Virginia school officials have spoken out against a Republican bill introduced this month into the Virginia General Assembly challenging diversity admissions measures taken at 19 Virginia’s Governor’s Schools across the state.
The bill, put forth by Del. Glenn Davis Jr., targets what Davis calls “proxy discrimination,” which the bill defines as using demographic factors like race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in admissions to discriminate against or give preference towards an individual or group. The bill’s definition also includes broader factors such as ZIP codes or socioeconomic background as demographic information that cannot be considered during the admissions process.
In their place, the bill would require only “traditional academic success factors,” such as standardized test results, academic grades, and extracurricular activities, to be used in admissions at Governor’s Schools.
The bill has sparked a backlash from leading Virginia Governor’s and magnet schools.
Fairfax County Public School Division Counsel John Foster says that the bill appears to have been influenced by opposition to Fairfax County Public Schools’ new admissions policies at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (locally referred to as TJ), a top-ranked magnet school in Alexandria.
TJ’s new admission process, adopted in October 2020, uses a “holistic review” that includes “experience factors” such as economic disadvantage, special education, and students attending underrepresented schools.
The changes were made in an attempt to increase diversity at the school, whose student population has historically been comprised of white and Asian-American students. TJ is currently facing a legal battle brought by parents, collectively named the Coalition for TJ, for alleged discrimination against Asian-American families following TJ’s changes in admissions policies.
“Apparently, the sponsor was talking to the Coalition for TJ before he submitted his bill, and the Coalition is plaintiff in a case that is challenging the admissions process,” Foster says. Davis has said publicly that Coalition of TJ members reached out to him and spoke with him about the bill before it was introduced, according to the Washington Post.
If passed, the bill could reverse TJ’s admissions changes, Foster says. “We really viewed this bill as the third attempt to stop these important admissions changes.”
Foster denied that TJ knows the race, ethnicity, or gender of students when they apply, information that the bill is seeking to prevent from being used in the admissions process.
“We don’t gather demographic information regarding race or ethnicity or gender as part of the application process,” Foster said. “The folks who are doing these applications, they don’t even know the names of these kids, let alone their race or ethnicity or gender. What is concerning in the bill, so far from what we’ve seen, is this parroting of language that is in legal briefs and a pending court case.”
Davis, for his part, denied to the Richmond-Times Dispatch the allegations that the bill is aimed specifically at Fairfax County Public Schools, but explained that schools that are changing their admissions solely for the purposes of diversity are not addressing the real problem.
“There are communities that have historically not had the same resources as others when it came to educational opportunity,” Davis told the newspaper. “By adjusting admissions standards significantly by allowing race to be used significantly as (an admission standard), it just covers up the inequities that exist at the middle-school level.”
The bill comes at a time when Richmond Public Schools and Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras are making efforts to diversify their student body and “eliminate the ‘opportunity gap’ that disadvantages many low-income children and children of color.” Richmond Public Schools has sought to do so in recent years with measures like school rezoning.
In a statement, Kamras said the bill is a “thinly veiled effort to prevent Governor’s Schools from becoming more diverse.” Kamras is the only superintendent in the Richmond area to publicly oppose the bill, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
The lawsuit against TJ will be decided by a ruling in the coming weeks without going to trial. U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton said there was no need because there are no “material facts in dispute,” according to the Washington Post.
FCPS is also facing another lawsuit regarding admissions at TJ. In November 2020, a different parents’ group sued to put an end to the new admissions policies at TJ, arguing that the test goes against a Virginia law requiring Governor’s Schools to offer a “nationally norm-referenced aptitude test” in the admissions process, according to the Washington Post. The lawsuit has had little movement in the past few months.
The legal turmoil comes at a time when Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s election has put the future of diversity initiatives at Virginia schools in question. When asked by a lawmaker about diversity in education, Youngkin’s secretary of education, Aimee Rogstad Guidera, said the admissions process should be “colorblind,” but that schools should also be representative of the state’s population.
During his campaign last fall, Youngkin told the Washington Post that he plans to pressure TJ to change its new admissions policies to a “merit-based” system.
Youngkin has run on a platform of change in public schools across Virginia. Youngkin signed 11 executive orders on his first day in office, including an executive order “ending the use of inherently divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory, and restoring excellence in K-12 public education in the Commonwealth.”
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