TJ Seniors - not allowed to walk at graduation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My understanding is you still walk with your class, but diploma will be pending until passing required classes even at the University.

Approved to walk is the right call. The young people did not try to fail a class, they will have to deal with it this summer but not walking with the class would be unnecessary torture, what would be the point, to single them out?

They had chances to improve the grade and didn't. So, they kind of did try to fail if they weren't doing what they needed to do to pass.

I think you've replied several times with this ridiculous claim. Just stop. You can't do everything you want either. You too, have tried and failed in your life. It's better for these kids to shoot higher and fail one class, than not try at all.

If they meet FCPS requirements, they should be allowed to walk.

You're as dumb as these kids. “A lot of these students have had opportunities [to improve their grade]. For most of them, the grade isn’t a surprise.

The extra requirement to walk at the ceremony is a surprise and was dropped on the students with little notice. Not surprised since Mukai is a terrible communicator and constantly moves the goalposts on students and staff.

Oh it's you again.
Mukai is enforcing rules. The fact that Bonitatibus didn't enforce rules doesn't make Mukai administratively capricious by enforcing the rules.
I know you didn't like it that he basically sent back entire delegations from historically underrepresented schools after they couldn't keep their GPA above 3.0 and replaced them with Froshmores from "feeder" schools. It's not that the kids were born different, they were trained differently and to take a kid that has spent their entire life at the shallow end of the pool and throwing them in the deep end with kids that have been there their entire life is not a recipe for success. To some extent it is always going to be harder at the underrepresented schools but if you blow smoke and pretend there isn't even a problem in K-8 in those pyramids, you are never going to close the gap.

I don't have a problem with rules being enforced. The problem since Mukai has taken over is that he is a terrible communicator and instead of being transparent about the rules and requirements from the beginning, he drops surprises like this on students and staff and constantly moves the goalposts with no rhyme or reason.

I am wondering why the faculty, staff students and families of WSHS all think he is so great?

He certainly more honest that Bonitatibus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's fine to scare future parents/students ... TJ may not let you participate in graduation if you don't fulfill TJ graduation requirements.

I would hope next year and going forward, TJ would actually not allow the student to participate in graduation.

Why? This is not a private school, but a public one. These people are graduating from a public school with a state-issued diploma. Why are you so determined to be vengeful on teenagers? Are you worried that someone might think your precious has the stink on them if you don’t obviously humiliate other kids who are still high school graduates?

Especially for the TJ kids, high school graduation is just a stepping stone to other things. I get when I read posts on national Facebook groups of the people going absolutely nuts over high school graduation and realize for some of these kids this may be the pinnacle of their academic achievement and this might be the best they will ever do, and may be the only time other than when they get married that they will have some kind of public event in their honor.

The real world doesn’t care that your kid went to TJ.

These kids will be graduating at the bottom of the class. They were small fish in a big pond. They would have been better served elsewhere, so why did they want to go there?

They went. Maybe it was the hard grading teacher, maybe they hit a wall with calculus. Maybe they got much further than they would have in their home school because more was asked of them. I still don’t get the nastiness towards these kids.

Nobody hates these kids, we pity them. We are angry with FCPS board for using these kids as props in their diversity virtue signalling and we should do our best to prevent kids finding themselves in this situation going forward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Adding an important point here.The Math professor Dr J who takes these classes is notorious for her extremely harsh grading not only in TJ but in college campuses as well. many straight A students with excellent GPAs had theirgrades dip to D and Fail due to her. TJ administration has been receving complaints about her since years, and yet have done nothing about the same. Our DD graduated last year and there were so many students who had straight As in other subjects but were sitting at D and Fail grades in her class - the other Math professor Dr Osborne was much better and relatively more lenient in his grading

The teacher quoted was "AP Calculus BC teacher Marianne Razzino"

No - The teacher quoted here is Jirari Scavotto, Alouf (known in TJ as Dr J)- One of the nastiest human beings and a sadist - someone the school has 100s of complaints against, and will still not throw out

From the tjToday article linked in the first post:

Graduates of the class of 2026 are the first to graduate with this condition. According to counselor Sean Burke and AP Calculus BC teacher Marianne Razzino, students who failed calculus in the past and didn’t receive a Jefferson diploma were still allowed to walk with their class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's fine to scare future parents/students ... TJ may not let you participate in graduation if you don't fulfill TJ graduation requirements.

I would hope next year and going forward, TJ would actually not allow the student to participate in graduation.

Why? This is not a private school, but a public one. These people are graduating from a public school with a state-issued diploma. Why are you so determined to be vengeful on teenagers? Are you worried that someone might think your precious has the stink on them if you don’t obviously humiliate other kids who are still high school graduates?

Especially for the TJ kids, high school graduation is just a stepping stone to other things. I get when I read posts on national Facebook groups of the people going absolutely nuts over high school graduation and realize for some of these kids this may be the pinnacle of their academic achievement and this might be the best they will ever do, and may be the only time other than when they get married that they will have some kind of public event in their honor.

The real world doesn’t care that your kid went to TJ.

These kids will be graduating at the bottom of the class. They were small fish in a big pond. They would have been better served elsewhere, so why did they want to go there?

They went. Maybe it was the hard grading teacher, maybe they hit a wall with calculus. Maybe they got much further than they would have in their home school because more was asked of them. I still don’t get the nastiness towards these kids.

Nobody hates these kids, we pity them. We are angry with FCPS board for using these kids as props in their diversity virtue signalling and we should do our best to prevent kids finding themselves in this situation going forward.

How is it any of your concern if it’s not your child? Why are you pitying anyone? And are you SURE they’re all the poor/non-Asian ones? You certainly seem to be doing the opposite of virtue signaling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's fine to scare future parents/students ... TJ may not let you participate in graduation if you don't fulfill TJ graduation requirements.

I would hope next year and going forward, TJ would actually not allow the student to participate in graduation.

Why? This is not a private school, but a public one. These people are graduating from a public school with a state-issued diploma. Why are you so determined to be vengeful on teenagers? Are you worried that someone might think your precious has the stink on them if you don’t obviously humiliate other kids who are still high school graduates?

Especially for the TJ kids, high school graduation is just a stepping stone to other things. I get when I read posts on national Facebook groups of the people going absolutely nuts over high school graduation and realize for some of these kids this may be the pinnacle of their academic achievement and this might be the best they will ever do, and may be the only time other than when they get married that they will have some kind of public event in their honor.

The real world doesn’t care that your kid went to TJ.

I don’t think it’s being vengeful, but it is frustrating if kids who can’t meet the requirements are allowed to go all the way through when there are thousands of kids who did not get in who may have been able to actually do all the work (my kid got in so I’m not just being bitter).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Adding an important point here.The Math professor Dr J who takes these classes is notorious for her extremely harsh grading not only in TJ but in college campuses as well. many straight A students with excellent GPAs had theirgrades dip to D and Fail due to her. TJ administration has been receving complaints about her since years, and yet have done nothing about the same. Our DD graduated last year and there were so many students who had straight As in other subjects but were sitting at D and Fail grades in her class - the other Math professor Dr Osborne was much better and relatively more lenient in his grading

The teacher quoted was "AP Calculus BC teacher Marianne Razzino"

No - The teacher quoted here is Jirari Scavotto, Alouf (known in TJ as Dr J)- One of the nastiest human beings and a sadist - someone the school has 100s of complaints against, and will still not throw out

Why did they refer to Dr J as a "her"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Weird sea change at TJ to go from a school where they didn't want to notify students receiving Letters of Commendation for their PSATs for fear it would stigmatize TJ students who were neither National Merit Semifinalists or Commended Students to a school where a principal is threatening not to allow students who meet state requirements to graduate participate in their graduation ceremony.

We really ought to get rid of this school. Let Loudoun apply for a Governor's School and then deal with all the distractions; let the Asians move there if they are so hell-bent on attending an exclusive magnet school; and let FCPS get back to the business of focusing on all of its high schools.

?????????????????????????????

It's one of the board's equity crusaders that think that TJ is evil because it implies some kids are better at things than others.

[Anonymous]

They were allowed to talk in the past, only because the rule wasn't enforced

The rule exists. No reason the rule can't be enforced
or threatened to be enforced

[Anonymous]

walk

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's fine to scare future parents/students ... TJ may not let you participate in graduation if you don't fulfill TJ graduation requirements.

I would hope next year and going forward, TJ would actually not allow the student to participate in graduation.

Why? This is not a private school, but a public one. These people are graduating from a public school with a state-issued diploma. Why are you so determined to be vengeful on teenagers? Are you worried that someone might think your precious has the stink on them if you don’t obviously humiliate other kids who are still high school graduates?

Especially for the TJ kids, high school graduation is just a stepping stone to other things. I get when I read posts on national Facebook groups of the people going absolutely nuts over high school graduation and realize for some of these kids this may be the pinnacle of their academic achievement and this might be the best they will ever do, and may be the only time other than when they get married that they will have some kind of public event in their honor.

The real world doesn’t care that your kid went to TJ.

These kids will be graduating at the bottom of the class. They were small fish in a big pond. They would have been better served elsewhere, so why did they want to go there?

They went. Maybe it was the hard grading teacher, maybe they hit a wall with calculus. Maybe they got much further than they would have in their home school because more was asked of them. I still don’t get the nastiness towards these kids.

Nobody hates these kids, we pity them. We are angry with FCPS board for using these kids as props in their diversity virtue signalling and we should do our best to prevent kids finding themselves in this situation going forward.

How is it any of your concern if it’s not your child? Why are you pitying anyone? And are you SURE they’re all the poor/non-Asian ones? You certainly seem to be doing the opposite of virtue signaling.

Your side trots out tax dollars as the reason we should include people from every middle school. Can I trot out the waste of tax dollars as a reason to create a minimum level of objectively demonstrated proficiency for admission?

They may not be my kids but they are somebody's kids and those parents were deceived. They were encouraged to send their unprepared kids to TJ because FCPS wanted their skin. They were encouraged to believe their kids could handle it, when in fact nobody had any idea whether or not they could. Then when their kids floundered, Bonitatibus reassured these families that remedial courses and extra support would get them through because she didn't want to admit that the scheme didn't work. And here we are with these kids failing math in their senior year. at a stem school.

And yes, for the most part the failing kids are who you would expect them to be. Kids that never took the Iowa test and took geometry as freshmen. The last test of cognitive ability they took before admission to TJ was was the COGAT in elementary. But that's not the point. The point is that they were admitted in pursuit of skin color diversity. White admits increased too and it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of unqualified white and asian kids got in as well. But ALL of the unqualified kids got in as a result of the pursuit of skin color.

[Anonymous]

Perhaps Mr, Mukai wanted it to be publicly talked about that there are seniors at TJ that can’t even pass AP Calculus AB, the minimum requirement in math for a TJ diploma. TJ has an 8th period 2 times a week for 1.5 hours for students to be involved in clubs, study, receive support from teachers, or be tutored. These students are also able to redo all summative assessments up to a 90%.

Students who aren’t able to even pass the minimum math requirement with 3 hours of dedicated time in school that can be used for math help and being able to retake all tests up to 90% are the students who 💯 should never have been at TJ to begin with. The former principal did these students a huge disservice by encouraging students who didn’t meet the grade requirements to stay at TJ.

I have a student at TJ in 9th grade and I’m happy that the principal is sending back all of the students to their base schools who don’t have a 3.0 unweighted GPA. Being at TJ is not fair to these students. Ruining their GPAs and chances of getting into college is not a benefit to anyone. This will make them room for the students who should have originally been admitted. The students all know who are being sent back to base school. The majority of the students are in Geometry in 9th grade.

Unless you have or had a student at TJ you wouldn’t know how rigorous the classes are at TJ. Even freshman classes are graded at a college level. The expectations for these students aren’t just “advanced”, the expectation is that the students are capable of operating at a university level of academics beginning in 9th grade. The only students who are prepared for TJ have been operating at an advanced level for years or students with genius level IQs.

The new admissions policy does not do anything towards finding the right students. If they truly wanted to know who is capable of handling the academic workload at TJ they would require end of year grades for 8th grade. Passed advanced on all SOLs (not just stem courses, the humanities courses are just as rigorous as the STEM courses). They would also put in metrics for ranking students from the same middle schools to see which students are the most prepared.

Blaming a tough teacher because “a few kids” failed the class doesn’t make sense at all. Somehow all of the other students who took the class were able to pass. We aren’t talking about needing an A, students only need a 60% to pass.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's fine to scare future parents/students ... TJ may not let you participate in graduation if you don't fulfill TJ graduation requirements.

I would hope next year and going forward, TJ would actually not allow the student to participate in graduation.

Why? This is not a private school, but a public one. These people are graduating from a public school with a state-issued diploma. Why are you so determined to be vengeful on teenagers? Are you worried that someone might think your precious has the stink on them if you don’t obviously humiliate other kids who are still high school graduates?

Especially for the TJ kids, high school graduation is just a stepping stone to other things. I get when I read posts on national Facebook groups of the people going absolutely nuts over high school graduation and realize for some of these kids this may be the pinnacle of their academic achievement and this might be the best they will ever do, and may be the only time other than when they get married that they will have some kind of public event in their honor.

The real world doesn’t care that your kid went to TJ.

These kids will be graduating at the bottom of the class. They were small fish in a big pond. They would have been better served elsewhere, so why did they want to go there?

They went. Maybe it was the hard grading teacher, maybe they hit a wall with calculus. Maybe they got much further than they would have in their home school because more was asked of them. I still don’t get the nastiness towards these kids.

Nobody hates these kids, we pity them. We are angry with FCPS board for using these kids as props in their diversity virtue signalling and we should do our best to prevent kids finding themselves in this situation going forward.

How is it any of your concern if it’s not your child? Why are you pitying anyone? And are you SURE they’re all the poor/non-Asian ones? You certainly seem to be doing the opposite of virtue signaling.

Your side trots out tax dollars as the reason we should include people from every middle school. Can I trot out the waste of tax dollars as a reason to create a minimum level of objectively demonstrated proficiency for admission?

They may not be my kids but they are somebody's kids and those parents were deceived. They were encouraged to send their unprepared kids to TJ because FCPS wanted their skin. They were encouraged to believe their kids could handle it, when in fact nobody had any idea whether or not they could. Then when their kids floundered, Bonitatibus reassured these families that remedial courses and extra support would get them through because she didn't want to admit that the scheme didn't work. And here we are with these kids failing math in their senior year. at a stem school.

And yes, for the most part the failing kids are who you would expect them to be. Kids that never took the Iowa test and took geometry as freshmen. The last test of cognitive ability they took before admission to TJ was was the COGAT in elementary. But that's not the point. The point is that they were admitted in pursuit of skin color diversity. White admits increased too and it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of unqualified white and asian kids got in as well. But ALL of the unqualified kids got in as a result of the pursuit of skin color.

How do you know who these particular kids are? Is there a list of names and bios of the kids somewhere?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s silly to spring on these kids that they can’t walk at the last minute.

However, it’s deeply troubling that these kids can’t pass calculus. And shocking that they are taking Calc in 12th grade at TJ. The admissions changes really impacted the school that my kids graduated from just a few years ago.

Mukai is fixing it as best he can by enforcing the GPA requirement and sending a lot of kids back to their schools after freshman year and recruiting large froshmore classes.

That's not likely to go well. I can't imagine a sophomore being flung into the rigor of TJ.

Besides the fact that the actual issue at TJ is rampant cheating. That's the only way to succeed in classes like math where teachers have openly told me they don't teach the class material. Kids are expected to teach themselves and each other.

And yet the Froshmores are doing better on average than the rest of the class. By a noticeable margin.

Are these numbers available on a public site?

No answer for this question yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's fine to scare future parents/students ... TJ may not let you participate in graduation if you don't fulfill TJ graduation requirements.

I would hope next year and going forward, TJ would actually not allow the student to participate in graduation.

Why? This is not a private school, but a public one. These people are graduating from a public school with a state-issued diploma. Why are you so determined to be vengeful on teenagers? Are you worried that someone might think your precious has the stink on them if you don’t obviously humiliate other kids who are still high school graduates?

Especially for the TJ kids, high school graduation is just a stepping stone to other things. I get when I read posts on national Facebook groups of the people going absolutely nuts over high school graduation and realize for some of these kids this may be the pinnacle of their academic achievement and this might be the best they will ever do, and may be the only time other than when they get married that they will have some kind of public event in their honor.

The real world doesn’t care that your kid went to TJ.

I don’t think it’s being vengeful, but it is frustrating if kids who can’t meet the requirements are allowed to go all the way through when there are thousands of kids who did not get in who may have been able to actually do all the work (my kid got in so I’m not just being bitter).

“may” .. maybe not, maybe yes, maybe worse, maybe better.
Reminder that you don’t know anything about these kids, none, zero.
Maybe this kids ace in anything else but struggle in calculus, maybe …

And if you are an incoming freshmen parents, congratulations.. you are entering the honeymoon phase, but very likely when your kid in junior year.. your tone might be different.

[Anonymous]

Even freshman classes are graded at a college level. The expectations for these students aren’t just “advanced”, the expectation is that the students are capable of operating at a university level of academics beginning in 9th grade.

duh