Tuesday I wrote a story highlighting the fact that the number of Virginia high schools who failed to inform students about their merit awards had risen to 13. Two days later the number has risen to 17.

The count just keeps growing.

Marshall High School Principal Jeremy Litz just sent parents an email, telling them that “it has come to light that Marshall High School students designated as Commended Students this past fall were notified later than we would have hoped.”

This brings to 17 the number of high schools in Fairfax County, Loudoun County and Prince William County that have admitted to withholding awards. Many other Fairfax County high schools haven’t yet released the results of their reviews.

Here’s the list put together by the Fairfax Times of the schools that are on record. But as mentioned other schools haven’t said one way or another what they did so I’d be willing to bet that by next week this list will be longer.

This list is of schools that failed to notify “commended students.” The demographics of that group doesn’t seem to be available yet but the Fairfax Times investigated and found that 75% of the National Merit semifinalists (one notch above commended students) are Asian. So it’s likely that the majority of commended students are also Asian despite Asians making up about 20% of Fairfax County.

Despite this, some local officials have been dismissing this story as fake news. Last week the Fairfax County Parents Association sent a letter blasting the response of those leaders:

“You should hang your heads in shame,” the parents’ group, a nonpartisan volunteer grassroots organization, wrote in a letter published late Saturday morning…

In its letter, the parents’ group asked state and local leaders, “How dare you tell students that their hard work doesn’t matter? How dare you pretend that students who manage to be in the top 3% academically among seniors nationwide have not achieved an accomplishment of which they should be enormously proud? How dare you tell these students – most of whom do not come from wealth – that it doesn’t matter whether they are able to note this achievement on college applications, or applications for academic scholarships that could help pay for college?”…

“The students earned these recognitions through hard work. They deserve to be notified and deserve the chance to decide whether to include this recognition on their college and scholarship applications,” the Fairfax County Parents Association said in its letter. “Our elected officials and the school system bureaucracy should never withhold or delay the recognition.”…

“This is not one school making a ‘one-time mistake’ by not notifying or delaying notification,” the group said in its letter. “This is a pattern that speaks to a school system focused on creating an illusion of equity by either punishing students who worked hard to achieve high academic performance and recognition, or one that has so little regard for academic achievement that it cannot be bothered to prioritize it. As schools race to issue almost-identical press releases clearly coordinated by FCPS central administration, families must wonder if that coordination also speaks to an effort to downplay, or ignore, the achievements in the first place to push high-achieving students to the side in the pursuit of the equal outcomes ‘equity’ narrative.”

There’s still no direct connection between the failure to notify students and equity but as I argued earlier this week, there doesn’t need to be. So long as everyone is being indoctrinated with the same junk there’s no need for secret plan. In this case, we know that Fairfax County was spending big money for virtual face time with Ibram Kendi:

As reported, the school district and local agencies have spent at least $513,500 on two controversial contracts with proponents of policies that parents groups and community members allege lead to the kind of discrimination alleged in the withholding of the National Merit awards. Since August 2020, Fairfax County Public Schools, the Reston Community Center and the Fairfax County Public Library have spent $58,500 for three hours and 40 minutes of talks, most of them virtual, with author Ibram X. Kendi, who has written, “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”

As for the claims by some Democrats that these awards don’t really matter, that’s debatable. Yesterday, an ABC affiliate spoke to a tutor in Northern Virginia who believed these commendation awards could make a difference for some students.

As a tutor and educator specializing in helping high school students in the college admissions process, Julia Ross has never seen anything quite like this.

This being schools in at least three counties in Northern Virginia delaying the notification of students who earned National Merit Commended Scholar status. She said this could be the difference for students between getting accepted or rejected by schools or scholarships.

Ross is the principal of Professional Tutoring, LLC in Burke, Va., and said she grows more frustrated the more schools she sees reveal they have made this crucial mistake.

“It is incredibly frustrating because it is one of the things we ask the students,” Ross said. “When you look at TJ, about 50% of their junior class and senior class would have been commended or was commended, but they weren’t commended on time. That’s another huge number, so it’s expected. Students are evaluated for college admission in their graduating cohort, so they’re going to compare these students against other TJ kids of this year and, to some extent, by prior years by saying, ‘Well this kid wasn’t commended.’ It’s very important you’re keeping up with the Joneses in college admission.”

Ross says the chances of a school reconsidering their decision for early admission are low and in most cases this commendation wouldn’t be enough to change the outcome but at some smaller schools it could matter. She recommends copying the commendation and having the students send a letter to the schools asking them to consider it.