At Fairfax’s Thomas Jefferson High School, that kid a couple of lockers down
could be the next Bill Gates—and getting a first-class education here doesn’t
cost $30,000 a year. But could America’s best high school be too good?
M
By
Drew Lindsay
Because it culls top talent from all over, Jefferson is
Meet Brian Murphy. He’s days away from graduating
often likened to the star-studded New York Yankees—
from Thomas Jefferson High School, better known as
and hated with the same passion. But the Yankees win
America’s Best High School, where smart kids from all
Photographs
By
only in baseball; Jefferson wins at everything. In the
over Northern Virginia plot to take over the world, or at
least get into Princeton.
Matthew school’s orchestra and band, 22 students made AllState in 2008—nearly twice as many as at any other
Jefferson is a science-and-technology magnet school
Worden
Fairfax school. Classmates of Brian’s won a national
with an admissions process more daunting than those
bridge championship against middle-age players. The
that guard the gates of the nation’s top colleges. By
school is even emerging as a sports power, having
reputation, it’s a school of geeks and computer gamearned eight state titles since 2000, more than every county rival
ers. Brian, however, arrived at Jefferson caring more about
except Lake Braddock and Robinson.
history and writing than science. Tall, broad-shouldered, and
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Thomas Jefferson High
blond, he’s cocaptain of the soccer team and walks with a looseSchool for Science and Technology was created in 1985 as a
limbed confidence. Though voted biggest flirt by classmates,
learning laboratory to seed the workforce for Northern Virhe’s mature, well spoken, and genuinely nice.
ginia’s growing technology industry. No one expected it to win
If Brian defies the Jefferson stereotype, that’s because the
soccer games.
school is nothing like it’s supposed to be. Yes, whiz-kid sciToday, the fact that Jefferson is great at ev- An annotated
entists, computer jocks, and chess champions roam the halls
along with more National Merit Semifinalists than probably at erything is a source of pride but also of con- periodic table of
cern. Among the faculty, there’s a fear that elements adorns
any other school in the country. But there’s also a professional
the ceiling at
the school is becoming a success factory—a Jefferson, a
model who juggles New York gigs with dissecting leeches in
place where overachievers are too busy rack- science-andneuroscience lab. A recent grad was a world champion in the
ing up trophies and college credentials to test technology
martial arts. A junior is president of Virginia’s Latin society
themselves in the lab or classroom. The na- school.
and a college-baseball prospect.
62 | Washingtonian | october 2009
october 2009 | Washingtonian | 63
Brian Murphy ’09
Cocaptain, varsity soccer; All-District player last year; team won state
championship in 2007. His Annandale club team was one of the top
teams in the state. ■ Cochair of Jefferson Society, school’s tour-guide
group. ■ Plans to study chemical engineering at University of Virginia.
tion’s number-one school is asking itself:
How much success is too much?
Brian Murphy arrives in the Jefferson main
office on a late spring day. He’s chewing
bubble gum and wearing a sweatshirt and
faded jeans with a key lanyard dangling
from the pocket—a portrait of cool.
Brian is cochair of the Jefferson Society, a student-run group that handles
64 | Washingtonian | october 2009
tours of the school. Last year, Brian and
his cohort introduced nearly 3,000 visitors to Jefferson, among them dignitaries and educators from the Netherlands,
Korea, Japan, Singapore, and China.
U.S. News awarded Jefferson the top
spot in its “America’s Best High Schools”
issue in 2007 and again in 2008. (The
2009 issue is due out soon.) But the
school doesn’t make a great first impres-
sion. Its Annandale neighborhood is classic suburban sprawl. The school building,
which dates to 1964, is sheathed partly in
white metal, a once-contemporary look
that now is just ugly.
Outsiders assume that Jefferson is lavishly funded, but it gets the same perstudent allocation from the county as the
other high schools, plus a seven-percent
boost from the state. A foundation tied
to Jefferson is trying to raise $750,000 to
resupply the school’s labs, some of which
are stocked with 15-year-old equipment.
Brian sets off with today’s visitor to
see the labs, home to the senior-year
research that is a Jefferson trademark.
When the school opened in 1985, the
country was still reeling from a landmark
report warning of “a rising tide of mediocrity” in education. Created with help
from local business leaders, Jefferson
was to be a beacon of excellence. Staff
saw the school as a learning laboratory,
a chance to break from prescribed curricula and textbooks. Students would
team with researchers throughout the
area and work on real-world problems.
“Those were great days,” says Geoff
Jones, the school’s first principal. “We
could not just become another giftedand-talented center and simply offer the
very best AP curriculum in Northern
Virginia. We had to do more.”
Yearlong lab research for seniors was
part of that early vision. Today there are
13 labs, for everything from robotics to
neuroscience.
In the chemical-analysis lab, senior
Sumit Malik is hunched over a laptop
working on a PowerPoint presentation. Sumit spent the previous summer
at DC’s Naval Research Lab, where he
coauthored a paper with his mentor. For
his senior project, a derivative of that
work, he built a microbial fuel cell that
captures the energy of a plant’s photosynthesis and produces clean, naturally
replenishing energy.
Sumit, now at Harvard, was one of 15
Jefferson semifinalists in the prestigious
Intel Science Talent Search. More than
1,600 high-schoolers nationwide entered
research in the competition. Jefferson
had the most semifinalists of any school in
the country; two, Alex Kim and Narendra
Tallapragada, finished in the top ten.
In the prototyping lab is the chassis for
a biofuel car under construction. In the
oceanography lab, students are wrapping
up a study of underwater-mining effects
on the hearing of sea horses. A biotech
student tests the effects of a Chinese
licorice root on cancer cells in a rat.
At every stop of Brian’s tour, it’s the
same. The teacher is a bystander as students work on their own or in groups.
When the kids talk about their research,
they look you in the eye. There’s no
mumbling.
At least half of
Jefferson seniors
who apply to
Carnegie Mellon,
NYU, and UNC–
Chapel Hill get in.
More than
two-thirds are
accepted at UVa.
sional students,” says Emmet Rosenfeld,
a former English teacher at Jefferson.
“They know how to game anything, and
they know how to get A’s.”
But Jefferson kids play as hard as they
work—hence the trophies that pile up
at the school every year. It’s no coincidence that all but one of the school’s state
championships have come in cross-country, track, and swimming—sports where
talent is often secondary to effort.
“You have to be smart to get in,”
Brian says. “But it’s a combination of
being smart and being driven. I realized
toward the end of my sophomore year
that it’s not a school for smart kids; it’s
a school for motivated kids.”
To get into Jefferson, students pass
through an Ivy League–like vetting. Of
the roughly 3,000 eighth-graders who
apply each year, 480 are admitted. That’s
a 16-percent acceptance rate, which
means Jefferson is as tough to get into as
Georgetown, Cornell, and Williams.
Other public magnet schools, such as
Stuy­vesant in New
Yo r k C i t y, h a v e
sim­ilarly rigorous
Chris Kilgore is
admissions. But
perhaps the JefferJef ferson draws
son archetype. As
from the extraordia middle-schooler
nary pool of talent
at the private Flint
in Washington, a
Hill School in Fairregion with the nafax, he took math
tion’s densest colcourses geared for
lection of PhDs.
high-schoolers.
“What makes JefAt Jef ferson his
ferson the numberfreshman year, he
one high school in
joined the Latin
the nation is almost
Honor Society
settled right out of
and a Shakespeare
admissions,” says
troupe, played footformer principal
ball and baseball,
Jones, now head of
and trained with
the private Potomac
the crew team.
School in McLean.
As a junior last
Only the most elite At lunch, kids eat wherever they want—one way Jefferson breaks with high-school
year, Chris took
colleges draw appli- conventions to give students a sense of ownership.
four Advanced
cants with this type
Place­ment classes—in chemistry, Amerithrough a 20-minute dissertation.
of intellectual firepower, he says. “And
can history, Latin, and statistics. He added
But a stratospheric IQ isn’t the definthey are selecting for a broader range of
a college-level math class each semester—
ing characteristic of a Jefferson student.
things. They have to pay attention to putmultivariable calculus in the fall, linear
The kids are quick to note that to get
ting out football teams; they’ve got legaalgebra in the spring. Rounding out his
in, they had to do well on a standardized
cies to worry about. They don’t have that
seven-period schedule were English and
test created specifically for the school.
luxury of building a freshman class almost
physics.
We’re smart, they say, but more imporentirely on intellect.”
That wasn’t enough. Watching TV
tant, we’re good test takers.
Jefferson has its share of geniuses. Alex
coverage of the recent economic recesAnd they’re driven. Dinner by the lapKim began thinking about the research
sion, Chris decided he wanted to edutop is routine. At parties they talk about
that made him an Intel winner when he
cate himself about how the economy
homework and all-nighters spent studywas 13. Reading a book about crayfish
works. So he enrolled in two online AP
ing for tests. A few cast aside Face­book, a
that caught his eye one day in the library,
courses—one for macroeconomics and
life force to many teens, as a time waster.
he was intrigued by a footnote: No crayone for microeconomics.
For teachers, such students are a blessfish had ever been discovered in Africa.
All of this coursework led to a hellish
ing and a curse. There are almost no
Since then, Alex has been fascinated
two weeks when the spring AP exams
classroom-management issues; kids aim
by how species evolve and migrate
rolled around. Chris took the tests for his
to please, do their work, and turn it in on
across the planet. At Jefferson, he’s
four Jefferson AP classes and one each
time. Indeed, teachers say they have to
focused on the lobster-size giant river
for his online economics courses. Bework hard just to keep up with the class.
prawn and has won grants to collect
cause Jefferson’s non-AP physics course
At the same time, the kids are obsessed
samples in Puerto Rico and Texas.
is rigorous, he did a little extra studying
with grades and work the angles for evWhen he talks about his work, he leans
and also took the AP physics exam.
ery point they can get. “They are profesacross the table, his excitement building
october 2009 | Washingtonian | 65
A Powerful Rival in
Montgomery County
In 1985, the same year Fairfax County opened Thomas Jefferson High
School, Montgomery County launched a science-and-math magnet program at Blair High School in Silver Spring. The two now are rival siblings,
the flagships of competing school systems.
Blair’s program was started to attract white, upper-middle-class families
to a school that increasingly had more minority teens from low-income
families. At the time, such racial mixing was the goal of magnet programs in
Chicago, Kansas City, and other school systems.
Blair’s magnet program is small—it includes only 400 of the school’s
2,300 students. The magnet kids spend half their day in non-magnet classes, where they mix with students from some of the poorest families in the
county.
“It’s the real world,” says Dennis Heid­ler, coordinator of the magnet program until he stepped down this summer to become an elementary-school
assistant principal. “A lot of parents like that.”
Blair students take a standardized test as part of the admissions process,
but there are no cutoff scores. Each student’s application is reviewed in its
entirety, Heidler says.
In years past, Blair’s admissions process was about as competitive as Jefferson’s, with one student getting in for roughly every eight or nine applicants. But the number of Blair applicants has dropped, due largely to the
popular magnet International Baccalaureate program at Rockville’s Richard
Montgomery High School and a new science-and-tech magnet program at
Poolesville High School.
Last year, Blair accepted a third of its 415 applicants. Another 379 eighthgraders applied for the 50 slots in the Poolesville program, with about a
quarter getting in.
Jefferson receives the lion’s share of national attention in part because it’s
a whole school and has a bigger enrollment—which means more honors
and prizes. Last year, 143 Jefferson students were named National Merit
Semifinalists, compared with 43 at Blair.
But an exception is the prestigious Intel Science Talent Search. Since
2000, 119 Blair students have been named semifinalists in the research contest; Jefferson has had 85. Blair credits its Intel success to its work honing
students’ oral and presentation skills in research courses for underclassmen.
Many Blair students also begin their senior research project as juniors, which
allows them to complete work before the fall Intel deadline. At Jefferson,
most students don’t start their research until their senior year and get results
too late to enter the contest.
In recent years, Jefferson has done more to encourage interested kids
to start research earlier, often through summer internships. Last year’s 15
semifinalists were the most for the school since 1999.
Jefferson officials say their efforts are hampered by stringent state and
county graduation requirements for non-science-and-math courses. Blair,
they note, has the freedom to introduce core sciences and math in a student’s first two years. Jefferson students typically don’t take physics or advanced math until junior year.
“The graduation requirements are a burning issue for us right now,”
says Bob Latham, a coordinator of science competitions at Jefferson. With
fewer restrictions from the state, Latham says, Jefferson could get students
grounded in the sciences more quickly.
66 | Washingtonian | october 2009
“I figured I might as well,” he says.
Chris slept little during his sevenexam marathon. But aside from circles
under the eyes, he seemed invigorated
by the experience. He scored a five on
each of the exams—the top mark.
Entering senior year, Chris has yet to
sacrifice much for his academic pursuits.
He’s a pitcher on the varsity baseball team
and works out three times a week in the
off-season with private trainers. He’s a fan
of The Office and iTunes. “He’s even managed to squeeze in time for a girlfriend,”
says his mother, Carrie Kilgore.
An officer in Jefferson’s Latin Honor
Society, Chris campaigned last year to become head of the Virginia Junior Classical League. At the group’s annual conference, a Jefferson contingent worked the
crowd and helped him win. Even amid
the campaign hubbub and his academic
marathon, he continued to meet once a
week with a retired Latin teacher. They
translate Latin texts together—not because he needs help but because he enjoys it. “My friends make fun of me about
this,” Chris says, “but I really love it. It’s
very relaxing.”
Chris and his family live not far from Wolf
Trap on a winding street of nice homes
built in the mid-1990s. Each year, roughly 400 Jefferson freshmen come from
Fairfax; the rest live in Arlington, Falls
Church, Loudoun, Prince William, and
Fauquier. It takes some students well over
an hour to commute.
To study environmental technologies, kids
are building a two-room structure—one
room made conventionally and one made
with “green” design and materials.
The neuroscience lab—the newest
of 13 labs—is popular with students
considering careers in medicine.
About nine out of ten students arrive
at Jefferson from public middle schools.
Families who can’t afford the $30,000
price tag of a Potomac School or Sidwell
Friends see Jefferson as a private-school
equivalent. Money remains an issue for
some after graduation: The school gets
lots of kids into the Ivies and top private
schools, but more than 40 percent go to
the University of Virginia or other state
schools in the Commonwealth, in part
because of their lower costs.
The Jefferson demographics that get
the most attention revolve around race
and ethnicity. The percentage of students of Asian descent at the school has
grown steadily. This fall, Asian-Americans make up 54 percent of freshmen,
the first time they’ve represented a majority of the incoming class. Whites account for 36 percent.
These figures are similar to what other
science magnets report. Because highlevel education in many Asian countries
is reserved for elites, immigrants to the
United States often place great importance on schooling—a value their kids
internalize.
“The typical stereotype is that the Asian
students have no life and hate their mothers,” says Vern Williams, a math teacher
at Falls Church’s Longfellow Middle
School, a feeder for Jefferson. “That
couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Jeanette Du, daughter of Chinese immigrants, is a senior at Jefferson. She’s a
top violinist, having made All-State orchestra each of her first three years. She
also competes regionally in figure skating.
Living with her grandmother, who had
Alzheimer’s disease, sparked her interest
in medicine and neuroscience.
Jeanette’s parents, James and Jenny,
moved from Shanghai to the Washington area in the late 1980s. They nudged
Jeanette as a middle-schooler to think
about Jefferson, but it wasn’t a hard
sell: Most of her friends were applying.
Arvin Ahmadi ’10
Editor of school newspaper. ■ Won countywide election as 2008–09 student representative to Fairfax County School Board. ■ Was freshmanand sophomore-class president. ■ Finalist in international competition
to identify future leaders.
Her father occasionally pushed her to
do well. “In grade school, he’d say, ‘You
can’t go to that party until you learn your
multiplication tables,’ ” Jeanette says.
“But later on, I began to push myself. I
wanted to get those good grades.”
Like others, she says the atmosphere
at Jefferson is competitive but not cutthroat. Students are more likely to help
one another study for quizzes than sabotage a friend’s experiment.
Whatever their backgrounds, Jeanette
says, students are unified by their work
ethic: “Everyone at TJ has a common
goal, and that’s to learn as much as we
can and succeed at life as much as we
can. When we have trouble, we help
each other out. It would be impossible
if we didn’t.”
Brian Murphy’s family lives on a wooded cul-de-sac in Oakton. His mother,
october 2009 | Washingtonian | 67
Ellie Clougherty ’09
Professional model with Manhattan agency; has done shoots for Target,
Macy’s, Kohl’s. ■ National Honor Society president. ■ Four-year varsity
lacrosse player. ■ Voted most likely to become a millionaire by classmates. ■ Recently learned to play guitar. ■ Plans to study neuroscience
at Stanford.
Elizabeth, is executive director of the
Fairfax Symphony; his father, Kevin,
is an executive with ePlus, a Herndon
tech company.
Brian’s kindergarten teacher first suggested that the family consider Jefferson
for him. But history and writing were
his passion in seventh and eighth grades,
when he attended a gifted-and-talent68 | Washingtonian | october 2009
ed program at Rachel Carson Middle
School in Herndon. He applied to Jefferson mainly because his friends did.
“I took the test just to see if I could
get in,” he says. “Once I did, it seemed
stupid not to go.”
Brian’s story is not uncommon. Jefferson draws big numbers of kids from
gifted-and-talented programs in rela-
tively affluent neighborhoods—among
them Longfellow Middle School in Falls
Church, Rachel Carson in Herndon, and
Kilmer in Vienna. Jefferson is a natural
next step for these kids.
The first Jefferson students didn’t
make the choice so casually. It was seen
as an experimental school, and Fairfax
high schools were among the best in the
nation, with Langley often singled out
as a superschool. Why leave your friends
to go to a school miles away?
As the school’s reputation grew, a Jefferson diploma became a hot commodity. John Aulabaugh moved his family
1,700 miles from Estes Park, Colorado,
with an eye to getting his twins, Jack
and Alex, into the school. The boys,
Aulabaugh says, were frustrated with
the schools in Estes Park. “They’re real­
ly hard workers, and they had to put up
with a lot of disruptions in the classroom
and a lot of counterproductive time.”
This worried Aulabaugh and his wife,
Tori, who have Ivy League hopes for
their kids. “We’re kind of positioning for
Harvard, Princeton, maybe MIT,” he
says. Both parents graduated from state
schools. “We came from pretty modest
means, and we just want to give our kids
an opportunity we didn’t have.”
From their research on high schools—
which leaned heavily on the U.S. News
ranking—Jefferson emerged as their top
choice. The abundance of other top high
schools in Northern Virginia was a bonus; if the boys didn’t get into Jefferson,
they could enroll at Langley or another
area school.
The Aulabaughs, who owned a software company that they could relocate,
visited Northern Virginia several times
and interviewed staff at middle-school
feeders for Jefferson. Last summer the
family moved to Fairfax City and rented
a house near Frost Middle School, where
the boys entered seventh grade. By the
end of the school year, their home in
Estes Park was still on the market, along
with a mountain condo. But the kids got
straight A’s and love Frost, Aulabaugh
says: “They thank us every week.”
Summer plans call for internships and
tech courses. “We’re just doing everything we can to beef up their résumés,”
he says. “I’m probably driving my kids to
drinking at an early age. But they’re really
driven, they know what they can be, and
they’re working toward that.”
Kevin and Elizabeth Murphy had little to
do with Brian’s decision to go to Jeffer-
son. They worried it was a poor fit. One of
their babysitters had been a Jefferson student. He was brilliant, an Intel winner and
computer programmer. How could Brian
match that? Plus Brian wasn’t crazy about
science. The section of his application that
asked for his science-and math-related extracurriculars was largely blank.
“I said that they let him in to be the
balance,” Elizabeth Murphy says. “He
was so far in the other direction—he
was athletic, he was a good writer. But
I wasn’t sure his math and science skills
were what they needed.”
Jefferson can overwhelm freshmen,
many of whom were too smart for their
own good in middle school—they cruised,
never doing homework or learning to
manage their time. “Some fail for the first
time here,” says Brandon Kosatka, head of
the school’s counseling department. “Parents have never seen less than an A.”
The Murphys also worried that Brian
was giving up a traditional high-school
experience. Kevin cautioned his son,
who played on a top travel-soccer team,
that the sports at Oakton High would be
better. “You might be giving up championships to go to TJ,” he said.
But Jefferson delivered all the trimmings of high-school life—and more. At
back-to-school nights, the teachers had
PhDs but also enthusiasm. “They literally
jump around the room because they’re so
excited,” Elizabeth says.
When Brian was a sophomore, the Jefferson soccer team won the state championship. For the Friday-night semifinal
in Newport News, hundreds of kids took
final exams early, then hopped buses for
the nearly three-hour trip. When the
buses pulled in, Kevin watched as kids
came pouring off, all wearing red, one of
the school colors.
Homecoming week is an explosion of
school spirit. Kids dress up every day in
creative, themed costumes, and there’s a
parade with floats, skits by each class, and a
bonfire. “It’s so big and complex that you
almost need a visitor’s guide,” says former
teacher Emmet Rosenfeld.
For homecoming and prom dances,
kids see who can land a date in the most
creative way. Flowers are de rigueur, classroom musical serenades common. Last
year, Brian stood in the school driveway
one morning holding an old door with
prom? and the girl’s name painted on it.
One boy spelled out his invitation in flowers planted near the entrance.
Don’t think Jefferson students are too
different from others, says Arvin Ah-
Glazer is fighting
the obsession
with achievement
that’s enveloped
the country—and
Washington—since
the school opened.
madi, a senior and editor of the school
newspaper. “You have the jocks, you
have the nerds, you have the kids who
party—all the types you see at other
schools,” he says. “The percentage of
nerds may be considerably higher, and
the percentage of partyers may be significantly lower. But we’ve got it all.”
What’s more, Ahmadi says, TJ kids defy
stereotypes: “Athletes can be mathletes,
and kids doing neuroscience research one
period may be cheering at the top of their
lungs in a pep rally the next.”
At a time when high schools are often
big, alienating places, Jefferson has a
rare esprit de corps. That’s no accident.
With kids coming from dozens of middle
schools scattered across the region, the
original staff saw the challenge of creating
community. Their solution: Throw out
the regimentation of conventional high
schools. Gone were bells and hall passes.
Students ate lunch at the same time and
anywhere they wanted—in classrooms,
lounging in the hall, or outside.
Early on, the faculty rejected a traditional high-school schedule for freshmen.
Incoming students take an integrated
program of biology, English, and technology in groups of 60 or 70. The groups
function as schools within a school; they
spend nearly half the day together and are
taught by teachers who work as teams.
The coursework is fun—building robots,
for example—and camaraderie, class unity, and friendships blossom.
Another Jefferson innovation is “eighth
period.” Worried that kids commuting
long distances might have to skip afterschool clubs and extracurricular activities,
the staff scheduled those activities instead
in twice-weekly 90-minute periods. Some
kids use the time to study or catch up on
lab work, but it’s also a time when Jefferson’s diversity of talent goes on display.
More than 150 clubs and groups meet
during eighth period. Typical extracurriculars—newspaper, class government,
Latin Honor Society, math teams, and
the like—are packed. A few groups, such
as the Stonecutters, which airs reruns of
The Simpsons, dabble in pop culture.
Many Jefferson students use the time
to pursue a passion. A handful of kids de-
Senior Maita Esteban dissects a leech in the
neuroscience lab using a microscope with a
computer display.
october 2009 | Washingtonian | 69
signed an alternative-energy system for
the school, then raised the money to add
solar panels to the roof. Two students
who help manage the school’s computer
systems won a $380,000 grant from Sun
Microsystems for new equipment.
Jefferson kids talk of an entrepreneurial spirit at the school. If you float an
idea or want to start something, they
say, no one shoots you down.
Senior Jeremy Chaikind used eighth
period last year to make a feature-length
film. Jefferson, he recognized, had excellent writers and a great drama department. With a friend, he started
the Cliffhanger Media Project,
though he pitched it to others in
a less-than-hopeful way: “This is
what I want to do. I don’t know
if we can do it. It’s never been
done before.” By the end of the
year, more than 20 people were
working on the film.
“People saw my dream and
said, ‘That’s wonderful—let’s
do it,’ Jeremy says. “I think
that’s a statement about TJ.”
Jefferson is turning
away passionate,
talented students,
says one critic:
“These are the kids
the school was built
for, and they’re not
getting in.”
Early on, the county leaned heavily on
results from the school’s admissions test
to make a first cut of applicants and create
a semifinalist pool of 800 candidates. In
the second round, teacher recommendations and student essays were considered.
Later, the school board authorized
putting into the second round students
who had outstanding academic rec­ords
but just missed the cutoff. This was done
in large part to improve the school’s
diversity—specifically, to increase the
number of black and Hispanic students.
In the late 1990s, however, Fairfax
abandoned the practice when
court rulings around the countr y raised doubts about the
legality of such affirmativeaction measures. The number
of black and Hispanic students
at Jefferson dropped. Together
they made up only 3 percent of
enrollment in 2004.
Economics may play a big
role in the low numbers. Middle schools in poorer neighborhoods of Fairfax, particularly
along Route 1 in the southern
part of the county, seldom send
kids to Jefferson.
As a freshman at Jefferson, Brian
Murphy studied the eating habits of a species of flatworm. As a
In 2004, the county appointed
senior in the energy systems lab,
a blue-ribbon commission of
he built a Stirling engine with a
educators and high-school and
parabolic reflector to catch light
college admissions officials to
and transform thermal energy to
review Jefferson’s admissions
power small appliances. Along
process. The panel proposed
the way, he got turned on to
eliminating the test-score cutoff
chemistry.
and instead conducting a full re“It was the perfect experiview of every application.
ence for him,” says his mother,
The board declined to go
Elizabeth.
that far. But beginning with the
Brian’s brother, a sophomore
class of 2009, it broadened the
at Oakton High, applied to Jefcriteria by which applicants adferson but didn’t get in. This
vanced to the second round and
surprised the family because
adopted a sliding scale in which
his record closely resembled
Brian’s. The school, they say, is Seniors in the energy-systems lab build a solar-powered vehicle. stellar grades could offset lower
test scores and vice versa.
now emphasizing math and sciFive years later, the school’s racial mix
ence more, squeezing out kids who, like
considered equally important.”
Brian and his brother, aren’t passionate
That duality is hard to manage. If the has changed little. Last year, more than
1,600 applicants made it to the second
about the subjects.
humanities and social studies are equally
round—twice as many as before—yet
“It’s kind of heading in a dangerous
important, how many science and math
only 14 black and Hispanic students were
direction,” Brian says.
courses should be required? Should the
admitted. That’s about 3 percent of the
Tension over the school’s mission has
school add senior-year research options
incoming class of 480, roughly the same
simmered for years. Though a sciencein English and history? What should the
as in previous years.
and-tech magnet, Jefferson aims to be a
criteria be for admitting students?
The new policy has become another
comprehensive high school with strong
That last question fuels heated debate
point of contention in the tug of war
offerings in the social sciences, humaniin coffee klatches and school-board meetover the school’s identity. Supporters of
ties, and arts. In a 1984 brochure, busiings. The admissions process is run not
a strong math-and-science focus argue
ness leaders touted Jefferson’s 21st-cenby Jefferson staff but by Fairfax school ofthat too many kids are getting in based
tury instruction in science and math but
ficials following guidelines established by
on leadership qualities and general acapromised that “the humanities will be
the county school board.
70 | Washingtonian | october 2009
demic achievement, not smarts in science and math.
Vern Williams has been teaching math
at Longfellow Middle School since the
early 1980s. The department he heads,
legendary in the county, has sent hundreds of kids to Jefferson. Last year,
Williams and his colleagues wrote recommendations for 150 kids. Some 75
were admitted.
In Jefferson’s early days, Williams
says, most of the kids who got in were
math fanatics. They ate and slept algebra, sometimes at the expense of the
English essay due the next day.
The admissions balance between math
and technology types and more academically well-rounded kids has shifted, he says.
Now some of his most talented and passionate math students get turned down.
“These are the kids that the school was
built for,” Williams says, “and they’re not
getting in. They couldn’t care less about
where they’re going to go to college four
years from now. They just want more of
what they’re getting in middle school—
cool math and cool technology.”
Fairfax officials dispute such claims.
Students with good test scores sometimes
don’t get in because other elements of
their applications aren’t strong. Or an application may not demonstrate that a student truly is passionate about math and
science. As part of the policy change in
2004, the board made clear that it wanted
Jefferson students to have a genuine interest in the school’s signature subjects.
“We were insistent on that,” says
Janie Strauss, a longtime member of
the Fairfax school board. Many families,
she adds, had come to see Jefferson as a
school for gifted-and-talented students.
“A high score on the math section of
the test or even a perfect score on the
test does not guarantee that you will
get in,” says Judith Howard, director
of admissions at Jefferson. “There are
students with very impressive résumés
who don’t get in because they have not
demonstrated a genuine interest in science, math, and technology.”
The task of managing Jefferson’s competing factions day to day falls to principal
Evan Glazer. When he was hired in 2006,
both sides took note of his bona fides,
which include a master’s in math education, a PhD in instructional technology,
and experience as principal of a scienceand-tech magnet program in Roanoke.
At 38, Glazer is a young principal. With
a boyish face and suits a bit big, he looks a
Ronit Malka ’11
On All-State 4x800 track relay team as sophomore. ■ Commutes to Jefferson nearly two hours from home near Warrenton. ■ Spent summer at
National Cancer Institute studying glycoproteins.
little like a teenager at a job interview. He
sometimes makes his rounds on a scooter,
and he has a Segway students can ride.
Glazer has set out to reinforce Jefferson’s uniqueness—and its focus on science and math. He has denied requests
for a senior-year research option in the
social sciences.
“There are some people here—a small
number, I believe—who would reconstitute the school’s mission,” Glazer
says. “They want it simply to be a school
for gifted and talented. So I do stand up
in front of the community and remind
everyone, ‘We’re not a GT school.’ ”
To raise the profile of lab work, Gla­
zer is creating events to celebrate student
research and demonstrate its real-world
impact—events he hopes will make highlevel science more attractive to kids heavily
invested in sports, community service, or
other interests. “They carry a full plate,”
october 2009 | Washingtonian | 71
newspaper ran a hall of fame of kids taking 11, 12, and 13 AP courses over their
four years.
The school’s reputation is due in part
to its success in the AP program. Virtually
100 percent of Jefferson students score
three or better on the AP tests’s five-point
scale—a key to its top U.S. News ranking.
But Glazer says students would be
better off balancing AP courses with
more electives. Jefferson teachers have
created courses in organic chemistry,
DNA science, neurobiology, and the
like, which he says offer intellectual
challenges equal to or better than AP
courses, with curricula designed for students to do critical analysis.
Why come to Jefferson, teachers ask, if
you’re going to take the same APs offered
at virtually every high school in America?
Jeanette Du ’10
Three-time All-State orchestra. ■ Violinist with American Youth Philharmonic, a competitive orchestra of the area’s most accomplished young
musicians. ■ Competes regionally in figure skating.
he says. “They want to do it all.”
Glazer is also championing students
who pursue a passion during eighth period or on their own time. He wants to see
students try new things and chase their
dreams, such as the kids who put the solar
panels on the roof and Jeremy Chaikind’s
Cliffhangers group.
Glazer is fighting perhaps his biggest
72 | Washingtonian | october 2009
battle against what has become the gold
standard in high-school education: Advanced Placement courses. Last year,
Jefferson kids took 3,300 AP exams—
about a tenth of the total from all 25
Fairfax high schools.
It’s a badge of honor at Jefferson to
pack five or six AP courses into the seven-period day. Last spring, the school
So far, Glazer and the teachers haven’t
sold students on the idea. The school recently began an elective for an alternative
to AP American history. “Maybe 10 percent of students—not even 10 percent—
are interested,” Glazer says.
AP courses are hard to resist for students
with an eye on college. Grades in APs are
assigned a higher value when teachers calculate grade-point averages—a signal to
colleges that APs are more rigorous than
the electives that Glazer promotes, parents and kids say. Plus, good scores on the
AP tests can impress college admissions
officers and translate to college credit.
“A lot of students will be motivated
by that extrinsic reward,” Glazer says.
As a countermeasure, he has a proposal before the county to eliminate gradepoint averages from student transcripts.
“We want students to select courses
based on their passions and not what will
give them a higher GPA,” Glazer says.
He is joined in his battle against AP
dominance by some of Jefferson’s veteran teachers and a few alumni who have
returned to teach. They say students’
obsession with AP is one of the biggest
changes at the school—and perhaps the
most harmful.
AP curriculum is standardized and
limited, says Jennifer Pierce, a math
teacher who graduated from Jefferson
in 1994. “AP is a baseline for Jefferson
students,” she says. “Students are really
just regurgitating information.” The
majority of the faculty would gladly ban
APs from the school, she says.
Indirectly, Glazer and his allies are
fighting the culture of achievement that
has enveloped the country as a whole—
and Washington in particular—since the
school opened. The best learning, they
say, comes from exploration and experimentation. Rewards are not always tangible, and failure is often the best teacher.
But lots of kids today approach education as if it were a video game. At each
level, they believe, you work to master
the tricks and collect enough points to
move to the next level. The ultimate
goal may be getting into a good college. But even when it’s not, kids approach school this way because they’re
programmed to chase success.
“Every year that goes by, you see these
kids under tremendous pressure to build
résumés,” says Bettie Stegall, a creativewriting teacher who retired recently after
more than 20 years at Jefferson. “Some
kids don’t have two free hours the whole
week because they’re so scheduled by
everything.
“We have to find a way to pull away,”
she says, adding that that’s Glazer’s biggest challenge: “I think he has the courage and the integrity and the vision to do
it. It’s going to be quite interesting to see
where the school goes in the next few
years. We’re really at a turning point.”
Visitors to Jefferson this year won’t have
the pleasure of meeting Brian Murphy.
He applied to seven colleges and got into
seven. Johns Hopkins was his top choice,
but its tuition seemed high.
“In the end, it came down to money,”
he says.
Brian enrolled this fall at the University
of Virginia along with 103 of his classmates. His soccer career is over, though
he hopes to play club ball at UVa. He
plans to study chemical engineering, maybe winding up in science policy, where he
can tap his writing skills. Who knows?
One thing he does know from what
his TJ friends who are already at UVa
have told him: He’ll be able to handle
just about anything his professors throw
at him.
W
Life After Jefferson
See washingtonian.com/jefferson for the
acceptance rates of Jefferson students at
30 top colleges. Also read about Jefferson alumni who have gone on to
success as computer-game designers,
thriller writers, and more, and watch a
slide show of the school’s history with
commentary from a veteran teacher.
Does Jefferson
Cause a Brain Drain?
Each year, Jefferson enrolls 480 teenagers who are, by almost any
measure, star students. What does that mean for the schools left
behind—the neighborhood schools those students otherwise would
attend?
Critics of Jefferson and other selective magnet schools see them
as a contradiction of the idea of public education for the common
good. When Jefferson opened in 1985, kids at neighboring schools
liked to say that TJ, the school’s nickname, stood for “total jerks.”
This debate over Jefferson is nearly identical to the one that revolves around any program that “tracks” students by ability, such as
the gifted-and-talented programs in elementary and middle schools.
Parents like these programs because smart kids thrive when grouped
with their peers. But education research suggests that other students
lose when the pacesetters are pulled out.
Fairfax says the Jefferson “brain drain”—sometimes called “bright
flight”—has little effect on other schools. The county maintains highlevel science classes at all of its schools, according to school-board
member Janie Strauss. “We really are determined to make every high
school a place for gifted students,” she says.
Other school systems are wary of Jefferson’s impact. Fauquier
County doesn’t allow more than two or three students to enroll at
Jefferson with each freshman class. In 2006, the county opened a
part-time science-and-tech magnet program that draws about 120
students from Fauquier as well as Clarke, Culpeper, Frederick, and
other jurisdictions bordering Northern Virginia. Prince William
County, Manassas, and Manassas Park are joining forces to open a
similar magnet program next year.
Alexandria has never allowed its residents to attend Jefferson, in
part because of the impact on its only high school, T.C. Williams.
John Porter, who was principal of T.C. Williams for more than 20
years, says the school might not have the numbers to support certain
high-level science and math courses if the brightest kids were allowed
to go to Jefferson. The AP physics C-level course had about ten kids
when Porter was at the school, he says. “If you took out four or five,
could you offer it?”
Rick Nelson, a former Fairfax chemistry teacher and ex-president
of the county’s teachers’ union, argues that schools that lose kids to
Jefferson see direct effects in the classroom.
“These students are the spark plugs, the ones who drive class discussion and make everyone reach higher,” Nelson says. “When other
students walk into class, look around, and see those kids aren’t there,
they know that they won’t have to work as hard.”
For their part, students say the Jefferson experience couldn’t be
replicated at a traditional high school. Ronit Malka, a junior who’s
one of the few Fauquier students at Jefferson, says there’s a powerful
synergy at work when these smart, hard-working kids come together.
They push each other, she says, but they also support each other.
Ronit initially balked at applying to Jefferson because of the travel;
the morning commute from her home near Warrenton takes nearly
two hours. Now, she says, “I cringe when I think about how close I was
to deciding not to go.”
october 2009 | Washingtonian | 73