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FAIRFAX, Va. (CN) A Virginia judge has denied a preliminary injunction sought by parents of middle school students who sued the Fairfax County School Board over a plan to jettison standardized testing as part of the admissions process for one of the nation’s top high schools.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology is a so-called governor’s school. As such, the lawsuit argued, it operates as a high school for gifted students identified through multiple criteria, including aptitude or achievement tests.
But in his ruling Tuesday, Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge John Tran found that no Virginia Department of Education regulation “requires specific measures for selecting candidates for admission to a governor’s school.”
FAIRFAX, Va. (CN) Attorneys for students hoping to attend the country’s most prestigious public science and technology high school argued Monday that a Virginia school board unfairly eliminated the standardized admissions tests that would have made their acceptance a sure thing.
But attorneys for Fairfax County School Board asked a county circuit court judge to toss out the case brought aspiring Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology students and their parents. The school’s students, they argue, do not necessarily have to be designated as gifted.
“Where is the law that TJ can only be for gifted students?” asked Stuart A. Raphael of Hunton Andrews Kurth, attorney for the school board and its superintendent, Scott. S. Brabrand. “There isn’t one.”
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
The latest example of the cancel culture is a Virginia judge’s ruling that a Black defendant cannot get a fair trial in a courtroom decorated overwhelmingly with portraits of White judges. Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge David Bernhard ordered that the paintings be removed for the upcoming trial of a man charged with assaulting a police officer and other crimes.
As if the defendant is unaware that the vast majority of Americans are White, the judge said in an opinion, “The court is concerned the portraits may serve as unintended but implicit symbols that suggest the courtroom may be a place historically administered by whites for whites, and that thus others are of a lesser standing in the dispensing of justice.”