I attended TJHSST from 1999-2003. TJ does have a serious diversity program, but I think it's important that readers understand just how special TJ was. Becaus

I attended TJHSST from 1999-2003. TJ does have a serious diversity program, but I think it's important that readers understand just how special TJ was. Because of TJ, I became a top participant in some America's most prestigious high school academic programs (USAMO, USACO, USAPHO, etc.). Through those programs, my family met incredibly successful students from all over the country. What shocked my parents was how parents of these other top students had to do a ton of work to get their child a challenging education -- usually a mix of homeschooling, driving them to classes at the local college, working the system, scouring the early Internet for resources/summer camps/etc. These other parents (and their kids) envied our experience, because they'd worked incredibly hard to get an education experience worse than what we'd gotten from our county's public education system. (And it wasn't just TJ -- the high school I'd have gone to were I not admitted to TJ was also one of the best in the country). TJ's education was why I was able to test out of or otherwise skip more than 10 MIT classes -- more than a full year -- because I'd taken a version of those classes in high school. (Of course not every TJ student took differential equations and complex analysis in high school -- there were maybe 20 of us each year -- but where else is that possible?). AFAIK no other high school had (student organized!) after-school gatherings for 10 hours every single week to learn from each other solving interesting math/cs/physics problems, and still take the school bus home? Most importantly, it provided me with a community of intellectually curious students similar to what I found at MIT. When I think back on all my major successes in life, whether attending MIT, my published academic research, 3 startups... likely none of that would have happened without TJ and its student community. The worst part about this is that TJ's diversity was severely damaged by legal challenges back in ~1998. What was missed in his discussion is that TJ didn't just have affirmation action -- there was also this great program called Visions [1], where TJ teachers would teach middle school students from under-represented backgrounds on the weekend, a key function of which was to provide the support and encouragement for strong students from those backgrounds who could get into TJ to apply. I don't remember the precise numbers, but every year starting with my class of 2003 had something like 2-3x fewer Black students than the few classes before that. TJ admissions published statistics that made clear the school was doing affirmative action (100% of Black students who made the "top 800" test-based cut were admitted to the class of 400), so affirmative action was still in effect. But the end of the Visions program meant many fewer qualified Black students were applying. Virginia needs to fix TJ's diversity, but thinking about "TJ admissions" as a problem in isolation is ineffective (and it has been tried many times before with TJ specifically, including admissions changes motivated by improving diversity that actually made the numbers worse). I'm not close enough to the facts around TJ today to make specific proposals, but I think any overall plan should feature programs like Visions intended to market TJ to students (and parents!) from underserved backgrounds who would thrive at TJ but aren't currently applying. Folks who care about diversity at the high end of American education should consider donating to BEAM: (https://www.beammath.org/; https://www.beammath.org/; [2] in an nytimes article on it). It's an exceptional program to help underserved students access an intellectual community of fellow mathematics lovers, with impressive results. (Disclosure: the founder is a friend from MIT, whose decision to devote his career to this cause inspires me). [1] https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-excellence-gap-despite-efforts-diversity-stalls-elite-public-high-school/ https://www.educationnext.org/stubborn-excellence-gap-despit... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/nyregion/new-york-math-camp.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/nyregion/new-york-math-ca...