Thomas Jefferson High for Science and Technology Ranked #1 US Public High School

By Jeff | Sunday, December 13, 2009 | View Comments

When I read a story on Yahoo Finance about America’s best high schools (summarizing rankings by US News and World Report), I noticed that Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology was at the top of the list. When you look at the detailed statistics for the school, it says that the school is 4.6% minority. I thought, “wait, didn’t John write about the fact that the school has an Asian plurality?” Then I remembered in many forums, Asians aren’t counted as minorities. Are we now interchangeable with white people? Must be why we get so few roles in the Last Airbender Movie. It’s a funny stat – if someone went to #3 ranked Whitney High School, thinking it was mostly white with only 11.5% “minority,” they would be surprised to find it being 84.9% Asian.

I am just glad this story does not include Yellow Peril warnings about the large numbers of Asian Americans at elite high schools or tales of white flight from Asians. Some of the high schools we talked about in previous posts are ranked highly by US News and World Report, such as Lowell High School (#28) and Mission San Jose High School (#36).

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jhwu

just found your site and am loving the posts... i'm laughing with the lighthearted ones, and feeling along side with the more serious ones.

i recently felt the same way when i read an article (http://www.ajc.com/health/surgeon-general-calls...) about the surgeon general's comment saying that "minorities make up only 6 percent of U.S. physicians, and she lamented that the percentage was the same in 1910." (quote from the atlanta journal constitution). my husband and i immediately looked at one another and i said "that can't be right"... just looking back at his residency class and the classes that trained before and after him, we knew the stats were wrong... it lauched us into another long conversation asking the same question you asked "why are we counted as whites when inequality needs to be highlighted?" isn't that, then, unfair to us asians? and why doesn't anyone call them on it?
Dragon888

Apparently this forum doesn't understand that "minority" refers to "disadvantaged" minority. Asians have the highest household income in the U.S., behind Jews and Armenians, so Asians are not considered to be disadvantaged. "Disadvantaged" refers to poor blacks and Hispanics and the spoils they can claim for their supposed "disadvantaged" status. It doesn't matter if the head of household is a Hispanic heart surgeon earning $600,000 per year, they are still considered "disadvantaged" and are eligible for preferential treatment through the racial spoils system.

As for the Hispanic "race," this refers to anyone with origins in Hispanic culture. They can be blond haired and blue eyed Europeans from Spain and Portugal and still qualify for favored admissions and hiring.

Don't you get tired of all this race business? Wouldn't it be better to forget about race, stop asking people what race they are, and just treat everyone as Americans? Wouldn't it be better to forget about race and base university admissions on merit only? So long as you claim you are of a certain race, you are playing the race game: you are racist. Don't play this game. On your census questionnaire, don't check "Asian," check "Other," and on line next to it, enter: Human race.
jeffat8asians

In the more detailed analysis of each school (not shown in the Yahoo Finance summary article), US News and World Report breaks out each school's population with detail that includes the percentage of Asians. Then again, they also break out the percentages of blacks and Hispanics! Here is an example for Whitney High School. While mousing over "minority" explains their definition of "minority," it doesn't make it any less strange to me. Simply eliminating the minority definition, given the long term demographic trend that there will be no majority, would have been better in my opinion.
jeffat8asians

In the more detailed analysis of each school (not shown in the Yahoo Finance summary article), US News and World Report breaks out each school's population with detail that includes the percentage of Asians. Then again, they also break out the percentages of blacks and Hispanics! Here is an example for Whitney High School. While mousing over "minority" explains their definition of "minority," it doesn't make it any less strange to me. Simply eliminating the minority definition, given the long term demographic trend that there will be no majority, would have been better in my opinion.
Simon

By excluding Asians from the minority pool, the survey by USNews shows some degree of bias.

Asians are considered minorities because they account for only 4.5% of the US population. It doesn't matter if they make up a majority of the student population in a high school; that would just make it a high school with a high minority population.

Because Asians are not seen by USNews as a minority, it discredits their involvement in making their school a part of the "Top 100" list. Because when you tell someone that the top high school in the country only has a 4.9% minority student population, they would assume the other 95.1% is white.

Asian students are already being discriminated against in the college admissions process by the top universities in the country. What's next? Refusing to promote Asians in the workforce? Remaking Asian movies with an all-white cast? It looks like we have an answer to those questions.
BigBrotherSpeaks

Wow, that is truly retarded statistical analysis. I had read that report and thought, how odd that these top schools would have such low Asian American student enrollment. Now you're telling me that in fact, these schools do have a significant Asian American student population? This is fraudulent demographic reporting by US Newes & World Report at best and borderline criminal. It's really disenfranchisement and one more example of the institutional racism deeply ingrained in our society. Where is the accounting? Where is the accountability? I don't see their methodology listed anywhere on their websites. Why on earth would they disregard the Asian American students in the statistical analysis?

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