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Washington Post Editorial On TJ Admissions: Both Unpersuasive And Incoherent

A few days ago I discussed The Quest For ?Diversity? At The Most Selective Public High School In America. Now comes the Washington Post with a pablum-like editorial on the same subject, ?Narrowing N.Va. high school?s diversity gap.? (?Pablum,? says the dictionary built into the Mac OS, is ?bland or insipid intellectual fare, entertainment, etc.; pap.?)

Diversity gap? A foreigner landing on our shores might wonder what a ?diversity gap? is, but by now we Americans all know that ?diversity? has simply become another word for black and Hispanic ? and hence that a ?diversity gap? means that there aren?t as many blacks or Hispanics here or there as those who spend much of their time counting blacks and Hispanics think there should be.

A new secondary meaning of ?diversity? is a lack of proportional representation of blacks and Hispanics, or something close to it. Thus the Post predictably (if bordering on ungrammatically) notes that ?African Americans and Hispanics comprise a third of the enrollment of the systems TJ draws from,? thus arguing that ?[t]he lack of diversity at TJ, as [Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology]is known? results from their underrepresentation.

The Post gingerly refrains from blaming TJ?s admissions officials, but it has to blame someone or something other than the underrepresented blacks or Hispanics who, the Post is sure, for unexplained reasons, should be present in far greater numbers. So it blames the Fairfax County school system as a whole. ?Surely,? its editorials asserts with a certainty based on no apparent knowledge or evidence,

a school system that is seen as among the nation's best should be capable of readying ? and recruiting -? a broader spectrum of its students for the rigorous academic demands of the selective school.

As it happens, in today?s mail (in fact, just a few minutes ago) I received a book I?m reviewing (thanks to George Leef) for the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, Equal Opportunity in Higher Education: The Past and Future of California?s Proposition 209, edited by Eric Grodsky and Michal Kurlaender (Harvard Education Press, 2010). A quick, superficial skim suggests that most of the included essays are of one mind about the desirability of preference-produced ?diversity,? but I was pleased to see a Comment on several essays by Peter Schmidt of the Chronicle of Higher Education, who covers affirmation action thoroughly and fairly (though not always persuasively). I mention this here and now because, by chance, I happened to land on a page (211) where Schmidt responds (here quite persuasively) to the routine criticism of the schools for not doing more to prepare minorities for higher level work:

Clearly, public schools need to be doing more to help children overcome learning deficits associated with being brought up in poverty, crime-plagued neighborhoods, single parent or dysfunctional households, or within immigrant families struggling to learn English and assimilate. But to expect public schools to fully remedy the effects of these broader societal forces, and completely blame them for the failure of the disadvantaged to qualify for UC admissions, is to place on such institutions a larger burden than they can be expected to bear. Worse yet, pointing the finger at public schools narrows our focus so that we do not consider how other institutions, as well as individuals, can work to improve the bigger picture and help more children show up at schools ready to learn. The authors emphasize the importance of establishing a ?college-going school culture? at Preuss [a special school at UC San Diego one of the authors helped start that has a good record of preparing disadvantaged students for college], but give little thought to the question of whether more can be done to create a college-going culture in the homes of Preuss students...

Although neither the Post articles I cited in my earlier post nor this editorial attempt to explain why there aren?t more minorities at TJ, Schmidt?s call for caution before routinely blaming the public schools, as this editorial does, makes good sense.

The editorial quotes Fairfax deputy superintendent Richard Moniuszko?s unfortunate, system-abasing admission that ?We need to do a better job of evening the playing field? that I quoted in my last post, but it never suggests (just as neither earlier Post article asked Moniuszko or anyone else) in what way the current playing field is not level. He and the Post?s editors, of course, know, they just know, that the playing field is not even now because it does not yield a satisfactory number of minority winners, but they never say where or how the field is not even or what must be done to even it. ?Evening? the field, the editors assert,

doesn't mean ? as some critics of diversity would claim ? watering down the standards. High standards and a more inclusive student population are not incompatible.

Perhaps not, but the editors don?t say what should be done, beyond ?seeking out talent? and ?exposing students to Algebra I at an earlier age,? to reduce the oddly named ?diversity gap.? Seeking talent and exposing all students to Algebra earlier, though worthy goals, would seem to do nothing to make the playing field more ?even? for minorities.

Well, there was one other thing the Post editors encouraged, but it?s so odd it?s hard to tell whether the recommendation was serious or a typographical error: it is important, they said, that school system officials ?are looking to make its honor systems more accessible....?

Honor systems? I don?t know what, if anything, accessibility to an honor system means, much less what it has to do with qualifying for admission to a highly selective science and technology high school.( Could this be an attempt to take seriously education reporter Jay Mathews? odd suggestion [criticized in my last post] that TJ should take grades and test scores less seriously and place greater admissions emphasis on interest and determination, and especially on ?character? and ?grace??)

Are Post editorials edited? Could the editors possibly have meant gifted programs instead of honor systems? But if so, making them ?more accessible? would simply push the problem of TJ?s ?diversity gap? down the education ladder to the middle schools; it wouldn?t resolve it.

Full post as published by Discriminations on November 12, 2010 (boomark / email).