Elite Fairfax magnet school omitted honors designation from transcripts: Report

Fairfax County
Elite Fairfax magnet school omitted honors designation from transcripts: Report
Fairfax County
Elite Fairfax magnet school omitted honors designation from transcripts: Report
Virus Outbreak Schools Reopening
Fairfax County Public School buses set idle at a middle school in Falls Church, Va., Monday, July 20, 2020, as the nation’s 10th largest school district moves forward with plans that allow students to receive two days a week of in-person instruction when classes start during the Covid-19 pandemic. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Thomas Jefferson
High School
for Science and Technology in
Alexandria
,
Virginia
, reportedly failed to include honors class designations on its transcripts, according to a parent activist organization.

The transcripts of over 2,000 students at the elite northern Virginia high school do not designate which classes were considered honors courses,
according
to the parent activist group Parents Defending Education. Such classes are given an additional grade point weight of +0.5.


Parents Defending Education said it received numerous transcripts from parents in Fairfax County Public Schools whose children attended a number of different schools within the district, but only the transcripts from Thomas Jefferson High School failed to include the honors designation.

According to the parent activist group, administrators reportedly told inquiring parents that the reason the designation was withheld was a “nuanced” issue and that the high school had faced requests to include the marker for years but had yet to add it.


YOUNGKIN RIPS FAIRFAX SCHOOLS FOR MERIT SCANDAL, WARNS OF ‘HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION’

The revelation comes as Fairfax County Public Schools is embroiled in controversy after it was revealed that a number of high schools in the district, including Thomas Jefferson High School, failed to inform properly students who had been designated as commended scholars by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.

While the school district said the lack of notice was due to human error, the situation has drawn the attention of Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, who has launched a state civil rights investigation into the school district. Miyares is also investigating Thomas Jefferson High School for possible civil rights violations over the high school’s admissions process, which was overhauled in 2020 in a manner critics say disproportionately harmed Asian students.

Miyares’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

In a statement to the Washington Examiner, Parents Defending Education President Nicole Neily said the failure to include the honors designation on transcripts was part of the high school’s continued “war on merit.”


CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

“The TJ administration owes families answers on when and why this policy change was implemented,” Neily said. “Unlike the school asserted, this doesn’t seem to be a ‘nuanced’ issue — rather, it appears to be a clear-cut case of a war on merit, particularly in the wake of FCPS’s National Merit commended scholars problem.”

Fairfax County Public Schools did not respond to a request for comment.

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