Academic Reparations

Last week, we reported that Virginia Governor Glen Youngkin had ordered a civil rights investigation into an elite high school in Fairfax County. It turns out that school administrators hid the results of National Merit Scholarship awards from their students. 

Now we’re learning that the state’s investigation is expanding to include all Fairfax County public high schools after several principals admitted that they also failed to inform students who won these prestigious awards, which potentially involve tens of thousands of dollars in scholarships.

Why is this such an important issue? 

Well, Fairfax County, a suburb of Washington, D.C., has become a solidly Blue county. As a result, leftist insanity has taken root. Rather than promoting excellence in academics, leftist bureaucrats are now promoting “equity.”

Two years ago, during the height of the pandemic, the Fairfax County public school system spent $20,000 for a one-hour Zoom lecture on equity and critical race theory and by radical professor, Ibram X. Kendi. Kendi is infamous for suggesting that the only solution to past discrimination is more discrimination.

In addition to paying Kendi $20,000 for one hour of his time, the school district also spent another $24,000 to buy his books. It was part of his contract for the Zoom lecture. (Keep in mind, the schools were closed at the time.)

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Fairfax County’s left-wing teachers are all in on critical race theory and equity. The school board recently signed a “no-bid” contract paying $455,000 for a far-left group in Oakland, California, to develop “equity-centered strategic planning” for the school system.

The organization’s CEO explains his work this way, “To have true equity, you have to be purposefully unequal when it comes to resources. I want to say that again . . . we have to have the courage and the willingness to be purposefully unequal when it comes to opportunities and access.” [Emphasis added.]

This is a perversion of the law and it leads to the corruption of academics.

Excellence in academics is the whole point of school. Not equity. Excellence will not be equity. Excellence is based on merit. Equity is based on race and left-wing ideological nonsense. 

But in the pursuit of equity, Fairfax County schools are doing away with excellence.  Thus, high-achieving students had to be punished.

And here’s the dirty little secret: This is also an attack on Asian students, whom many leftists see as “white adjacent.” The leftist mind is exploding because Asian students do better in math and science than students of other races. 

Once again, we’re seeing how the educational bureaucracy operates. It’s not about the kids. It never has been. It’s about the left’s radical agenda, and Fairfax County “educrats” lied about the National Merit Scholars awards in order to advance their radical agenda. 

Knowing how much this rot has infected our public schools, I suspect this scandal is much bigger than one county in northern Virginia. If this is happening in Fairfax County, it is probably happening in other school districts all over the country, especially in liberal areas. 

It goes hand-in-hand with the dumbing down of education. It is academic reparations. The left is willing to destroy your child’s future if he or she does not fit into some “preferred” category.