There is a huge difference between the Harvard policy and the TJ policy. Harvard explicitly considers race. TJ does not. TJ removed some elements of the admissions process and seeks to have students from every school in fcps but does not allocate any admissions points based on race.

The logic is straight-forward. Whether it is necessary, correct, or advantageous, depends largely on your circumstances and personal put look.

A) historically a number of groups have been disadvantaged.

B) this has lead to those groups "falling behind" advantaged groups from a wealth perspective. [side bar - wealth begets wealth, while poverty begets poverty, and while it is possible to rise up it is hard]

C) since it is easier to get good grades when you have money, it's more impressive to get good, but not necessarily top, grades from a different starting point. Thus the route, not just the result, should be considered when reviewing applications.

D) thus admitence with "just grade scores" tends to favor those groups with money, which would result in a largely hermogenous student body.

E) education extends beyond just knowledge. The goal is to turn out adults who will function well in a society as a whole, get good jobs, add value to the community, and do on.

F) in modern times it is considered poor form, or worse, to exhibit bad speech or behavior patterns. You can no longer behave like your great-grandfather, you can no longer speak like your grandfather. To do so will harm your prospects.

G) thus, in order to become better human beings, its good to rub shoulders with those of different social, financial, gender, ability levels. In the safety of a school environment everyone can better be taught, and practice, the social norms of the day.

H) thus a diverse student body is good for all students. Previously disadvantaged groups get a leg up. Currently advantaged groups get to interact with those dissimilar to themselves, and thus improve those interaction skills.

US society likes to believe that "hard work" is the secret to financial position. But hard work itself is hard to measure, so we measure grades instead. However grades are more a function of current economic status, not work, and if anything reflect the hard work of the parents, not the students. There are various tools used to try and improve the proxy measure, things like diversity quotas and so on.

Of course imperfect improvements to imperfect proxies still result in contraversy since the system is still flawed. And naturally those most disadvantaged by the rules feel the sting the most.

None of this explains or excuses the behaviour of the school in with-holding these results though. The logic behind that is strange. Why would a top quality school, with a diverse student body, look to prejudice the ability of those students to get good college positions?

I can see some logic in not making a public song and dance about it, but surely all students, and their parents, should be notified as soon as possible?

On the up side, the fact this is "news" at all suggests this is a very uncommon practice.

You skipped a critical step between G and H which seems to be overlaying skin color as an approximation for current social status.

Edit: Though point taken that isn’t the case now with the high school policy. It does seem to be, however, a held sentiment.

Even lebron James has to deal with people calling him the n word. Diversity is about more than social status.

But is skin color an effective, useful, or correct overlay or proxy? What are the downsides? What are the alternatives? Skin color differences in a group = diversity is perplexing to many and offensive to others, nor does it seem to logically stand up to scrutiny.

There are a few ways to look at why schools value diversity. As the other child comment points out, Lebron clearly is more privileged than most white people, but that doesn't mean he hasn't experienced things that no white person has. Certainly some of the diversity push is about giving disadvantaged students an equalizing advantage, but a large part of the push is because schools legitimately believe having different perspectives is advantageous. And make no mistake, black people do have very different experiences, and therefore perspectives, than white people in this country. Not just because they're discriminated against either, they have a unique cultural perspective/identity that may be valuable for other students to interact with.

I do think it's unfortunate that cultural groups have largely coalesced around race in this country, but that's the reality, and it won't change if the groups don't interact with each other.

The view that “cultural groups have largely coalesced around race in this country, but that's the reality” is precisely the question. Is that the best and most effective proxy for population segmentation and policy-making? Many would argue that it isn’t. Regardless, what we can say with certainty is that it isn’t evaluated.

I’m not arguing against diversity nor skin-color prejudice in America, I’m raising the question of how we best define diversity and associated ramifications.

Definitely a big question, and I don't know much about sociology so don't have any data. I will say though that using race as a signal for diversity has a few advantages. First it's a relatively objective metric that can't really be faked. Income also falls into that category, but my experience is that I grew up in a pretty diverse area, my schools growing up had about equal numbers of white, black, latino, and asian people, all from widely different economic groups. And the social groups were much, much more along racial lines than economic ones. Even leaving my home that was my experience in university and after. I'm not going to try to get into diagnosing why that is, it's just something I've consistently noticed, and it leads me to believe that racial groups do have their own unique cultural perspective that transcends income.

In the end it's tough for me to see any good diversity metrics beyond income and race, and it seems to me they are both valid and not necessarily related. If you value diversity you should probably aim to have both economic and racial diversity.

I've also noticed that many of the people claiming that race is a bad diversity metric have minimal experience interacting with different racial groups which leads me to believe it is largely from a place of ignorance or even bad faith.

While I hold a US passport and live in the US, I can’t claim a background that is solidly from the US. In my experience in the US, location matters and general culture varies (surprisingly) widely. I would find it hard to believe that a skin-color segmentation is effective across the entire population. In my limited experience not in sociology but in running consumer segmentations as a management consultant years back, the idea of a single, best segmentation for all the USA does seem suspect. My personal experience in the US is relatively low in socioeconomic diversity but high in skin-color diversity (lots of educated, well to do people from all over the world who all think more or less similarly).

“Race” or specifically European-ancestry versus former slaves is the main, historical dichotomy in the US. But well-to-do “Asians”, various people from the continent of Asia, people from other continents, and mixing tends to dilute the historical dichotomy. But the mindset persists. To me it seems as though skin-color diversity feels good to certain (perhaps many) Americans, but it isn’t necessarily logical.

(Editing for typos)

You think LeBron is more or less privileged than some poor white kid from Appalachia?

I think diversity is about more than social status.

Gee, why is it then that we are concerned only about skin color and gender?

Other forms of diversity are impossible to measure objectively through a college application.

False. Economic status can easily be measured. In fact, college admissions process has the entire financial picture of a candidate thanks to FAFSA.

Wonder why colleges don't publish stats of how many kids are admitted from, say, each quintile of wealth or income. I guess that would be an inconvenient stat to expose.

The US universities might do well by forcibly mixing people of different political stripes. Red and blue…makes purple?

Too easy to fake