Jason Miyares on Fairfax County schools probe: ‘Equity without excellence is emptiness’
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares discusses investigations into Fairfax County, Virginia schools after three institutions admitted to delaying notifications of merit awards.
Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares is expanding his probe into a prestigious state high school delaying the notification of National Merit Awards to include all public schools in Fairfax County.
Miyares joined "Fox & Friends" Tuesday to discuss the decision to expand the investigation after two more county schools admitted to delaying notification of the significant academic achievements.
"We want to demand excellence. We want our students to not have this 'war on merit,'" Miyares told Ainsley Earhardt. "What we have seen unfortunately in some areas of the country is what I call woke racism, which is reverse discrimination against the wrong groups in those individuals' minds. We want to make sure that in this country everybody has an equal playing field and everybody can achieve their dreams. We certainly don't want anybody to be held back because of who they are and their ethnic background."
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Thomas Jefferson High School seen July 01, 2020 in Alexandria, VA. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) was the first school to face allegations of withholding the awards, but Langley High School and Westfield High School faced accusations shortly thereafter.
The Fairfax County Public Schools district adopted the new policy, which focuses on "equal outcomes for every student, without exception," after hiring an equity consultant.
"We know that the Fairfax Superintendent Michelle Reid hired an equity consultant, paid this consultant $455,000 for nine months' worth of work, in which one of their recommendations that you are to demand equal outcomes, even if it means treating students unequally," Miyares said. "And so we're trying to determine whether this meant there was a pattern or practice of possible discrimination against Asian American students."
The delayed awards in question are given by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which recognizes top-performing high schoolers nationwide.
Virginia parents are outraged over the incidents, alleging the move had impacted their students' college application process and even prevented them from being able to include them on their early applications.
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Miyares noted that the probe, announced on Monday, is focused on not only the delay in notification of the National Merit Awards, but also the admission standards for one of the high schools that admitted to withholding notification. He argued as a result of the district's new "equity" policy, it drastically reduced the number of Asian students in attendance.
"They passed a new admission standard that dropped Asian American enrollment by close to 20 points in just a year, and so that's why we have our investigation to get to the truth of what is happening," he said.
Miyares likened the impact of the policy on Asian students to that of Jewish students decades ago when colleges limited the number of Jewish students they would accept.
"What we have seen across the country is that Asian American students are in many ways treated the same way Jewish American students were treated in the 1920s and 1930s," Miyares said. "We had elite institutions that determined, hey, we have too many Jewish American children in our schools. We're going to make sure we cap how many are allowed to attend, and that's what you saw Ivy League schools and other schools do in the 1920s."
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"It was wrong 100 years ago to do it to Jewish American children. It's wrong to do it to Asian American children now," he continued. "And so that's why we're having this investigation under the Virginia Human Rights Act to determine whether there's a pattern or practice going on because equity without excellence is emptiness."
Fox News reached out to FCPS for comment on the investigation, but they did not immediately respond.
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