Thomas Jefferson Tech High School
On the 23rd local time in the United States, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, the first public high school in the United States, announced the admission of new students in 2025 (fall 21 admission), resulting in a sharp drop of nearly 20% in the proportion of Asian students, triggering the "anger" of Asian families.
This year marks the first time that Thomas Jefferson High School (TJ High School) has adopted the new rules for comprehensive assessment:
Abolished standardized entrance exams for TJHSST;
Cancellation of the $100 filing fee;
Increased minimum GPA for application requirements;
Expanded the freshman class from 480 to 550;
The school allocates admissions to all students in the top 1.5% of the public schools in Fairfax County.
Under the new admissions policy, TJ High School received a total of 3,034 applications this year, compared to just 2,539 applications last year — a 17 percent increase in the number of applicants. In the end, 297 boys and 253 girls were admitted.
Also because of the new admissions rules, for the first time in at least 10 years, every fair middle school in Fairfax County has students admitted to TJ High School.
The average grade of these admitted students is similar to that of previous years, with an average GPA of 3.9 for applicants and 3.95 for final admissions. But the ethnic makeup of this year's new class has changed dramatically.
The proportion of white, African-American and Hispanics has increased, while Asian students, while the majority, while the proportion of Asian students has dropped directly from 73% last year to 54.36%.
White 17.7% (last year) – 22.36% (this year)
African Americans 1.23% (last year) - 7.09% (this year)
Hispanics 3.29% (last year) – 11.27% (this year)
Asians 73% (last year) – 54.36% (this year)
A total of 1,535 Asian-American students applied, and 299 were admitted, a significant decrease from 355 students last year.
TJ High School's admissions reforms have sparked widespread discontent among Asian-American families, which have been criticized for lowering the bar for admissions solely to increase ethnic diversity.
In March, several Asian parents filed a lawsuit against Scott Brabrand, director of Fairfax County Public School Systems and Districts, accusing them of not remaining "ethnically neutral" and discriminating against Asians, and the case is still pending.
The Fairfax County public school system announced the admission results on the 23rd that the new admission criteria are still based on grades, do not consider ethnicity, apply students only have a number, and admissions officers do not know the ethnicity or gender of applicants when evaluating.
The reduction of the proportion of Asians in the top high schools is likely to be a trend
At present, almost all schools in the United States are pursuing ethnic diversity, which also makes Asian students who originally had an absolute advantage in elite schools begin to prepare to face the problem of quota reduction.
Earlier, at the end of April, the results of the New York Special High School Entrance Examination (SHSAT) for the 2020-21 academic year were released. This year, 4,262 candidates were on the list, of which 53.7% were Asian candidates, which was basically the same as last year, and continued to rank first among all ethnic groups, far ahead of other ethnic groups.
New York Special High School is a secondary school where admission is based on an entrance test (SHSAT) score as the only criterion for admission. Since the enrollment stage basically recruits all high-quality students, students in special high schools far surpass other schools in academic performance and further education results.
Such a result sparked dissatisfaction from Porter, the director of the New York Board of Education, who said the admission results were "unacceptable."
New York City Education Commissioner Meisha Porter
"Due to the pandemic, the number of test takers has declined, New York City uses only one-time tests to determine enrollment, and the results year after year are unacceptable, and the De Blasio administration has been calling for a new approach (to admit new students)," she said. ”
Porter also made it clear in a statement: "New York state laws establishing special high school entrance exams must be repealed." ”
In fact, the last New York Education Commissioner, Richard Carranza, along with Mayor Bill de Blasio, tried in 2019 to overturn the current special high school exam model, but without success.
However, under the influence of Blasio's policies, special high schools are quietly reducing the number of students admitted through examinations, and Asian students are the most affected by this. In the case of Steyvesant High School, in 2019, there were 895 places admitted based on test scores, but in 2021 it dropped to 750; the number of Asian students admitted also fell from 587 to 493, a decrease of nearly 100.
A large number of Asian-American families in New York are disgusted by the City's actions.
Mr. Huang, a parent of Chinese students in New York, said: The mind of the New York Education Bureau is not to run schools well and improve the quality of education, but to blindly talk about "race", and to cancel SHSAT, cancel genius classes, push the lottery, push what diversification, and transfer students from the original corresponding schools to other schools, so that students' learning will definitely be affected. Therefore, this year, the number of applicants and admissions of African Americans and Hispanics has declined, indicating that there is no emphasis on quality education, and the results will only get worse and worse.
The 29 constituency city councilors also believe that some people see Asians dominating the world, and psychological imbalance, and re-mention the abolition of the exam, in fact, African Hispanics did not perform well, has nothing to do with the exam, the exam is the fairest.