The public recently learned that Thomas Jefferson High School, an elite public magnet school, decided not to tell students when they’ve been honored as National Merit Scholars. We now know that several other schools in Virginia have been doing the same thing, apparently reluctant to highlight the deserving students. This is yet another example of egalitarianism run amok in our schools, fueled by the misguided belief that acknowledging achievement is more likely to discourage others than to inspire ambition.

There are two ironies here. One, which others have noted, is that elite public schools are an important vehicle for the children of immigrants to move up in society. Success at a competitive school such as Thomas Jefferson and the receipt of a National Merit scholarship can provide a child an edge in competitive admissions races, not to mention the scholarship itself helps make an elite education more affordable. In other words, the attack on merit means that these schools are failing the very children they are designed to help.

The other irony has to do with the particular school in question. The school’s namesake spent a significant amount of time and energy both thinking about and working to change schooling in Virginia. Indeed, along with “author of the Declaration of Independence” and of the “Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom,” Jefferson’s tombstone , which he designed, notes that he was the “father of the University of Virginia.” It was one of his signal achievements.

For Jefferson, the University of Virginia was to be a capstone university in a larger, reformed public educational system. Although the state’s legislature did not cooperate until many decades later, he envisioned a Virginia that had several schools very much like Thomas Jefferson High School, at least as it is supposed to be.

In his own lifetime, Jefferson helped ensure many children received an education. He was the driving force behind the Land Ordinance of 1785 , which required settlers in the Northwest to set aside land for common schools. That, combined with the prohibition of slavery on the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 , which he also helped create, was fundamental in developing the North that would win the Civil War.

Jefferson noted the purposes of common education were many :

Jefferson knew that some students could, and would, do more. Hence, he envisioned a large system that ensured the best students in the early years could rise up to the next levels of the school, including what we call elite public high schools, and to the University of Virginia, the capstone of the system. Such a government-funded system would allow the children of poorer families to compete with the children of wealthier families. By failing to reward merit, the school that bears Jefferson’s name is conspicuously failing in that regard.

At times, Jefferson seemed to suggest that talent was inborn, although equally to be found among the children of the poor, the middling, and the rich. His scientific racism is infamous, and rightly so. But men, even great men such as Jefferson, are not angels. And it is a focus on Jefferson’s failings that helps ideologues to attack merit and claim that they’re merely fighting racism, to the detriment of so many poor and middle-class children in Virginia.

It would be a shame if a misguided egalitarianism and an overreaction to Jefferson’s shortcomings blinded us to the importance of rewarding and recognizing merit in our schools.

Richard Samuelson is an associate professor of government at Hillsdale College's Van Andel Graduate School of Government in Washington, D.C.