A race-neutral admissions policy at one of the nation’s top 10 high schools will stand after the Supreme Court declined to intercede, even after finding affirmative action unconstitutional last year.
Fairfax County Public Schools leaders overhauled the policy at the elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in 2020, when administrators realized students were being admitted from just a handful of the district’s middle schools. This resulted in classes that “lacked the socioeconomic and geographic diversity seen in the other schools,” the district said in a statement this week.
“We have long believed that the new admissions process is both constitutional and in the best interest of all of our students,” said Karl Frisch, Fairfax County School Board chair. “It guarantees that all qualified students from all neighborhoods in Fairfax County have a fair shot at attending this exceptional high school.”
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take the case filed by a group that claims the magnet school’s race-neutral admissions policy discriminated against Asian American students. That decision let stand the ruling of an appeals court that found the new policy “did not reduce the percentage of Asian American admittees below the percentage of Asian American students in the schools in the jurisdictions served by the magnet school.”
Beyond describing the history of the case, the Supreme Court did not give a reason for its ruling. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas wrote a lengthy dissent, saying the appeals court decision endorsed “intentional racial discrimination.”
The policy raised the minimum GPA for admissions, guaranteed every middle school a certain number of seats, and eliminated standardized tests and application fees at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. Students from every Fairfax County middle school are now enrolled and the average GPA is 3.9, which is in line with historical averages, Frisch noted.
Economically disadvantaged students received 11.64% of the admissions offers for the freshman class of 2023. The gender breakdown was 43.4% female and 57.6% male. More than 60% of the admissions offers went to Asian-American students while white students received 19% and Black and Hispanic students received 6.7% and 6.0%, the district reported.
