The lawsuits are already being typed up after merit award winning students were denied major opportunities. They could have had their pick of Ivy League college placement and hefty scholarships. The administrators in their progressive high school hid the awards until it was way too late. They didn’t want the other students to have their feelings hurt. You can bet the FBI will have agents planted at their next school board meeting, all set to drag away angry parents.
Merit awards hidden from students
Withholding prestigious merit based awards from students can seriously “impact the trajectory of their academic futures.” Like that asteroid which recently got slammed by a satellite. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology found a new way to infuriate parents. Attorney Erin Wilcox is real familiar with “TJ.”
She successfully sued them for racial discrimination against Asians in their admissions policy. They didn’t want to enroll them because they were making Black and Hispanic students look lazy and unmotivated. Even the White kids were getting a complex.
Just before Christmas, TJ parent Shawna Yashar was shocked to learn that her son had earned a National Merit Scholar award. He had an amazing score on his PSAT from the fall of 2021. Shawna wasn’t shocked that he earned it, he deserved it and she knew that. What threw her for a loop was that the school sat on the golden ticket to academic success until it couldn’t do her son any good.
I’ve asked @JasonMiyaresVA to investigate allegations that information about National Merit Awards was withheld from students at Thomas Jefferson High School. pic.twitter.com/NuPJ9o7fX1
— Governor Glenn Youngkin (@GovernorVA) January 3, 2023
Once they figure out what that award was worth to his future career, it will be called “damages.” Then, a jury will kick around whether to add more to keep other districts from doing it to other students.
As The Hill points out, “under normal circumstances, this honor would have been cause for celebration — it’s a potent garland on a college application.” Merit in academic circles means straight A-pluses. They weren’t celebrating, they were doing internet searches for a good lawyer.
“Neither Shawna nor her son had any idea that he had earned the award when they were submitting those applications.” He wasn’t the only student in the same jam.
Awards intentionally rat-holed
Several of TJ’s students were recipients of the National Merit Scholars award but none of them knew it. That’s because “school officials intentionally decided to keep this information to themselves for fear that it might hurt the feelings of students who did not receive an award.”
They’re supposed to be a science based school? Technology teachers like that lead to pedestrian bridges that are self-cleaning and have Wi-Fi but can’t support themselves and pancake on cars, like that one done by that engineering school in Florida.
All the way back in Mid-October, as the students were preparing their college applications, TJ officials learned who would be getting the certificates. They intentionally “waited several weeks to inform the students by quietly placing the awards on each student’s desk.”
Today I'm expanding my civil rights investigation into Thomas Jefferson High School's withholding of merit awards to include the Fairfax Public Schools system following reports that other schools failed to notify & recognize their qualifying students. https://t.co/OOvC2crpjn
— Jason Miyares (@JasonMiyaresVA) January 9, 2023
By then, they knew every one “college early acceptance application deadlines had passed.” That “merit” they earned wouldn’t do them any good. Other schools throw a party.
The Hill notes that “winning a National Merit Scholar award can open a lot of doors for a student, including entrance into the college of their choice and the scholarship money to pay for it.”
What progressive teachers and administrators at the school did was slam “those doors shut in the name of promoting new school policies.” Ones which “promise equal outcomes for every student, without exception.“
