VA AG Jason Miyares on the National Merit Scholarship Scandal

BUCK: We have the attorney general of the state of Virginia, Jason Miyares, with us now. Mr. Attorney General, thanks for calling, appreciate you taking the time.

AG MIYARES: It is great to be with you. Thanks for having me on.

BUCK: So there has been some attention given to this story about Virginia schools withholding National Merit Awards from students that got them based on their performance on the PSAT — Preparatory SAT. What can you tell us about this? How many schools, how big a deal is this? And when did it come to your attention?

AG MIYARES: Well, you know, it first came to my attention with, actually, Thomas Jefferson High School, which is considered one of the best public schools in the country. It’s a magnet school you have to apply to attend. And they went to a new equity — quote, equity-focused — admissions policy and which saw a 20 point drop in Asian-American enrollment. And then obviously, this exploded on the scene. We know that Fairfax Public Schools hired an “equity consultant,” paid them about $455,000 of taxpayer money for about nine months of work.

BUCK: Wow.

AG MIYARES: One of the equity consultants recommendations was an “equity-centered strategic plan” in which, and I quote, “equal outcomes for every student without exception,” end quote. And they further opined — this equity consultant — that to get to equal outcomes, you had to get there, even if it meant that you were treating some students, quote, “purposefully unequal.” That goes against every notion we have in a merit-based society, and so what we’re trying to determine is, does that then mean to get — to this kind of forced equal outcomes — that you were discriminating against certain Americans solely because and only because of their racial or ethnic background.

And that that’s a violation of a state statute we have in Virginia, the Virginia Human Rights Act. And this obviously… We were originally told this was a single high school at Thomas Jefferson High School, and it was an administrative error then. It has now turned into close to over a dozen high schools in the Northern Virginia area and Fairfax and Loudoun that we are reviewing. It seems to be systemic, and so that’s why we’re doing this investigation to get to the bottom of this — and what’s so sad is you hear the word “equity” all the time.

But the point I like to make is equity without excellence is emptiness. And so many of these students are the children of immigrants. They have fled here to the United States, “the last, best hope on earth.” I’m a child of an immigrant, someone who fled Cuba. I know that education is the doorway to the American dream. For a lot of these kids, English is not even the primary language spoken in their household, but they are incredible students, and they’re being denied opportunities simply because of who they are, and it really goes… If it is true they’re discriminating based on your background, then it just it goes against everything we believe as Americans.

CLAY: Jason, for people out there who may not be familiar with this story, I would connect it also with what’s been going on in New York City, which is we’ve moved from — with the elite public schools there as well, we’ve moved from — this idea to everybody should compete and the best among us academically should be rewarded for that competition, too if the rewards for competition academically are not distributed in a cosmetically even fashion across all racial groups, then somehow those awards are racist or unacceptable.

How do we fix this? Right? Because I think about it from the world of sports. We want elite success. The last thing you would want — and I know you’re in Virginia, so you’ve dealt with this for a long time with the Redskins and Commanders. Not trying to take a shot there (laughs) but there has been a lot of mediocrity there. The last thing you want is for every team to go 500, right? You want excellence to reign supreme. Yet we’ve turned away from that — the meritocracy — in education. How does it get fixed?

AG MIYARES: Well, I think a lot of what you’ve seen is nationally, you’ve had this sense of a war on merit, which goes against who we are as Americans. We believe in equality of opportunity. We just don’t believe in equality of outcomes, and I think you can differentiate between the two. And listen, a lot of it is you have so many individuals, particularly Northern Virginia, that are just they’re angry about it and they’re going to let their voices be heard. I mean, I had a mom share with me that… You know, “My daughter has done everything right since the first grade,” is what she shared with me.

“She’s worked incredibly hard. Her dream has always been to go to Thomas Jefferson High School. But I realize that she’s probably not going to get her dream, denied her not because of anything she has done, not because of a lack of work, but simply because she’s Korean American,” and that has created such a firestorm, this sense of not recognizing the value of merit. And I will say this — and this is what’s so troubling. You know, they say the only thing you learn from history is nobody learns from history. A hundred years ago in this country in elite academic institutions, they decided that we had too many, quote, “Jewish American children” in our elite institutions,” and they capped them.

CLAY: Yep.

AG MIYARES: They literally said, “We’re not going to allow anymore,” and they were discriminating against Jewish American children, and we recognize that. We look back at that with horror, as we rightly should. Well, if it was wrong 100 years ago to treat Jewish American children this way, then it is wrong today to treat Asian American children this way in America. And I think it goes against our sense that we are we are fundamentally a good, decent and noble country. And it goes directly against what we feel is the sense of fair play.

And so I have a high, high degree of confidence that as a lot of this comes out and we find out what’s happening nationally and we’re going to see — that’s what we’re doing this investigation to see exactly what is happening in Virginia — your average American, when they hear, you know, quotes like “equal outcome for every student without exception,” that’s not the America that they know. They want an America that believes in equality of opportunity but not forced outcomes, because at the end of the day, that’s the number one country we care the most about is not the color of your skin, it’s about your character. That is what Dr. King dreamed, and that’s what we have the Virginia Human Rights Act in Virginia for: To make sure that’s not the reverse of that isn’t happening.

CLAY: Jason. Building on your historical analogy about the exclusion of Jewish kids from elite academic institutions, as Buck and I have talked about on this show, that’s actually why standardized testing began, because they wanted to have an ability to compare kids from all over the country instead of just looking at their GPA. Because different high schools were different quality, let’s have one standardized measure. And what you’re really seeing in this ties in with the deal. The results in Northern Virginia is Asian kids are dominating and they are dominating at a level that is making others uncomfortable.

And so, as a result, they’re being punished. And there was a big article in the New York Times talking about recently — and if they’re writing about it in the Times, you know it’s a big issue — that many Asian Americans voted for. Lee Zeldin over this issue in the New York City area. And I’m sure that’s happening — as your example you just gave of the young girl who’s Korean background. I bet it’s happening in Northern Virginia in a big way where a lot of these Asian families are saying, “We believe in the meritocracy. We believe in academic excellence. That means we vote Republican now.”

AG MIYARES: Well, you know, I had a mom… Amazing story. She fled Vietnam with nothing, similar to my mom fled Cuba with nothing. She fled with nothing from Vietnam as a child. She was hearing a story with me that she had gone to a school board member to protest the fact that she felt like her daughter was being treated differently just because she was Vietnamese American, and this is a woman that has come to this country with nothing and the school board member told her that she needed to really check that she was falling into the trap of, quote, “white privilege.”

And, you know, she’s like, “I’m being lectured about white privilege, and I came to this country fleeing communism with nothing.” And so I do think, you know, I think lots of people want leaders that speak to their aspiration. I did an interview with The New York Times a couple of months ago where they asked me, “Why are so many Latino and Asian American voters flocking to the GOP?” And I said, you know, “It used to be that both parties broadly agreed that this was an exceptional country, and we still talked about this is indeed ‘the last, best hope on earth,’ and now one party walked away from them.”

I still talk about it. I still talk about America is given more second chances to more people for more background faiths, colors and creeds than any country that’s ever existed in the history of the world. That doesn’t mean we’ll discuss our darkest chapters, but we’ve given so much hope to so many people. But one party no longer uses that language, and you could see why so many new Americans that come to this country, they know they fled hellholes. They know they fled countries that are incredibly oppressive.

Either they oppressed them because of their religion or their or their ethnic background. They know this is a unique country unlike any other, and I know you have a lot of sports fans listening. If you don’t think you’re unique, go on YouTube. Watch a video of the opening ceremony of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo; 119 countries walk into that stadium — 119. They announce the United States of America. We go in alphabetical order, and when they announce the United States of America, we’re the only delegation out of 119 in which our delegation looks like the entire world. Every race, every color, every creed.

CLAY: It’s a great example.

AG MIYARES: That visual image does more to the show, more to destroy kind of this woke narrative that America is somehow irredeemably broken and cannot be redeemed. We have given so many second chances, and if you want to feel proud about your country, go to a naturalization ceremony. You meet these individuals. I love to do it. I spoke at one right before Christmas, 69 people, 35 countries. You hand them that $1 American flag. It is as precious as a diamond. They get that. They understand that. And when the doorway to the American dream is education, and that’s being denied certain people simply because of who they are — at least at the national level — that breaks your heart. And that’s why we want to make sure that’s not happening in Virginia.

BUCK: Attorney General Jason Miyares of Virginia, sir, appreciate your being with us. We’ll talk to you again soon.

AG MIYARES: And always an honor. Thanks, guys.

CLAY: Those guys are fighting battles that matter in a big way in Virginia, and I think they’re winning a lot of them back.

BUCK: Attorney General Miyares is doing a good job. Glenn Youngkin is doing a good job. There are some folks getting it done out there.