By Matthew Barakat/AP
For parents in Fairfax County, Virginia, who want the best for their children’s education, Jefferson School for Science and Technology is as revered as an Ivy League school. Asian American community groups in the region make a concerted effort to get their children enrolled there. Korean churches, for instance, regularly hold classes to help students prepare for the school’s rigorous admissions test.
But as the county becomes more and more diverse, its premier public high school is moving in the opposite direction. Though the county’s API population is well-represented at Jefferson, constituting 21 percent of the incoming freshman class, blacks represent just one-half percent and Latinos 1.6 percent. That’s just two African Americans and seven Latinos in a class of 430.
Compare that with the just-graduating class of 2001, which was 5.8 percent black and 5.6 percent Latino.
“It’s a huge concern. I was shocked when I came to the school this year and saw the numbers,” said new principal Elizabeth Lodal.
Jefferson, a magnet school with a national reputation, may have the smartest student body of any high school in the country. Last year, 153 students were named National Merit Scholar semifinalists, the most of any school in the nation. The average SAT score at the school is above 1400.
Four years ago, the school took race into account as it considered the thousands of applications it receives for the 400 or so spots available in each class. But subsequent court rulings led administrators to believe that the admissions process must be race neutral, so the school system changed its policy, said regional superintendent Michael Glascoe.
“Once that changed, the numbers dropped off considerably,” Glascoe said.
The demographic change has not gone unnoticed by students.
“The students are really getting upset by the numbers,” said Courtney Sims of Burke, a black student who just graduated from Jefferson and will attend Stanford in the fall. “Everybody is trying to figure out what to do to improve diversity. It’s a complicated issue.”
Sims was quick to point out that she always felt at home at Jefferson, even though she was often the only African American in her class.
“Everyone is friends with everyone, although you do notice that most of the people there don’t look like you,” she said.
The drop-off has occurred as the school district itself grows increasingly diverse. Blacks represent 11 percent and Latinos 13 percent of the 158,000-student school system. Four years ago, blacks also represented 11 percent of the countywide student body, but Latinos constituted only 10 percent.
Jefferson isn’t the only magnet school struggling to maintain a diverse student body. The Governor’s School for Government and International Studies in Richmond, which along with Jefferson is one of only three magnet schools in the state to carry designation as an elite Governor’s School, has also seen its number of blacks and Latinos drop.
The incoming freshman class of 139 has only eight blacks and one Latino. Four years ago, the freshman class had no Latinos, but 21 blacks in a class of 149.
The third all-day Governor’s school, the Appomattox School in Petersburg, has been in existence for only two years, and enrollment figures were unavailable for incoming students.
At the Richmond school, the admissions process has always been race neutral. But it still makes an extra effort to get minority students to apply. To begin with, it provides proportional representation to the 11 localities it serves, which ensures that the city of Richmond, which has a large black population, does not have to compete with wealthier suburban counties like Henrico and Chesterfield to place its students at the school.
In addition, guidance counselors make sure to visit middle schools with high minority populations to encourage students there to apply, said admissions director Mike Geiger.
At Jefferson, a task force has been formed to determine ways to boost black and Latino enrollment without resorting to a quota system. A report from the task force is expected by February 2002, Glascoe said.
“There’s no reason Jefferson should not look like the rest of the community,” Lodal said. “But this is not a problem unique to Jefferson.”
She said the county, like most other school districts, first tries to identify gifted and talented students in the second grade. If talented minority students aren’t identified early, it aggravates the problem.
It’s also important to get parents and students thinking about Jefferson early on. For instance, a student must have already completed algebra to enroll at the school, so a student who wants to attend Jefferson has to be placed in an advanced math track well before eighth grade.
Sims said it could be easy for a student to cruise through middle school without being aware that Jefferson is even an option.
“If it hadn’t been for the fact that my older sister went there, I would have known nothing about it,” she said.
The school system wants to make sure that all students have the same oppoturnity to prepare for Jefferson’s rigorous admissions process. In fact, volunteer efforts are under way to offer a prep course for minority students, said Don Mixon, an African American parent at the school whose son Ricky will attend the University of Virginia this fall.
“Everybody is working hard to address this issue,” Mixon said. “It’s going to take a concerted effort by everyone, but I’m confident things will improve.” |
