Elite high schools are the new model for diversity without affirmative action 

What if there was a plan that colleges and universities could adopt that could improve admissions, create stronger classes and increase diversity, all at the same time? 

Impossible, many admissions officers might say, especially in the wake of last summer’s landmark affirmative action case. 

And yet, this month, the Supreme Court left in place the admissions standards at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia that a lower court deemed constitutional. This provides a win for advocates of excellence and diversity, as well as a roadmap the rest of the country can follow. 

For context, there are highly sought-after public schools in most major metro areas — such as Thomas Jefferson or the Boston Latin School — that are pipelines to the Ivy League. Often, they are the only schools where white, upper-class families meaningfully participate in public education. They require an application to gain admission, and unlike most public schools, they are not open to all students. Few are diverse. 

To many, these schools represent the creme-de-la-creme of public education in America. Thomas Jefferson, for example, has been ranked the nation’s #1 high school for three of the last four years.

In 2021, Thomas Jefferson and the exam schools in Boston made significant changes to their admissions that led to substantially greater diversity. Both governing boards said they wanted to see more racial diversity in their most selective schools. 

The official working group in Boston stated that one of its goals was to: “Work towards an admissions process that … better reflects the racial, socioeconomic and geographic diversity of all students (K–12) in the city of Boston.” 

But how could these schools achieve the stated objective of greater diversity without resorting to methods that the Supreme Court invalidated in June? Easy — they developed policies that did not take race into account for any individual applicant, but which were better at selecting a promising and talented student body than what they had in place before; policies which also happened to boost diversity.

In Thomas Jefferson’s case, the board jettisoned its old process, which required a $100 fee, a minimum 3.0 GPA and a battery of tests. Because application fees are barriers to low-income applicants and standardized tests have been consistently shown to correlate with socioeconomic status and race, the school’s old process discounted thousands of talented and meritorious potential candidates. 

Unsurprisingly, most students accepted to Thomas Jefferson in 2020 predominantly came from just a handful of middle schools, and 91 percent of offers went to white and Asian students, despite Fairfax County being 37 percent Black and Latino.  

Thomas Jefferson’s new system increased the minimum GPA to 3.5 (you read that right) and allocated admissions spots to the top 1.5 percent of every Fairfax 8th-grade middle school class, significantly broadening the pool of candidates. Consequently, applicants compete against other students who have access to the same curriculum, coursework and teachers. 

In the first year of implementation, spots offered to Black and Latino students increased between two and fourfold from previous years. And in 2021, 51 low-income Asian American students were admitted in contrast to just one in 2020.

Boston revamped its process differently, but also to great effect. Students in Boston now compete against students who live in the same socioeconomic tier as they do, rather than competing against students with differing built-in advantages based on income. For the 2023-2024 school year, the percentage of offers to Black students rose to 22 percent from 13 percent in 2020, and for Latino students, it rose to 29 percent from 21 percent. 

Opponents of these new policies, such as the Pacific Legal Foundation, which brought suits against Thomas Jefferson and other exam school boards, argue that because the overall number of Asian and white students declined under the new policies, there was evidence of discrimination. 

But they miss an important fact: The racial percentages under the prior policy are not the bar against which to judge the new policy. The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of Boston Public Schools and its admissions policy for its “exam schools” in December, writing that legal precedent supports considering two “equally valid” ways of selecting students and choosing to use the one that “reduces underrepresentation.”

There are two important takeaways from Thomas Jefferson and the exam schools. First, diversity, and racial diversity specifically, matters in our most elite and selective academic institutions. Saying so out loud is not taboo, is certainly not discriminatory, and no one should shy away from explicitly stating it. This is because people in diverse environments learn more, empathize more and perform better and because our nation has a shameful history of shutting people of color, and especially African Americans, out of these spaces. 

The 1st Circuit stated this plainly, “There is nothing constitutionally impermissible about a school district including racial diversity as a consideration and goal in the enactment of a facially neutral plan.”

Second, the Supreme Court in its most recent decision frowned upon using race as a criterion for individual admissions, but the court has historically and presently encouraged race-neutral processes that lead to diversity. Even members of the court’s most conservative wing, including Justices Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, agreed the use of socioeconomic or other factors was permissible in admissions policies in the landmark affirmative action case.

Thomas Jefferson and the exam schools achieved something truly laudatory: They simultaneously adopted processes that improved their ability to select meritorious and worthy candidates and increased diversity. By contrast, many of our nation’s top universities have met the post-affirmative action moment with equivocation and diffidence. 

Perhaps it’s time that higher education learns something from K-12. 

Stefan Lallinger Ph.D. is the executive director of Next100, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, and a former teacher, principal and district leader.