The U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice began investigating discrimination in admissions at Thomas Jefferson High School (TJ) on May 22. The day before, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares concluded his investigation, laying the groundwork for federal intervention. Altogether, the Department of Education, Department of Justice and Miyares claimed that TJ’s emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) violated the civil rights of Asian American students. TJ has been embroiled in controversy since 2020, facing intense scrutiny regarding its admissions process.

“The Fairfax County School Board made it clear that its intended outcome was to reduce opportunities for Asian American students—and that’s exactly what occurred,” Miyares said in a May 21 press statement given to The Highlander by his office. “These students are not statistics. They are sons and daughters, neighbors, classmates and Virginians who deserve equal protection and opportunity under the law.”

Such controversy has already taken a toll. Last year, former Principal Ann Bonitatibus stepped down from her position after facing heated disapproval over her administrative decisions. As the school’s driving force of DEI, Bonitatibus’ tenure oversaw major overhauls in TJ’s admissions process.

“Bonitatibus demonstrated a desire to shift away from merit,” TJ junior Walter* said. “Many teachers whose values aligned with hers were also hired during this time.”

The largest change to TJ admissions occurred in 2020, when FCPS removed standardized admissions tests and teacher recommendation letters from the application requirements. Furthermore, the new admissions revolved around the “Portrait of a Graduate,” a county standard that expects students to be a communicator, collaborator, ethical and global citizen, creative and critical thinker and a goal-directed and resilient individual. The school board also began to consider factors such as economic status, disabilities and whether or not applicants spoke English as a second language. To compensate for these changes, FCPS raised the minimum GPA to 3.5 and required that applicants take at least three honors courses.

“When I applied, the application consisted of a few essay prompts that were meant to measure Portrait of a Graduate qualities,” TJ junior Lauren* said. “While I don’t think this necessarily assesses a student’s academic qualities as well as previous tests, I think it still checks a few good points: Will you be an active student in the TJ community? Are you able to communicate your ideas in a short time frame? And, of course, the science question checks if you can clearly explain a line of logic.”

Dissatisfied with the drastic policy shift, Asian American parents filed a lawsuit in 2021 that reached the Supreme Court, arguing that the new admissions system discriminated against Asian Americans. While the Court declined to rule last year, Trump’s opposition to DEI brought tensions back to the surface. His Department of Education cited Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to frame the new admission system as a paragon of discrimination.

“Many people at my school have said they know they completely failed answering the science question or had no idea how to answer the prompts, but they still got in,” Lauren said. “This brings up questions on how exactly TJ admissions officers decided what made one student’s application better than others.”

In addition to changing admission requirements, FCPS added a merit-based lottery to TJ admissions, which randomly selects top students from all middle schools in order to increase the diversity of admissions. This lottery capped the number of applicants from high-performing schools like Longfellow Middle School, which had previously dominated the TJ applications pool. It also allowed underrepresented middle schools with high concentrations of minority students to have a higher chance of admission.

“I thought it was funny that I was waitlisted,” said junior Joshua Lee, a Korean American and former student at Longfellow. “I was nationally ranked in first place for many of my Science Olympiad events, and I also took some TJ prep classes. Whether or not I was waitlisted by chance or by the lottery, I didn’t like the lottery system in principle. The system made the process more holistic and less objective. It’s not based on how ready you are for TJ’s course rigor or your grade, but it’s about your passion for TJ.”

The addition of a lottery-based system prompted critics to declare TJ admissions discriminatory and connect it to the school’s overall decline.

“Most TJ students are against the lottery system,” Lauren* said. “Lots of people at the school joke about how the school is ‘falling off,’ and so they are in agreement that better assessments need to be put in place, or at least the whole process needs to be less randomized.”

Others, such as junior Clement Ding, maintain that DEI did not significantly alter the admissions process. Ding, a Chinese American student, applied to TJ in 2021. He placed in the top 100 in his elementary age group at the United States Chess Federation, and in middle school, passed the AMC 12—a math test designed for seniors in high school. Even though TJ waitlisted him, he didn’t believe his race, gender or any other social factor played a determining role in his result.

“I genuinely wasn’t even in the top 50% of TJ applicants, just because I didn’t have any extremely groundbreaking accomplishments to my name,” Ding said. “I think the only reason why I was accepted in sophomore year was because I passed the F=ma exam to qualify for the United States Physics Olympiad.”

Independent of support or opposition to the admissions process, attempts to restore TJ to its number one spot on the national stage have triggered educational reforms within the school.

“There are theories that the reason TJ is implementing more AP classes next year is to boost our rankings up again,” Lauren said. “We also have retakes up to 100% now, but that’s an FCPS policy, and a lot of teachers have been making tests a lot harder as a result [of accusations of DEI], which may also be contributing to why people think newer classes have worse test performances.”

In the wake of the Trump administration’s investigation into TJ’s admission process, the school must handle the challenge of accommodating both merit and diversity in its admissions. 

“Regardless of how people interpret Trump’s investigation into TJ or the admissions process itself, federal involvement in a local school creates an unseen precedent,” Walter said. “[This] will undoubtedly inflame the situation for years to come.”

*The names Lauren and Walter are pseudonyms to protect their identities in the context of TJ’s competitive and high-pressure environment, where publicly sharing controversial opinions carries social risks.