Affirmative action on a high school level

[skreidle]

So, the current admissions procedures for my magnet high school, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, is under attack again. The initial admissions procedure of an SAT-style entrance exam weighted with GPA culls the application pool from about 2500 annually to 800; those 800 applications are then compared--courses, extracurriculars, essay, etc.--to select the final 400 students for the freshman body. The "problem" arises when this race-blind process results in an almost entirely white and Asian student body, with low numbers of minorities represented.

The kneejerk reaction to this is modify the admissions process to artificially boost the numbers of minorities, "increasing diversity." The problem with this is, as iriantuu succinctly put it:

Iriantuu (12:21:34): There's nothing illegal or immoral about jefferson. ITS VERY CLEAR THAT GOOD SCORES GET YOU IN.
Iriantuu (12:22:50): I'd be all for dismantling jefferson if someone could demonstrate that it's part of an institutional problem.
Iriantuu (12:23:09): But as best I can tell, the terrible conditions of schools in low-income and predominantly black areas has nothing to do wtih jefferson

A fellow TJ graduate, Ryan Comes, has written a letter to the school board regarding the commission's report, raising several concerns before the board votes on the issue.

The comission's report, as well as a partial history of the issue, can be found here. (Does anyone else see anything questionable about the contradiction between "Increase Diversity; Read all applications including biographical information!" and "Don't change admissions standards and criteria"?)

Ryan's letter can be found here.

The post to tjpeople, including information on contacting Ryan and supporting his efforts, can be found here.

A survey on the issue, noticeable biased in favor of the change, with a comment box, can be found here.

My comment to the survey was as follows:
The educational problems resulting in TJ's non-diverse population lie in a faulty primary education system in the U.S., not in race-blind high school admissions. Artificially "increasing diversity" will result in a decrease in the quality of a TJ education, and an increase in students not properly equipped by their educational history to handle TJ's rigor.

More from iriantuu:

Iriantuu (12:43:35): Granted it's not fair and such, but people with low test scores are statistically less likely to do well at JEfferson.
Iriantuu (12:44:09): Personally I'd leave jefferson the same and use it's application and acceptance demographics as indicators as to how the state is doing with its schools.
Iriantuu (12:44:18): Not changing it to try and make the state look artificially better.

As an aside, I feel that No Child Left Behind is likewise off-target, though with similarly misguided good intentions, neglecting the positive outliers in favor of standardization.

Comments

[iriantuu.livejournal.com]

Although I'm a strong supporter of affirmative action, I agree with many of the thoughts you posted. The way most of these institutions implement it, it doesn't turn out to reflect the original intention of affirmation action anyway. The concept of affirmative action was never intended to require that test, performance, or admissions be altered for certain classes of people. And, obviously in many of our opinions, that would be especially inappropriate for TJ.

My experience working on issues of affirmative action at Virginia Tech and within other areas strongly suggests to me that much can be accomplished through outreach programs. The problem is never that there are no qualified Black or Hispanic kids out there, but that they do not apply for a variety of reasons. It's not easy, but it's possible to make TJ more appealing to them without compromising it's fundamental mission.

In another time and place, I might consider the notion that the very idea of TJ is an inappropriate elitist one. But given how much the school system sucks in general, I really can't - I really hope we see the day when all of our schools are better than TJ is (or was, for us alumni).

Okey enough drunken rambling.