Virginia’s most prestigious schools are accused of withholding information from the families and public for five years about students who, mainly Asian, had won National Merit Awards.
The administrators of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology hid the awards and made it impossible for students to use the distinction in college applications.
On Tuesday Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears made a comeback on Fox and Friends, blasting the administrators and their anti-American policies.
I am shocked, and if the allegations are true, I’m just mad. Imagine that you are a parent and tell your child to work hard, study hard and do well. Martin Luther King Jr. actually said that you should burn the midnight oil and stay in school to study.
@WinsomeSears on latest Fairfax Public Schools scandal with @foxandfriends https://t.co/55PsYHHdNn
— Suburban Virginia Republican Coalition (@SUV_GOP) January 3, 2023
Administrators didn’t want “to hurt” students who didn’t win the awards to be hidden. A mother in fury claimed that Brandon Kosatka, Director of Student Services, told her that she wanted to acknowledge students for their individuality and not just their accomplishments.
Sears called this kind of thinking un-American.
Martin Luther King said that there are doors open for you that weren’t available for your parents. Be prepared to enter those doors. This is what these children want to do. How dare these educators to put their futures in jeopardy.
This is not the right way. This is not America. It is not possible to take bread from one child’s stomach and put it in another’s.
It doesn’t work in America.
The school was then attacked for its obsession with equity. However, forcing equal outcomes doesn’t actually prepare students to live in the real world.
They’re talking about equity. They spent $450,000 of their parents’ money to hire a company that would produce equal results. What do equal outcomes mean in school?
Everyone gets an A. Or does it mean that everyone gets an A because the B students get the B, and the C students get the B? It makes no sense. …
It feels like a new year, but the same hell.
The host asked Winsome, “What does this teach children?” Winsome did not hold back:
It teaches them that while participation is a great thing in school, life will hit them hard. Life isn’t going to wait for anyone. Either you are prepared or not. If you don’t prepare, you need to be prepared again, as an adult, when you should have had that experience when you were in school.
This nonsense is too much. Let me be clear, many teachers want to teach. They love teaching and love their profession. But, some people have a political agenda that will make everyone the same.
It’s not like that in real life.
Sears argues persuasively that ensuring equal outcomes at school or elsewhere does not work in real life and results in unprepared people being forced into the workforce. This also results in those who have worked hard to achieve their accomplishments being openly discriminated against. That’s not American.
Winsome has promised to investigate the matter and we hope that she will hold these prejudicial administrators responsible.
This is reprehensible. I have reached out to the Governor and Attorney General and asked for an investigation.
Our children’s education is not a zero-sum game. We cannot punish success in order to have “equal outcomes at all costs”. https://t.co/eH2VFXwQ3Q— Lt. Governor of Virginia – Winsome Earle-Sears (@WinsomeSears) December 30, 2022