'This Is Not America': VA Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears Shreds School That Hid Awards From Students in the Name of 'Equity'

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As RedState’s Nick Arama reported, one of Virginia’s top schools has allegedly been withholding information for the past five years from families and the public that students—mostly Asian—had won National Merit awards.

By hiding the awards, the administrators at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology not only denied the students their accomplishments, but they made it impossible for them to use the distinction on their college applications.

On Tuesday Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears appeared on Fox and Friends to blast the administrators and their un-American policies:

I’m astounded, and if these allegations are true, you know, I’m just livid—I am hopping mad. Because imagine as a parent, you tell your child, son, study hard, daughter work hard, do well. In fact, Martin Luther King Jr. said exactly that, burn the midnight oil, stay in school and study.

@WinsomeSears on latest Fairfax Public Schools scandal with @foxandfriends https://t.co/55PsYHHdNn
— Suburban Virginia Republican Coalition (@SUV_GOP) January 3, 2023

The awards were allegedly hidden because administrators didn’t want to “hurt” the feelings of students who didn’t win. An outraged mother claimed Director of Student Services Brandon Kosatka told her, “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements.” Utter insanity.

Sears called that kind of thinking un-American:

He [Martin Luther King] said there are doors that are opening for you that were never open for your parents; be prepared to walk through those doors. And this is what these children are trying to do, and how dare some of these educators keep these children’s future in jeopardy like this.
This is not the way. This is not America. You don’t take the bread out of one child’s mouth for another child’s.
We’ve done that in America—it doesn’t work,

She then blasted the school for obsessing over equity, when forcing equal outcomes does not actually prepare students for life:

What is it, “equity” that they’re saying? They paid $450,000 of the parents’ money to hire some company to have equal outcomes. Equal outcomes in the school, what does that mean?
Everybody gets an A? Or is it everybody gets a B because the A students are going to get the B and the C students are going to get a B? It makes no sense. …
This feels like new year but same hell.

The host asked, what does this teach the kids? Winsome didn’t hold back:

I tell you what, it teaches them that in school anyway you get a participation trophy for everybody but life is going to hit them and hit them very hard, because life isn’t waiting for anyone. Either you’re prepared or you’re not, and if you’re not prepared, you’ve got to get prepared, once again as an adult when you should have had that when you were in school.
We don’t have time for this nonsense. Let me say this, there are so many teachers, all they want to do is teach. They love teaching, they love the profession, but they are being driven out of it by some who have this political agenda to make everybody the same.
Life isn’t like that.

Sears powerfully lays out the argument that assuring equal outcomes in school—or elsewhere—does not work in the real world and leads to unprepared people being thrust out into the workforce. It also leads to those who work hard for their achievements being openly discriminated against, and as she points out, that’s just not the American way.

Winsome vows to investigate this matter, and let’s hope she holds this school and these prejudiced administrators accountable.

This is reprehensible. I have reached out to the Governor and Attorney General and asked for an investigation.
Our children's education is not a zero-sum game. We cannot punish success in order to have "equal outcomes at all costs". https://t.co/eH2VFXwQ3Q
— Lt. Governor of Virginia – Winsome Earle-Sears (@WinsomeSears) December 30, 2022