Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, one of the top state schools in the U.S., has seen its ranking plummet since implementing a new DEI ‘racial equity’ admissions policy in 2020. Laurel Duggan, UnHerd‘s U.S. correspondent, has the story.
In the days after George Floyd’s death, [school] leaders began assessing the underrepresentation of black and Hispanic students at the magnet school, and discussed how to move “towards greater equity, to be clearly distinguished from equality”. Soon after, the school updated its highly competitive admissions process, replacing standardised tests with a holistic evaluation that rewarded students on the basis of having attended underrepresented middle schools and qualifying for free lunch — considerations that critics have called racial proxies.
School leaders had repeatedly complained that the student population, which was majority Asian-American, did not match the racial demographics of the surrounding area. After the implementation of new admissions metrics, the admission of Asian students declined from 73% to 54%. Critics, including parents of Asian students, have pointed to this statistic as evidence of discrimination.
In addition to changing demographics, TJ’s academic output declined drastically. The school tumbled down the national rankings of top public high schools, falling from the #1 to the #14 slot in just four years.
TJ previously boasted 157 semifinalists for the prestigious 2020 National Merit Scholarship, a number that stayed fairly consistent until this year. But the number fell by nearly half for the current senior class, students who were admitted in 2021 under the newly implemented race-conscious admissions rules. Only 81 TJ students were semifinalists for the 2025 award.
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