Has the TJ Experiment Been a Success?

By Mark Spooner | March 9, 2024 |

We are more than three years into the TJ experiment, but the Fairfax County School Board hasn’t yet addressed its successes and failures.  Whether an objective analysis will ever be conducted is questionable, for the program was adopted primarily for ideological reasons, and the Board may be reluctant to subject its ideological assumptions to scrutiny. …

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Will the Harvard/U.N.C. Decision Affect the TJ Admissions Case?

By Mark Spooner | July 1, 2023 |

On May 23 of this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, overturned a federal district court’s ruling that the new admissions standards for the elite Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (“TJ”) violated the “equal protection of the laws” mandate of the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment. …

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Coalition for TJ v. School Board — Further Analysis

By Mark Spooner | May 25, 2023 |

The two-judge majority in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board concluded that the School Board’s revised admissions policy did not have a disparate, adverse impact on Asian American applicants to the high school; indeed, according to the court, this group was helped, not hurt, by the new admissions criteria. Having parsed through the…

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Appeals Court Overturns District Court Ruling in TJ Case

By Mark Spooner | May 23, 2023 |

In a 2-1 split decision today, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit reversed the lower court’s ruling in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board.  The district court had ruled in February 2022 that the Fairfax County School Board’s revision of admissions criteria for the elite Thomas Jefferson High School for…

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