Low Admission of Black and Latino Students at Area High School Receives Backlash

Anita Kinney points out, first and foremost, that yes, she is a person of color; yes, she has a learning disability; and yes, she was admitted to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) in Fairfax County.  But she also identifies herself as the exception to the rule. 

Kinney was singled out among her mostly white peers at TJ.  “I endured many taunts from students who told me I had only been admitted to the school because I’d ‘played the race card,’” she wrote in her recent Washington Post guest column.

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology is one of the nation’s top public schools, ranked #2 nationally by U.S. News & World Report.  But the school’s low enrollment of minority and learning-disabled students has long been a topic of debate within the community.

Now, the NAACP and an advocacy group called Coalition of The Silence have filed a 17-page formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education, the Washington Post reported.  The article, written by Emma Brown, explains that the complaint identifies not only the low enrollment rate of black, Latino and learning-disabled students, but also points out the “systematic failure” of Fairfax County Schools to recognize students of this demographic as gifted from a young age.

Starting in kindergarten, schools begin to pinpoint certain children as gifted.  But even before kindergarten, children from low-income backgrounds do not have the breadth of resources that privileged children do to prepare them for school.  And as Kinney points out, most underrepresented minority students in Fairfax County do not come from privileged backgrounds. 

Upper-middle class parents may be able to enroll their kids in supplementary education programs, while that may not be an option for lower-income families.  Likewise, wealthier families may be able to spend more time talking and reading to their children, while parents working multiple jobs may not have the time to do the same. 

Research shows, for instance, that low-income children hear an average of eight million fewer words per year than kids from wealthier homes, causing a 30 million word gap in a child’s vocabulary before he or she reaches kindergarten. 

While TJ is not necessarily singularly responsible for failing to identify students of color as gifted, their current admissions process, as Kinney puts it, “does not do enough to remedy educational disparities that minority students face in Fairfax County Public Schools.” 

Their admissions process focuses heavily on test scores, for instance.  However, Kinney explains that upper-middle class students tend to excel at this type of testing, while studies show that the same is not true for less privileged students. 

Brown’s article also points out that one part of the admissions application asks students to “Describe in detail your most important out-of-school or after-school activity or interest.”  The complaint states that, “For many black and Latino students, especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, their most significant after school activity may well be babysitting their younger siblings while their parents work.”    

Brown says that there is no way to know whether the complaint will lead to a federal investigation, but it is a step in the right direction.  If nothing else, the complaint has brought national attention to TJ’s admission procedures and sparked a dialogue within the community. 

“I hope this complaint,” Kinney says, “will compel our community to discuss how TJ’s narrowing focus on supposedly objective measures of performance ultimately compromises its stated mission ‘to foster a culture of innovation based on ethical behavior and the shared interests of humanity.’”