Anderson asked fellow board members to “please lower their hands,” so she could get the “pulse of the board,” “some feedback to the superintendent,” some “consensus taking” on the “assessment” to TJ.
Board members responded, saying they were “confused.”
Was she talking about the TJ “test?” asked a board member.
The TJ admissions director weighed in that there was actually a “battery” of tests.
Board member Megan McLaughlin wanted to “bring clarity” on the vote, and she asked if this was “for this year” and wasn’t a “long-term decision.”
“Are we talking about forever and ever?” she asked.
Anderson handed the baton to board member Karen Keys-Gamarra, speaking about the “Quant-T” and the “barrier” tests.
The tests now had a new name: the “barrier” tests.
McLaughlin said she still felt “uncomfortable.”
Keys-Gamarra said she had circulated some material to the board “that might help.”
It was still chaos.
‘A Little Confused’
“Are we in this moment directing the superintendent? Because I’m a little confused,” said Rachna Sizemore-Hizer, the only Asian American on the board.
No, Anderson insisted, interrupting and saying that she wanted to just help the superintendent: “We’re looking to get consensus, because we want to be able to give him substance of how to move on for Thursday, when he brings the next part of this presentation.”
Anderson kept diminishing what the board was doing, saying, “We’re not necessarily looking to give a direction” to the superintendent.
And then she asked for the vote, but then instructed board members to “lower their hands” because she had some “confounded” some issues, then told them to “raise your hand at this time,” when she wanted to get a vote on “removal of the assessment.”
The votes came in: 12-0. Kill the test.
Parents watching knew what this would mean: the death of TJ.
Sure enough, the next day, the TJ admissions office quietly added a new update to its website, rushing so quickly it misspelt the word “consensus,” stating:
“Based upon the School Board Work Session discussion on October 6, the school board concensus [sic] was that testing (Quant-Q, ACT Aspire Reading and Science) will be eliminated for this year, the application fee will be eliminated and there will be an increase in student enrollment at TJHSST. We do not have a window for the application process at this time.”
The test was gone. The lynchpin of evaluating STEM merit was gone. Instead of asking why school officials had consistently failed to educate Black and Hispanic students so they had high aptitude in math and science, the school board, superintendent and school principal had demonized not just the test but the Asian American students who do well on it.
The next night, Thursday, October 8, at the school board’s regular monthly meeting, parent after parent spoke up to protest the elimination of the test. I was among them, arguing that the elimination of the test represented the death of meritocracy and the death of TJ.
But the fix had long been in. The test was gone.
“It was a snow job in the middle of the night in the middle of a pandemic over videoconferencing,” says one TJ parent. “The Fairfax County school board was judge, jury and executioner to our amazing school.”
The school board and the school superintendent, Brabrand, had ignored our protests. Instead, that Thursday night, the school board struck through the word “merit” in a resolution they rejected anyway related to new public engagement.
For his part, Brabrand, the embattled superintendent, shared on the screen a response he would be sending to Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and Virginia Education Secretary Qarni, with his “diversity plan” for admission to the storied STEM school.
He forgot to include a critical word among the qualifications he’d be seeking from students: “STEM.”
Ten days later, this past Sunday, as students, parents, alumni and community members gathered for their memorial service for TJ, the iconic dome of the school rose high above them. They were mourning a loss but they were not abandoning the battle.
Zhou, the TJ alumni mother who stood before the group with a medal, declared loud and clear to friends: “We must continue to fight for our beloved TJ!”
Asra Q. Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is the mother of a Thomas Jefferson High School student. This article was published originally on Substack.
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