Hell yes they can! In fact, this recent editorial by the Post, Fairfax school board should appeal ruling on admissions at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, denouncing the pernicious notion that schools for high-performing students should actually be for, you know, high performing students, outwoked the Times famous/infamous “1619 Project”, for, while the Project was a mixture of both sense and nonsense, the Post’s effusion consists entirely—well, almost entirely—of the latter.
Non-Beltway folks probably need to have it explained to them that a woke local government in Fairfax, Virginia changed the admissions system for its prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in now standard woke fashion, eliminating the use of standardized testing in the admissions process and explicitly favoring low income students, English language learners, and students with disabilities.
If you guessed that at “Old TJ” Asian students were heavily overrepresented, well, you guessed right. In response, a “Coalition for TJ” was formed, bringing a lawsuit in federal court against the changes, winning a favorable decision from Judge Claude Hilton. I confess I have to agree with the Post that the judge’s decision constitutes a severe judicial overreach, the judge finding that the new admissions process reflects a constitutionally impermissible “racial purpose or object,” the racial purpose or object, according to the judge, in this case being the reduction in the percentage of Asian students attending TJ—though I will also say that the judge’s summary of the facts of the old versus new admissions policy is far more accurate and complete than the Post’s “loaded” summary.
I don’t believe that the new procedures are “racist”, though I do believe that they’re unwise, and I don’t think the old procedures were racist, as the Post wants to believe, and wants you to believe. I think standardized tests, by and large, are a good thing rather than a bad one, and shouldn’t be abandoned just because they tell us things we don’t want to hear. I think a school set up to cater to academically proficient students should do just that, and that educators should stop using the meretricious arguments of critical race theory to disguise the clear disparities in average student performance between racial groups in this country, which they are very largely doing to escape the charge that they have “failed” black and Hispanic students.
By and large, schools haven’t “failed” black and Hispanic students. The greatest factor affecting student performance is student background rather than the schools themselves, but of course no one wants to admit it. This doesn’t mean that Asians are genetically superior or that Africans and Amerindians are genetically inferior (also known as the Samuel Huntington/Victor Davis Hanson thesis). It merely means that Asians are more likely to esteem learning than blacks or Hispanics in contemporary American culture.
The Post, of course, is going to call this kind of thinking “racist”—too racist even to discuss. Instead, the Post sighs that
The debate in Fairfax County about diversity and merit is being played out in school districts across the country and, unfortunately, has been caught up in the ugliness that seeks to pit communities of color against each other.
I don’t know what this nameless “ugliness” is, or why “communities of color” should all think alike—really, of course, why every “person of color” should think the way the Post wants them to. In the “big picture”, I think Democrats in Virginia stupidly allowed educators to implement this deeply unwise policy in order to disguise what appeared to be, but largely was not, their own failure to erase and resolve America’s centuries-old tradition of racial bigotry, for which stupidity the Democrats paid the price at the polls last November. This matter should be resolved at the polls as well. There was a time when judicial conservatives believed in judicial reticence. (Judge Hilton, as the Post helpfully points out, was appointed by Ronald Reagan.) But, I guess, that was back when conservatives thought they could win elections.
Afterwords
Freddie deBoer, whom I don’t always agree with, has said a lot of things I do agree with regarding standardized testing, and he gives a list of links to them here at the start of an article in which he shockingly accuses Harvard of being greedy. Of all things!
In fact, I will say that I found what Freddie has to say about Harvard was, well, not enthralling. If you want the real skinny on why Harvard is awful, check out this not so PC link from me, Jews getting all goyish on our asses, study says, summarizing a long post from 10 years back by Harvard Jew Ron Unz as to why Harvard discriminates—in favor of the Jews!
