The War on Competence

American Thinker ^ | 22 Jan, 2023 | Clarice Feldman

[Tired of Taxes]

This whole story is much ado about nothing. (For the record, no, I don't work for a school. I don't think the government should be running schools. Parents who want more than a basic education for their kids should pay for it themselves, like I did.)

>If you want to know the REAL reason the awards were withheld, read the twitter thread below.<

That twitter account belongs to the woman who wrote the original story that appeared in the NY Post. You can find a video on YouTube of her at an earlier school board meeting. She's wearing a sign that says, "Stop Asian Hate," and she refers to herself as a "person of color," and she yells that white people want to hold Asian students back or something. (By Asian, she means East & West Asian including Indian and Middle Eastern.) That is the largest makeup of the student body at her school (the first school - Thomas Jefferson). When that school wanted to change admission standards by dropping the entrance exam and lowering the required GPA to 3.5, she threw a fit.

Then, she heard from another parent (a lawyer) that Letters of Commendation were handed out late to commended students this year. So, she wrote the NY Post article suggesting the principal withheld Letters on purpose as part of a "diversity" plan. She also said she never knew her own son was a commended student two years ago.

Gotta wonder... Why didn't she know her own son was commended? In the original article, she didn't say he didn't receive a Letter. She claims the school was "withholding notifications of National Merit awards from the school’s families."

Well, in the emails written by the other parent/lawyer to the principal and to the Student Services administrator, we learn the Letters of Commendation this year were handed out on November 14, but the parent/lawyer's son didn't show her his Letter until November 20 because "he felt like it didn't mean much because he wasn't a semifinalist." The parent/lawyer comments that other kids "may not appreciate the importance of the honor and perhaps not showed the card to their families." She pushes for the school to notify the parents directly.

In other words, the school has been handing out Letters of Commendation every year, but some (or most?) kids didn't show their parents, and their parents didn't check into anything on their own. No one thought the Letters were important, until now. Those letters were treated like participation trophies. Now, suddenly, the parents think these Letters are super important.

>Especially interesting is the following section where a school administrator ADMITS the awards were withheld ON PURPOSE.
TJ admin Brandon Kosatka admitted to TJ mom Shawna Yashar they hide National Merit honors on purpose: “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements,” adding they don’t want to “hurt” the feelings of kids who don’t get the award.”<

All spin. First of all, the school brags about its highest scoring students on its website every year. The commended students were not the highest scoring. Secondly, there is no direct quote from the administrator himself in those emails. The parent/lawyer is paraphrasing what the administrator allegedly said to her. And the context seemed to be about award ceremonies. But, the Letters of Commendation were handed out in class, in front of other students, so sparing the feelings of other students didn't seem to be the issue.

>The fact that at least 17 other schools in the SYSTEM did the same thing shows the discrimination was SYSTEMIC, and not an accident.<

Every one of those schools proudly lists the names of semifinalists on their websites.

The commended students don't score as high as the semifinalists. If anything, they were being ignored. Not because they were high scoring. But, instead, because they didn't score as high.