Asra Q. Nomani first smelled something fishy on June 7. That was when Ann Bonitatibus, the principal of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ), in Fairfax County, Va., sent a letter to the school’s students and parents. It implored them to reflect on the “privileges you hold that others may not” and on the low numbers of black and Hispanic students at the school — the No. 1 high school in the nation, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report.

Of the 1,809 students attending TJ in the 2019–20 school year, more than 70 percent were Asian. Many were from immigrant families. The letter’s use of the word “privileges” confused Nomani, a single mom who came to the U.S. from India when she was four years old. Her son is now a senior at the school.

The principal’s letter arrived only a few days after release of the admissions data for the new school year, in which the number of black students admitted to the school appeared as “TS” — too small to specify (the actual number, it turned out, was six). That was seized on by groups pushing for diversity at the school, such as the TJ Alumni Action Group, who saw it as new ammunition to demand change in the school’s admissions policy.

Nomani was aware of previous rounds of wrestling over diversity at TJ through the years, and so, she says, “my radar was all up.” The journalist spoke at the next school-board meeting, the first time she ever did so, to suggest ways that black and Hispanic students could be helped to meet the current rigorous admissions criteria, instead of changing those criteria.

But then, on September 15, the Fairfax County school district announced a plan that would destroy the current admissions policy for TJ, which is based on, among other things, tests and teachers’ recommendations. Under the new plan, these would be tossed out, and there would be a lottery for all students who met basic eligibility requirements, including residency and a minimum GPA. The plan will be in place to decide on next year’s intake of students if the school board approves it.

From the beginning, Nomani and other concerned parents at TJ realized they were facing a tough battle. But they were not fighting it alone. A few Asian parents from New York who for two years had been protesting against a similar plan for major changes in admissions criteria for the city’s top public schools saw the video of Nomani’s school-board testimony on Twitter and left supportive comments. From there, Zoom meetings were arranged among the parents, including one in late August in which half a dozen New York parents shared the lessons they had learned. Topics ranged from how to encourage often quiet Asian parents to speak up to how to fight the proposal by coming up with possible alternatives. “The Asian families in [New York City] are such an inspiration to us,” said Nomani.

Dubbed the “silent minority,” Asians seldom participated in civic matters until a few years ago, when the debate over affirmative action in college admissions began to heat up. They argued that they were being short-changed in order to achieve racial balance on campuses.

Now, with race-conscious admissions policies being proposed in school districts across the nation, these newcomers to public protesting are sharing their experience and forming a nationwide network to defend not only their own values, but also, in their view, those of America.

“Dr. Martin Luther King’s idea of equality” was that “race should not play a role in getting opportunities,” said Yukong Zhao, president of the Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE). “We Asians are leading this movement now.”

In May 2015 the AACE, founded by Zhao and several other Asian parents, filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Education and Department of Justice against Harvard’s admissions policy. In 2016 the group filed similar complaints against Yale.

While the Harvard case was turned down by the DOE and is still pending at the DOJ, the DOJ announced in August its determination that Yale illegally discriminates against Asian and white applicants in its undergraduate admissions. This and the Trump administration’s action last summer to rescind Obama-era guidelines that encouraged colleges to consider race in admissions were celebrated by many Asian parents as major victories.

But while the Asian parents were pouring their energy into these few high-profile cases against Ivy League institutions, “desegregation” became a buzzword in many local school districts, and affirmative action has trickled down from colleges to K–12. The concern among many on the left is that the top selective public high schools consist almost entirely of Asian and white students because they test well. Black and Hispanic students have difficulty competing.

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan in the summer of 2018 to get rid of the Specialized High School Admission Test (SHSAT), the sole criterion for admissions to the city’s top three public high schools. The plan has been stymied, at least for now, after tenacious resistance from Asian parents. In the same year, a new admissions policy for merit-based magnet programs for middle-schoolers in Montgomery County, Md., was put in place to reduce the emphasis on test scores. In Virginia, not long before the TJ admissions plan was announced, parents in neighboring Loudoun County filed a lawsuit against a similar plan for the Academy of Science and the Academy of Engineering and Technology that was adopted in August of this year.

And in California, Proposition 16, which if passed would allow race to be considered in public-education decisions, is on the ballot this November, a year after Asian voters in Washington State helped thwart a similar referendum.

The trend is accelerating as Black Lives Matter and the anti-racism movement gain momentum. “Everyone talked about racism. No one talked about improving the quality of education for K–8 students anymore,” said Chien Kwok, a New York parent, giving his impression of the more than a dozen meetings of various community education councils that he attended in the city this summer.

To be sure, those who push for diversity in these school programs have legitimate reasons. There is plenty of research showing that a diverse learning environment benefits all students. And the pressure can be devastating for the small number of black and Hispanic students admitted to a school where there are few others from similar backgrounds.

At an online town-hall meeting on September 17 held by the TJ Partnership Fund, which supports diversifying TJ’s student body, a Hispanic student shared her experience in the freshman-year computer-science class, where many classmates either had learned the material beforehand in cram schools or had software-engineer parents who could help them. “I felt I was the stupidest person in that class and even the whole school,” she said.

A black student shared her experience of trying to hide her hair and bleaching her skin to look less black. “I don’t think TJ was ever designed to have people like me,” she said. “I think I am a mistake.”

“When the students spoke, it hit me in the core,” said Bonitatibus, who supports the school district’s reform proposal. “They entered TJ the same year that I did, which means their experiences had happened under my watch, and I didn’t know.”

But to many Asian immigrants, these problems should be solved by helping more black and Hispanic students to meet the current entrance criteria. Lowering the bar for the sake of racial balance, in their view, is not fair to families that have been prioritizing education for generations.

When Nomani, the TJ parent, first came to the U.S., she lived with her family in a house where they had to turn on the gas stove for heat. Yet the first gift her father gave her was an encyclopedia. Almost every Asian parent has a similar story. “They said there are too many Asians, but they never asked why there are so many Asians in these schools,” said Eva Guo, a co-founder of the Association for Education Fairness (AFEF), which filed a lawsuit earlier this month against the Montgomery County Public Schools over the magnet-programs admissions policy. “It’s based on hard work and sacrifice.”

Compared with the cases against the Ivy League universities, the complexity of K–12 school systems presents greater challenges for parents. But the similarities among these admissions-reform plans, and the common values among Asian cultures, can overcome these barriers. For example, all the announced reforms aim to reduce or nullify the importance of tests, which Asian students often excel at. All include factors that have nothing to do with a student’s effort, such as the use of a lottery. And under all the reforms, Asian students, who are the majority in most merit-based schools, would lose or have already lost a bigger share of the student population than any other racial group.

Consider TJ. Based on the school district’s own estimate, if the new system had already been in place it would have chopped the 73 percent share of Asian students in the current freshmen class down to 54 percent, while the proportion of white students would have risen from 18 percent to 25 percent. Black and Hispanic students would have increased from 1 percent and 3 percent to 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively.

One thing for sure is that educational admissions are politicizing the Asian-American community in the U.S. to an unprecedented extent. When Zhao’s AACE filed complaints against Harvard in 2015, 64 other Asian-American organizations signed on to them. When they filed the complaints against Yale, 132 joined. And in January 2019, when they called for Asians to sign on to an amicus brief to support the lawsuit against Harvard filed by conservative-led Students for Fair Admissions, 269 Asian organizations came on board.

Zhao said the network among Asians is significant. “The left-leaning forces on the other side have been mobilizing for a long time, and we have just started to fight back,” said Zhao. “We have to share our experiences and help one another.” He realizes it is an uphill battle. “The ultra left politicians don’t like to look at the root of the problems in the failed fundamental education, so they’ll more forcefully draw attention to racial balance in the gifted programs.”

He said this battle has to be fought for Asian children, as well as for the future of the U.S. “Our generation lived the Cultural Revolution in China when people were allocated the same amount of rewards no matter whether you worked hard or not. And that left everyone struggling in poverty,” said Zhao. “We don’t want America to become like that.”

Back at TJ, about 200 people opposing the admissions reform gathered on September 20 to protest. Rage was visible on their faces, even behind the masks. A current student said her younger brother is even harder-working than she. He wants to get into TJ and become an engineer, but now he worries he’ll lose the opportunity under the lottery. “Luck shouldn’t be a factor. Hard work should,” she said. A parent asked who in the crowd was at a demonstration for the first time, and many hands went up. Behind the protesters, parents held up a giant American flag.