A Changed Student Body

Fairfax County school officials discontinued the district's affirmative action policies for Thomas Jefferson High School in 1998, on their lawyer's advice. The change had a noticeable effect on the racial composition of the next freshman class, the class of 2002, and on subsequent groups of freshmen. Although the number of African-American and Hispanic applicants has not trended downward since then, the numbers accepted to Thomas Jefferson have fallen from 49 accepted in the class of 2001 to nine in...