Asian students are far and above the most driven to succeed as a general rule and most do exceptionally well in school. Its even more interesting that in places like Japan, class sizes dwarf anything seen in the States and they still outperform our students. I think its time a lot of U.S. parents reassess their parenting skills.

[psychopomp]

4. It's called going to school...

...then going to after-school cram school, then coming home at 7:30, eating dinner and then doing homework until 11. I don't think that would go over with American parents, let alone American kids.

[bean fidhleir]

9. And it often produces the kind of technical ability that is disconnected from human needs

I can't count the number of choices, made by very good Japanese engineers, that have left me shaking my head in amazement that anyone so smart could do something so boneheaded AND have their mistake go into production rather than be caught during engineering or program review.

[BigDaddy44]

12. Thats not engineerings fault

Its the product / requirement peoples fault. Engineers build what someone tells them to build. If you tell them to build stupid things, they build stupid things.

[bean fidhleir]

13. No, I'm talking about engineering decisions - implementation/detailed design decisions

Small example: making the big dial on the car radio -the one where the standard is that it's both power and volume- merely the volume-control switch, with the power function relegated not only to the small button next to it, but integrated into the mode cycle: off - radio-on - cd-on - off

There's another one that I've mercifully forgotten some of the details on. It was some damned testing device that, for reasons I'm sure made sense to the Japanese (maybe they got the readouts for free) had an unlabelled octal readout connected to decimal input. So unless the victim is thinking about that possibility, any value they key in would be "wrong". It took me awhile to even start thinking in terms of something that counter-intuitive.

[MountainLaurel]

2. Thanks for posting

The debates about TJ's admissions policies have been going on for at least the past 10 years or so, although the debates usually surround the manner in which younger children are assessed for entrance into the county's gifted and enrichment programs, which are used as feeder programs for TJ.

[Clovis Sangrail]

3. it should always be open to review

but I don't think a rising Asian population in a magnet school means there is a problem with the admissions policy.
Assuming a rough economic parity, it illustrates cultural differences in relation to the value of education.
If it's determined the increase is directly linked to economic disparity then they should do something about it.

[junior college]

5. There is a similar situation at Lowell High School in San Francisco

I always thought it was a tad bit racist

[BigDaddy44]

6. Thought what was a tad bit racist?

[Mz Pip]

7. There were different

entrance exam scores allowed depending on race. You had to score higher if you were Asian to get admitted.

I don't know it they still do it like that anymore, though. Prop 209 pretty much eliminated racial, ethnic or gender considerations for any public institutions.

[AngryAmish]

10. Formally or informally, there are asian quotas at most highly competitive academic institutions

Asians generally have to score higher than other folks to get into the same schools. Not everywhere, but most places.

[Mz Pip]

11. That has changed in CA

I read freshman admissions applications for one of the most competitive public universities in the country. No quotas, period. We look at many things in addition to grades and test scores but race isn't one of them. But that's CA. I know other states don't have the contraints that Prop 209 on making decisions.

Admission stats are interesting. Asians are about 12% of the CA population but are about 30% of the UC student body population and growing.

[EFerrari]

16. And now, at Cal. There were a lot of Asian students there

when I left around 1995 but many more now. No surprise, considering we're on the Pacific coast. It'll be interesting to see how it all turns out. :)

[Burma Jones]

8. Fairfax County has more than a few really fine Public High Schools

Not every student that can get into Thomas Jefferson goes to Thomas Jefferson. If you want more emphasis on the Humanities, or Sports or a more realistic social scene there are better choices than TJ.

That being said, if you indeed want to go into Math/Science/Engineering, I don't think there's a better High School anywhere.

[Chovexani]

14. It never ceases to amaze me the way some people freak the fuck out

When minorities get ahead in something, given the pervasiveness of white privilege in this country since before its inception. Of course the school doesn't need to review the admissions policy. Seems to me like some people need to review their priorities and encourage their kids to care more about education than having the latest Abercromie fashions or who is shaking their ass on MTV.

Edited to add that the "model minority" stuff hurts Asian-American students because often times they are held to a much higher standard than other groups in the admissions process. Of course it's not formal policy anymore (that would be illegal) but there is still an unspoken rule at many institutions that Asian students have to get higher scores. A lot of my Asian friends have had this problem.

[AngryAmish]

15. My friend, have an unspoken rule against asians is still illegal

If there were an unspoken rule against african-americans that would be illegal. The bias against asians is pervasive in education and it remind one of the bias against jewish people in the Ivy League years ago.

[Chovexani]

18. It's a crying shame

Hell even in the non-Ivy League...I went through my own battle with the City University of New York system after they tried to place me in Medgar Evers (a predominately black 2 year college) even though I more than met the requirements for all three of my choices (none of which were ME). They took one look at my zip code--a working class neighborhood of mostly Caribbean immigrants--and tried to place me in the "black" school. I fought them and ended up in the school of my choice, but I wonder how many other black folks just went along with it. And that was only a few years ago.

I was just saying in another thread how horrible it is the way we've regressed as a nation in the last 8 years. Just awful.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. I'm not surprised:

Typical American parents want their kids to be popular, athletic, and non-delinquent, and to earn good grades but NOT to be intellectual. "You read too much." "Why are you always asking questions?" "Who cares how it works?" "No, you can't take violin lessons; what are you, some kind of nerd?"

First-generation Asian parents tend to think that being intellectual is a good thing, even though they're not against their children being popular, athletic, and non-delinquent.

I once read an article written by a man who was the son of Jewish immigrants. His own son was on a youth hockey team and put in hours per week on the ice. He recalled that in his own childhood, his parents didn't have him participating in any organized sports but did send him to violin lessons and community orchestra, while the Gentile kids were all playing Little League.

Now he said, it was the Asian parents who were sending their kids to violin lessons and the Jewish kids joining the Gentile kids on the athletic teams. He saw this as a sign of acculturation over the generations.

There's a public TV program called From the Top, which features classical musicians under the age of 18, many of them astonishing. Asian-Americans, whether descended from East Asia or India, predominate. However, the splendidly talented European-American and African-American kids who are about 1/3 of the musicians featured are no slouches either, which shows that it's not genetics but culture that makes Asians and Asian-Americans the predominant populations at places like Juilliard.

[MountainLaurel]

20. Funny you mention violin

A good friend was a strings teacher at a middle school that is literally across the street from TJ (the school mentioned in the article). About half the students in the school were Korean, first- or second-generation in the U.S., with the figure going up to about 80 percent among the orchestra students. But every year he had to beg kids to play instruments like bass and viola, because all of the Korean parents insisted their children play violin, because the other strings instruments just didn't fit their definition of success. It was very strange, but at the same time illustrative of the mentality behind why TJ has so many Asian students.

[superconnected]

19. Good for the Asians. Looks like the White, Black and Hispanic kids

need to work harder at keeping up on a level playing field.

"the T.J. admissions process weighs grade-point averages on a sliding scale with test scores in an initial screening. In the second round, the selection committee considers additional factors, including teacher recommendations and extracurricular activities that demonstrate interest in science and technology, as well as students' cultural background, economic status, sex or race."

It's sad that when affirmative action got thrown out at that school, black enrollment when from 50 down to 10. BUT, as long as everyone has to reach the same requirements I don't think that's necessarily a bad - I believe in a straight meritocracy. I am against that they are taking in account sex and race(above) - this keeps it from being a meritocracy.

[sakura]

22. The playing field isn't level when you consider poverty.

Kids growing up in wealthier neighborhoods get better educations than kids growing up in poor neighborhoods. That's a fact, and NCLB has only increased the differences in curriculum and attainment between these two groups. So if a kid in a poor neighborhood takes the test, he or she is likely to get lower scores than the kid of the same ability from the rich neighborhood. As the first round considers test scores and GPA, the first kid never makes it to the round where economic status, race or sex is considered.

In other words, the pool of applicants is weighted toward the economically well-off. You can't call that a level playing field. The key is to make sure that all kids have the opportunity to meet their potential. This means providing the highest level of curriculum to all schools, and providing the support some students will need to achieve at these levels. Only then can the high school admission process to a program like this be called a meritocracy-- and at that point it can truly be blind to race, sex and economic status.

[sakura]

21. The article says...

...that in the first round of selection, only test scores and GPA are considered-- so the first round (at this school) is blind to race. Once a student gets past the first round, other factors are considered, including race. Despite this, the black and hispanic enrollment at the school has only increased slightly. To me, this indicates a huge difference in preparation and parental support. If you have (or find) the resources to prep your student for the tests, or are wealthy enough to live in a neighborhood with a good school, you will be more likely to have the test scores and GPA to make the first cut. But if you miss out on either of those, you won't make it to the part of the process where race is considered. That's a problem when you consider that many minorities come from generational poverty-- the infrastructure that allows them to succeed may not be in place in their families, and the local school may not have the resources to serve them.

My son (age 8) attends a math and science magnet school. Because of NCLB, students at so called "failing" schools have a better chance at getting in, but for every one else entry is by a completely neutral lottery. (We got lucky.) Although this school has an accelerated curriculum, it doesn't select students based on their ability, IQ, or prior grades. If students can deal with the rigorous curriculum, they stay. If not, they move on. This seems fair to me-- the deciding factor in getting into this school is therefore parental (or student) desire, not income bracket.

I recognize that such a process probably wouldn't work at the high school level. By the time kids reach high school, the skills they need for an advanced curriculum are either there, or they aren't. But it would be awesome if each area had an accelerated elementary and middle school that was run completely by lottery, so that every child would have the opportunity to succeed, without having to live in a ritzy neighborhood. If a teacher realized a student was exceptional and not being served in the traditional classroom, he or she could talk to the parents about the lottery, and suggest that the student apply. The result would be that the student would be better prepared to succeed at the high school admissions test described above.