Posts Tagged ‘FCPS’
TJ Drops in Quality Rankings, Again
Fairfax County’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) used to be the #1 high school in the country in U.S. News & World Report’s rankings. It achieved this status in three consecutive years — 2020, 2021 and 2022. But it slipped to #5 in 2023. And it has dropped to #14 in…
Read MoreFCPS Promises Transparency, But Hides the Ball
Several prior posts on this site have reported on a lawsuit stemming from the failure of Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) to provide timely notice to high school students of commendations they had received from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. As reported earlier, the failure created intense controversy. In response, the school Superintendent announced in…
Read MoreFCPS Violates Its Policy on Political Advertising
A Regulation of the Fairfax County School Board states that “Campaign literature supporting one or more candidates shall not be distributed within the schools or on school buses by students, teachers, or others; nor shall campaign posters be displayed at or within the schools ….” (Regulation 4426.5). School administrators are ignoring this policy at at…
Read MoreFCPS Spins the Decline in SAT Scores
Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) posted a misleading article last week entitled “Fairfax County Students Continue to Outperform SAT State and Global Averages.” The school Superintendent, Michelle Reid, touted the same data at the October 12 meeting of the School Board, using a chart labeled “Fairfax seniors have consistently outperformed state and global SAT outcomes.” The…
Read MoreAppeals Court Overturns District Court Ruling in TJ Case
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…
Read MoreStrategic Plan and “Equity Policy,” Part 4 — The Superintendent Weighs In
The FCPS Superintendent, Michelle Reid, recently outlined her views about the relationship between a new “equity-based” Strategic Plan for the schools, and a new, overlapping Equity Policy. The occasion was a meeting with a group of citizens who have questions about the role of “equity” in the two FCPS initiatives. Background The three prior articles…
Read MoreStrategic Plan and “Equity Policy,” Part 2
This article reports on the development of a new Strategic Plan for Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), and the role of “equity” in it. A subsequent article will discuss FCPS’s simultaneous development of a separate but related initiative, the “Equity Policy.” Development of the Strategic Plan The Superintendent of FCPS initiated a planning process in…
Read MoreFairfax County SAT Scores Have Seriously Declined
I encourage everyone to read this short article. Fairfax SAT Scores Fall 27 Points. According to the statistics compiled by the Fairfax County Taxpayers Association (FCTA), the average SAT score of Fairfax County high schools students fell by a shocking 27 points between 2018 and 2022. Only two schools (Thomas Jefferson and Lake Braddock) showed…
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