Gov. Youngkin Announces Proposal to Protect Student Achievement Against Merit Withholders

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin at a "Back to School" rally in Annandale, Va., on Aug. 31, 2022. Courtesy of Spirit of Virginia

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Wednesday that he had requested Republican state legislators to introduce a new bill to “require Virginia schools to inform students and their parents about National Merit Scholarships and other awards.”

“We now know that at least 16 schools across three different school divisions in Northern Virginia withheld notification of accolades from high-performing students in the name of ‘equity.’ Parents are rightfully upset, and they should be,” said Youngkin in a press statement. He had previously called the problem “unacceptable.”

“In Virginia, parents matter, and the legislation I’ve asked Senator Dunnavant and Delegate Freitas to introduce today will ensure that merit and accolades are celebrated in the Commonwealth. We will not allow our students and their parents to be left uninformed of their hard-earned recognition in what we now know was widespread across more than a dozen schools in multiple school divisions,” he added.

The bill, introduced on Wednesday, requires all recognition, including those that may affect a student’s application to a higher education institution, “to be transmitted to the pupil and the pupil’s parent as soon as practicable after receipt of the information.”

The legislation specifically mentions national merit recognition associated with high Preliminary SAT (PSAT) scores. Such recognition opens doors to special scholarship programs and may differentiate an application from another.

Since December 2022, 16 high schools in Fairfax (seven), Loudoun (five), and Prince William (four) Counties in Northern Virginia have reported delays in notifying their students of national merit awards, qualified by students who have PSAT scores among the top 3 percent nationwide.

These high schools include the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST), currently ranked No. 1 in the country, and Langley High School, ranked No. 2 in Virginia. Both of these schools are located in Fairfax County.

Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (C) announces investigations on Thomas Jefferson High School's delay in informing students of national recognitions and the school's admission policies in Alexandria, Va., on Jan. 4, 2023. Terri Wu/The Epoch Times

Civil Rights Probe

At Youngkin’s instruction, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares announced a civil rights investigation on TJHSST on Jan. 4 and expanded the probe to the entire Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) a few days later, as more schools reported the same problem of withholding students’ merit awards. Miyares said that if the withholding of merit awards was based on race, national origin, or any other protected status under the Virginia Human Rights Act, it was unlawful.

This January, FCPS Superintendent Michelle Reid held multiple town hall meetings with parents of affected students. At the meeting at Langley High on Jan. 10, Reid said FCPS was responding to the issue with “all hands on deck” and had pulled central office staffers to call the college admissions office to inform them of students’ national merit awards. The school division had also hired a Richmond law firm to conduct its own investigation.

The number of affected FCPS students is over 300, and the seven FCPS schools with notification delay findings are about a quarter of the district’s total number of high schools.

AG Miyares also started an investigation on TJHSST over its admission policy. “Using race, national origin, or any other protected class under Virginia’s Human Rights Act as a factor to determine admission to one of our top high schools is wrong. It is unjust,” he said at the press conference on Jan. 4.

For two years, a group of FCPS parents fought over the revised TJHSST admission policies that eliminated the magnet high school’s entrance exam, allocated admissions for every school in TJHSST’s covered areas, and reduced Asian students from 73 percent to 54 percent in the class of 2025.

FCPS has been pushing for equity—or equal outcomes—in its policies. In November 2022, FCPS spent $455,000 to hire a consultant to develop an “equity-centered strategic plan” (pdf) that advocated “equal outcomes.”

“As a child of an immigrant, I know that education is the doorway to the American Miracle. It is supposed to create equal opportunities for our students—not equal outcomes at the expense of others. While my office continues our civil rights investigation into Fairfax County and looks into potential violations at additional school systems, I applaud the governor for introducing legislation that would prevent this from happening again,” said AG Miyares in a press statement today.

Reid also denied that equity goals lowered standards. “Equity is not lowering expectations. It’s about maintaining high expectations and providing high support,” she told parents at Langley. “[E]quity has nothing to do with delaying or not getting [award] certificates on time.”