Federal judge rules that admissions changes at nation’s top public school discriminate against Asian

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm reading all this as the parent of an elementary student.

Grades are very subjective as well, and also can vary widely based on the teacher a student gets. We have teachers assign above grade level status to kids doing well in on grade level work in one class while the class next door must actually take different tests to get thia distinction. Or a teacher who gives above grade level status and then straight 3s in the subject, putting kid gradewise on par with kids doing less challenging work..

Waiting to see how this all shakes out in AAP process.

True. Standardized testing will take away teacher bias. But many are opposed to it since tests can be subject to extreme prepping and not everyone can afford it either. Grades and teacher recommendations are probably the fair compromise without quotas that punish specific groups.

Standardized testing removes one type of bias and introduces another. There’s no single criteria alone that is the answer, a variety of factors ought to be considered. Some people are so invested in standardized testing though, they see it as some sort of merit-based silver bullet and have full blinders towards this sort of reliance on an ostensibly objective measure. I trust teachers more than a test to identify the kids most qualified and would benefit from TJ, but would prefer not to rely on teachers alone either. Multiple data points is a good thing, which goes for AAP, TJ, college, job hiring, or almost any sort of human selection process really.

Right, so the best plan would be a holistic evaluation including grades, teacher recommendations, essays, and a standardized test. The old system was bad because the standardized test was too strongly used as a gatekeeper for semifinalist status. The new system is bad because it is too sparse. Thankfully, there is a pretty broad middle ground between the old system and the new one.

This is basically what colleges do and it seems to be working well for them! I agree that old system needs to be changed, but the new system is full of holes and glaring apparent who they intended to penalize right from the start - academic focused kids, going to aap centers and living specific neighborhoods. No matter where your politics land, its not fair to these kids. However on the plus side, its easier to stand out in the base school, which helps in college admissions.

Elite colleges are moving away from standardized exams as a requirement. An approach that could work for TJ is optional exam submission - there are no end of excellent exams that students can take on their own that could be used as a piece of a portfolio. SSAT comes to mind, in addition to all of the competitions. This would allow TJ to set aside a few spaces for the kids who truly are phenomenal test takers, as a few of them would have significant value to the school environment.

"Test Optional" does not mean Test Blind.
Someone who tests well is still at a distinct advantage over someone who doesn't test. The non-tester really has to burnish his/her other traits.

But this is precisely the point.

No college in America evaluates all of their applicants through the same lens. By and large they are looking for a diverse group of candidates who fill different types of intelligence buckets as well as different types of skill sets.

For too long TJ has mandated that in order to get into the school, you must be an outstanding test taker - which is how they’ve artificially gained all of those “number one public high school” accolades. But test-taking is a very limited measure of intellectual ability.

Witness - in the old admissions process, a student could achieve perfect scores on the Quant Q and the ACT Science, but if they were in the 74th percentile on the ACT English, still WELL above average, they would not even qualify as a semifinalist. Perhaps that student inadvertently skipped a question out of nerves and simply miscoded their scantron sheet. That’s a potentially phenomenal applicant whose entire life track was thrown to a different course by a single mistake that they might have noticed with only two minutes left in the exam.

And that’s part of the problem with the old process. Even if you believe in test taking as some end all be all measure of merit (which I believe it is a piece of) giving it an outsized importance can really muddle your ability to identify the gems.

[Anonymous]

One day we’ll have a school board that actually has guts and believes what it says and TJHSST will be eliminated and returned to use as a community school. Until then these clowns can just twist in the wind as they try to suck up to their base and end up pleasing no one except the few dozen progressive activists who themselves went to TJ and spend all their waking hours defending an inherently snobby, elitist (just not too Asian, please) school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it acceptable, within the applicants for a particular school, to rank based on extracurriculars like MathCounts, AMC 8, AMC 10, Science Olympiad, Robotics, FLL, etc?

We live in a different jurisdiction, but I cannot process why choice of EC would be a factor? Almost nobody in the top academic classes at our school does those contests. It's a "thing" with some kids who don't have otherwise busy schedules, but it is not a marker of the brightest students by a long shot. It a choice about how to spend your free time.

Mere participation in STEM ECs shouldn't matter. High levels of success in a STEM based EC should. Kids who qualify for AIME in middle school, win first place at Science Olympiad states, or the like are showing that they are elite talents.

OR, that they have parents willing to supply enormous amounts of time, energy, and money who also have the right connections to match their kids up with amazing mentors.

Nope. That doesn't amount to much if the kids themselves don't spend incredible amounts of time and energy on getting better.

At some point America (mainly the lazy white population who tends to believe in innate IQ) will have to come to terms with the fact that hard work vastly outperforms any kind of innate ability or economical advantage. Face it ladies: Your kids will have to make a choice whether to work hard or not, if they want to truly compete, if they choose not to work hard, they will be held back. If they want to do travel and do sports, great, that's their choice. If they want to become great at academics, wonderful. If both, fantastic.. if they can handle it. But what they can't do is pretend that they are awesome without putting in an iota of effort.

Your argument might be relevant if there were more white families pushing for TJ. But less than half of eligible white 8th graders even both applying (compared to 90+% of eligible Asian and black students).

They don't apply because they don't want to work (or study in this case) too hard. Scared to compete against Asians. You just reinforced PP's point inadvertently. I think white parents on these threads are actually dumb.

DP. The top math and science oriented kids at other local HSes work hard. They are choosing not to apply to TJ because they don't want to go. This is one of the big issues that the school board was trying to fix.

I'm the parent of a gifted math and science oriented kid who is starting to think about TJ. Two years ago, I would have strongly steered him away from the school. Last year, I started to reconsider and thought that if he expressed interest, I wwould support him. Now? I don't know, I guess we'll wait and see.

[Anonymous]

The teachers for TJ class of 2025 are very caring and they give a lot of extra credits to help the kids. Average+ kids have 110% score. Also, for the exams teachers help the students to identify any in-correct response and give them chance to re-do. Not many other HS gives so many extra credits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm reading all this as the parent of an elementary student.

Grades are very subjective as well, and also can vary widely based on the teacher a student gets. We have teachers assign above grade level status to kids doing well in on grade level work in one class while the class next door must actually take different tests to get thia distinction. Or a teacher who gives above grade level status and then straight 3s in the subject, putting kid gradewise on par with kids doing less challenging work..

Waiting to see how this all shakes out in AAP process.

True. Standardized testing will take away teacher bias. But many are opposed to it since tests can be subject to extreme prepping and not everyone can afford it either. Grades and teacher recommendations are probably the fair compromise without quotas that punish specific groups.

Standardized testing removes one type of bias and introduces another. There’s no single criteria alone that is the answer, a variety of factors ought to be considered. Some people are so invested in standardized testing though, they see it as some sort of merit-based silver bullet and have full blinders towards this sort of reliance on an ostensibly objective measure. I trust teachers more than a test to identify the kids most qualified and would benefit from TJ, but would prefer not to rely on teachers alone either. Multiple data points is a good thing, which goes for AAP, TJ, college, job hiring, or almost any sort of human selection process really.

Right, so the best plan would be a holistic evaluation including grades, teacher recommendations, essays, and a standardized test. The old system was bad because the standardized test was too strongly used as a gatekeeper for semifinalist status. The new system is bad because it is too sparse. Thankfully, there is a pretty broad middle ground between the old system and the new one.

This is basically what colleges do and it seems to be working well for them! I agree that old system needs to be changed, but the new system is full of holes and glaring apparent who they intended to penalize right from the start - academic focused kids, going to aap centers and living specific neighborhoods. No matter where your politics land, its not fair to these kids. However on the plus side, its easier to stand out in the base school, which helps in college admissions.

Elite colleges are moving away from standardized exams as a requirement. An approach that could work for TJ is optional exam submission - there are no end of excellent exams that students can take on their own that could be used as a piece of a portfolio. SSAT comes to mind, in addition to all of the competitions. This would allow TJ to set aside a few spaces for the kids who truly are phenomenal test takers, as a few of them would have significant value to the school environment.

"Test Optional" does not mean Test Blind.
Someone who tests well is still at a distinct advantage over someone who doesn't test. The non-tester really has to burnish his/her other traits.

But this is precisely the point.

No college in America evaluates all of their applicants through the same lens. By and large they are looking for a diverse group of candidates who fill different types of intelligence buckets as well as different types of skill sets.

For too long TJ has mandated that in order to get into the school, you must be an outstanding test taker - which is how they’ve artificially gained all of those “number one public high school” accolades. But test-taking is a very limited measure of intellectual ability.

Witness - in the old admissions process, a student could achieve perfect scores on the Quant Q and the ACT Science, but if they were in the 74th percentile on the ACT English, still WELL above average, they would not even qualify as a semifinalist. Perhaps that student inadvertently skipped a question out of nerves and simply miscoded their scantron sheet. That’s a potentially phenomenal applicant whose entire life track was thrown to a different course by a single mistake that they might have noticed with only two minutes left in the exam.

And that’s part of the problem with the old process. Even if you believe in test taking as some end all be all measure of merit (which I believe it is a piece of) giving it an outsized importance can really muddle your ability to identify the gems.

Nobody is saying "test" is "end all be all" as long as some objective criteria are used and no racial discrimination takes place.

Let's stop with the false argument that ANYBODY is saying that TEST is end all be all especially most Asian applicants. Enough is enough with the spreading of false information. It doesn't matter what the criteria are as long as some form of objective criteria are used. Why is that so hard to understand.

In addition, if you are going to discount the result of any TJ tests to mere measure of test taking ability, then that same argument may apply to almost ANY tests. Why only limit it to potential TJ tests? You should pretty much discount all tests since all tests allow test takers to prepare for these tests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it acceptable, within the applicants for a particular school, to rank based on extracurriculars like MathCounts, AMC 8, AMC 10, Science Olympiad, Robotics, FLL, etc?

We live in a different jurisdiction, but I cannot process why choice of EC would be a factor? Almost nobody in the top academic classes at our school does those contests. It's a "thing" with some kids who don't have otherwise busy schedules, but it is not a marker of the brightest students by a long shot. It a choice about how to spend your free time.

DP. The trouble here is that many of those specific ECs have been historically seen as tickets to TJ because they theoretically provide evidence of “passion for STEM”. They were part of a very narrow path that families could rely on to position their children for the TJ admissions process as well as possible.

But when you have a very narrow path that is successful, you end up with a significant percentage of the students who enter TJ with VERY similar backgrounds and resumes because so many families have tried to optimize their child’s application in the same way.

It might make some sense to have this sort of process for a class of 100-150, like at a Blair in Maryland. But for a class of 550, you have to have more diverse interests and goals and backgrounds or you end up with a hyper-competitive environment where too many students are pursuing the same endpoint.

Exactly. We benefit from having diverse STEM talent from across the county, not just cookie-cutter applicants who are all following the same TJ checklist.

Right, we don't need cookie-cutter applicants. We need to accept the best and the brightest period.

Objective criteria and a transparent process results in cookie-cutter applicants. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand how admissions processes work and how they incentivize problematic behavior.

I do think it’s contributing to negative behaviors. Maybe it does need to be more holistic approach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So, when they decide on a straight up lottery for this year….everyone on this board will be really mad, right?

Let’s go lottery.

Either lottery or existing test results/GPA. Too late for other options.

They would probably have to roll back the "historically under represented schools" part. The top 1.5 percent per school is likely something that can be kept because that is still merit based.

Honestly, that sounds fine to me.

Yea, now we see whether they have the will to do something like this or will they stick to their racist guns as the chairwoman of the school board has already vowed to do.

The top 1.5% was not determined on the basis of merit, but on a holistic process which favored some racial groups over others. At each of these schools, there will be a plethora of children with a 4.0 GPA. There is no way around this without a test. What would make sense would be to award a seat to the top student, score included, from each BASE school, for children enrolled in AAP.

They have GPA and the test results. Pick the top X% from each base middle school to fill the school. If there are still too many kids from a middle school then lottery to get the X%.

I wish this was the process and no one would have had any issue with it as it would be completely fair and no implicit discrimination against any particular group. Distribute half of the available to equally among top students in all the BASE schools or school pyramids (not 'attending' schools to avoid discriminating against kids going to AAP centers) and put the other half in an open pool and select the top students from the remaining students provided some min criteria is met. I wish they consider teacher recommendations as they know kids who are truly deserved, but might have missed an A in some course etc. I wouldn't give too much attention to portrait sheet etc (as its subjective and tests language skills more than STEM focus) and instead focus on fully middle school GPA, regular courses taken (not 'paid' summer courses), teacher input etc.

What will happen with this model is that the school will end up with 2-3 different tiers of courses - Advanced, middling and remedial. The kids will be intellectually segregated within the school. Although by all appearances the demographics will please those on the lookout for equity, the actual mechanics of the school coursework will distinguish the high performing cohorts from the low performing ones. On a daily basis, these groups will silently waft by each other, each on their own academic track.
My Arlington County High public high school was like this. Believe me, here is no sense of community in this model.

And by “remedial” you mean only 1-2 years ahead of grade level?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm reading all this as the parent of an elementary student.

Grades are very subjective as well, and also can vary widely based on the teacher a student gets. We have teachers assign above grade level status to kids doing well in on grade level work in one class while the class next door must actually take different tests to get thia distinction. Or a teacher who gives above grade level status and then straight 3s in the subject, putting kid gradewise on par with kids doing less challenging work..

Waiting to see how this all shakes out in AAP process.

True. Standardized testing will take away teacher bias. But many are opposed to it since tests can be subject to extreme prepping and not everyone can afford it either. Grades and teacher recommendations are probably the fair compromise without quotas that punish specific groups.

Standardized testing removes one type of bias and introduces another. There’s no single criteria alone that is the answer, a variety of factors ought to be considered. Some people are so invested in standardized testing though, they see it as some sort of merit-based silver bullet and have full blinders towards this sort of reliance on an ostensibly objective measure. I trust teachers more than a test to identify the kids most qualified and would benefit from TJ, but would prefer not to rely on teachers alone either. Multiple data points is a good thing, which goes for AAP, TJ, college, job hiring, or almost any sort of human selection process really.

Right, so the best plan would be a holistic evaluation including grades, teacher recommendations, essays, and a standardized test. The old system was bad because the standardized test was too strongly used as a gatekeeper for semifinalist status. The new system is bad because it is too sparse. Thankfully, there is a pretty broad middle ground between the old system and the new one.

This is basically what colleges do and it seems to be working well for them! I agree that old system needs to be changed, but the new system is full of holes and glaring apparent who they intended to penalize right from the start - academic focused kids, going to aap centers and living specific neighborhoods. No matter where your politics land, its not fair to these kids. However on the plus side, its easier to stand out in the base school, which helps in college admissions.

Elite colleges are moving away from standardized exams as a requirement. An approach that could work for TJ is optional exam submission - there are no end of excellent exams that students can take on their own that could be used as a piece of a portfolio. SSAT comes to mind, in addition to all of the competitions. This would allow TJ to set aside a few spaces for the kids who truly are phenomenal test takers, as a few of them would have significant value to the school environment.

"Test Optional" does not mean Test Blind.
Someone who tests well is still at a distinct advantage over someone who doesn't test. The non-tester really has to burnish his/her other traits.

But this is precisely the point.

No college in America evaluates all of their applicants through the same lens. By and large they are looking for a diverse group of candidates who fill different types of intelligence buckets as well as different types of skill sets.

For too long TJ has mandated that in order to get into the school, you must be an outstanding test taker - which is how they’ve artificially gained all of those “number one public high school” accolades. But test-taking is a very limited measure of intellectual ability.

Witness - in the old admissions process, a student could achieve perfect scores on the Quant Q and the ACT Science, but if they were in the 74th percentile on the ACT English, still WELL above average, they would not even qualify as a semifinalist. Perhaps that student inadvertently skipped a question out of nerves and simply miscoded their scantron sheet. That’s a potentially phenomenal applicant whose entire life track was thrown to a different course by a single mistake that they might have noticed with only two minutes left in the exam.

And that’s part of the problem with the old process. Even if you believe in test taking as some end all be all measure of merit (which I believe it is a piece of) giving it an outsized importance can really muddle your ability to identify the gems.

Nobody is saying "test" is "end all be all" as long as some objective criteria are used and no racial discrimination takes place.

Let's stop with the false argument that ANYBODY is saying that TEST is end all be all especially most Asian applicants. Enough is enough with the spreading of false information. It doesn't matter what the criteria are as long as some form of objective criteria are used. Why is that so hard to understand.

In addition, if you are going to discount the result of any TJ tests to mere measure of test taking ability, then that same argument may apply to almost ANY tests. Why only limit it to potential TJ tests? You should pretty much discount all tests since all tests allow test takers to prepare for these tests.

Supporters of the old admissions process are by definition supporting an exam as the end-all-be-all.

The old process required applicants to reach certain percentile scores - curves that were reset by students engaged in expensive boutique prep programs - to be a semifinalist at all. The exam was a gatekeeper that eliminated Black and Hispanic applicants from the semifinalist pool almost entirely.

These prep programs - as many are fond of highlighting with respect to mediocre white kids and the SAT - are EXCEPTIONAL at taking relatively workaday kids and passing them off as gifted.

Standardized exams do not aid the search for talent - they confound the search for talent.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it acceptable, within the applicants for a particular school, to rank based on extracurriculars like MathCounts, AMC 8, AMC 10, Science Olympiad, Robotics, FLL, etc?

We live in a different jurisdiction, but I cannot process why choice of EC would be a factor? Almost nobody in the top academic classes at our school does those contests. It's a "thing" with some kids who don't have otherwise busy schedules, but it is not a marker of the brightest students by a long shot. It a choice about how to spend your free time.

DP. The trouble here is that many of those specific ECs have been historically seen as tickets to TJ because they theoretically provide evidence of “passion for STEM”. They were part of a very narrow path that families could rely on to position their children for the TJ admissions process as well as possible.

But when you have a very narrow path that is successful, you end up with a significant percentage of the students who enter TJ with VERY similar backgrounds and resumes because so many families have tried to optimize their child’s application in the same way.

It might make some sense to have this sort of process for a class of 100-150, like at a Blair in Maryland. But for a class of 550, you have to have more diverse interests and goals and backgrounds or you end up with a hyper-competitive environment where too many students are pursuing the same endpoint.

Exactly. We benefit from having diverse STEM talent from across the county, not just cookie-cutter applicants who are all following the same TJ checklist.

Right, we don't need cookie-cutter applicants. We need to accept the best and the brightest period.

Objective criteria and a transparent process results in cookie-cutter applicants. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand how admissions processes work and how they incentivize problematic behavior.

I do think it’s contributing to negative behaviors. Maybe it does need to be more holistic approach.

+100 thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm reading all this as the parent of an elementary student.

Grades are very subjective as well, and also can vary widely based on the teacher a student gets. We have teachers assign above grade level status to kids doing well in on grade level work in one class while the class next door must actually take different tests to get thia distinction. Or a teacher who gives above grade level status and then straight 3s in the subject, putting kid gradewise on par with kids doing less challenging work..

Waiting to see how this all shakes out in AAP process.

True. Standardized testing will take away teacher bias. But many are opposed to it since tests can be subject to extreme prepping and not everyone can afford it either. Grades and teacher recommendations are probably the fair compromise without quotas that punish specific groups.

Standardized testing removes one type of bias and introduces another. There’s no single criteria alone that is the answer, a variety of factors ought to be considered. Some people are so invested in standardized testing though, they see it as some sort of merit-based silver bullet and have full blinders towards this sort of reliance on an ostensibly objective measure. I trust teachers more than a test to identify the kids most qualified and would benefit from TJ, but would prefer not to rely on teachers alone either. Multiple data points is a good thing, which goes for AAP, TJ, college, job hiring, or almost any sort of human selection process really.

Right, so the best plan would be a holistic evaluation including grades, teacher recommendations, essays, and a standardized test. The old system was bad because the standardized test was too strongly used as a gatekeeper for semifinalist status. The new system is bad because it is too sparse. Thankfully, there is a pretty broad middle ground between the old system and the new one.

This is basically what colleges do and it seems to be working well for them! I agree that old system needs to be changed, but the new system is full of holes and glaring apparent who they intended to penalize right from the start - academic focused kids, going to aap centers and living specific neighborhoods. No matter where your politics land, its not fair to these kids. However on the plus side, its easier to stand out in the base school, which helps in college admissions.

Elite colleges are moving away from standardized exams as a requirement. An approach that could work for TJ is optional exam submission - there are no end of excellent exams that students can take on their own that could be used as a piece of a portfolio. SSAT comes to mind, in addition to all of the competitions. This would allow TJ to set aside a few spaces for the kids who truly are phenomenal test takers, as a few of them would have significant value to the school environment.

"Test Optional" does not mean Test Blind.
Someone who tests well is still at a distinct advantage over someone who doesn't test. The non-tester really has to burnish his/her other traits.

But this is precisely the point.

No college in America evaluates all of their applicants through the same lens. By and large they are looking for a diverse group of candidates who fill different types of intelligence buckets as well as different types of skill sets.

For too long TJ has mandated that in order to get into the school, you must be an outstanding test taker - which is how they’ve artificially gained all of those “number one public high school” accolades. But test-taking is a very limited measure of intellectual ability.

Witness - in the old admissions process, a student could achieve perfect scores on the Quant Q and the ACT Science, but if they were in the 74th percentile on the ACT English, still WELL above average, they would not even qualify as a semifinalist. Perhaps that student inadvertently skipped a question out of nerves and simply miscoded their scantron sheet. That’s a potentially phenomenal applicant whose entire life track was thrown to a different course by a single mistake that they might have noticed with only two minutes left in the exam.

And that’s part of the problem with the old process. Even if you believe in test taking as some end all be all measure of merit (which I believe it is a piece of) giving it an outsized importance can really muddle your ability to identify the gems.

Nobody is saying "test" is "end all be all" as long as some objective criteria are used and no racial discrimination takes place.

Let's stop with the false argument that ANYBODY is saying that TEST is end all be all especially most Asian applicants. Enough is enough with the spreading of false information. It doesn't matter what the criteria are as long as some form of objective criteria are used. Why is that so hard to understand.

In addition, if you are going to discount the result of any TJ tests to mere measure of test taking ability, then that same argument may apply to almost ANY tests. Why only limit it to potential TJ tests? You should pretty much discount all tests since all tests allow test takers to prepare for these tests.

Supporters of the old admissions process are by definition supporting an exam as the end-all-be-all.

The old process required applicants to reach certain percentile scores - curves that were reset by students engaged in expensive boutique prep programs - to be a semifinalist at all. The exam was a gatekeeper that eliminated Black and Hispanic applicants from the semifinalist pool almost entirely.

These prep programs - as many are fond of highlighting with respect to mediocre white kids and the SAT - are EXCEPTIONAL at taking relatively workaday kids and passing them off as gifted.

Standardized exams do not aid the search for talent - they confound the search for talent.

The responses:

Supporters of the old admissions process are by definition supporting an exam as the end-all-be-all.
How so? Which admissions process are you referring to? The admissions process from several years ago or the admissions process that was in effect prior to the recent change?

The old process required applicants to reach certain percentile scores - curves that were reset by students engaged in expensive boutique prep programs - to be a semifinalist at all. The exam was a gatekeeper that eliminated Black and Hispanic applicants from the semifinalist pool almost entirely.
You are referring to the admissions process that was in effect several years ago before they changed the "test" to what they said was very difficult to prep. The admissions process that was replaced years ago is not relevant to the admissions discussions we are having now but for the sake of argument we will discuss it. First, it was not the sole criterion to qualify to be the semi-finalists. The process involved GPA and test scores. In addition, the test was not very difficult at all. The problem with the test was that too many applicants were receiving high scores and it was too easy to qualify to be semi-finalists. The reason for the prep was not that the test was difficult but some wanted to do what they can to try to obtain a highest score possible. Typical applicant did not need to prepare at all to obtain a passing score to become a semi-finalist if that student had academic aptitude and studied hard throughout his/her academic grades.

These prep programs - as many are fond of highlighting with respect to mediocre white kids and the SAT - are EXCEPTIONAL at taking relatively workaday kids and passing them off as gifted.
We have prep programs for all kinds of tests. You can't get rid of them so we just have to come up with NEW tests each year which TJ can easily do without much costs by asking TJ or any high school math or science teachers. In fact, fcps will save a lot of money if this process was adopted.

Standardized exams do not aid the search for talent - they confound the search for talent.
Then suggest an alternative instead of just keep saying test is not "end all be all" bull crap all day which nobody subscribes to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm reading all this as the parent of an elementary student.

Grades are very subjective as well, and also can vary widely based on the teacher a student gets. We have teachers assign above grade level status to kids doing well in on grade level work in one class while the class next door must actually take different tests to get thia distinction. Or a teacher who gives above grade level status and then straight 3s in the subject, putting kid gradewise on par with kids doing less challenging work..

Waiting to see how this all shakes out in AAP process.

True. Standardized testing will take away teacher bias. But many are opposed to it since tests can be subject to extreme prepping and not everyone can afford it either. Grades and teacher recommendations are probably the fair compromise without quotas that punish specific groups.

Standardized testing removes one type of bias and introduces another. There’s no single criteria alone that is the answer, a variety of factors ought to be considered. Some people are so invested in standardized testing though, they see it as some sort of merit-based silver bullet and have full blinders towards this sort of reliance on an ostensibly objective measure. I trust teachers more than a test to identify the kids most qualified and would benefit from TJ, but would prefer not to rely on teachers alone either. Multiple data points is a good thing, which goes for AAP, TJ, college, job hiring, or almost any sort of human selection process really.

Right, so the best plan would be a holistic evaluation including grades, teacher recommendations, essays, and a standardized test. The old system was bad because the standardized test was too strongly used as a gatekeeper for semifinalist status. The new system is bad because it is too sparse. Thankfully, there is a pretty broad middle ground between the old system and the new one.

This is basically what colleges do and it seems to be working well for them! I agree that old system needs to be changed, but the new system is full of holes and glaring apparent who they intended to penalize right from the start - academic focused kids, going to aap centers and living specific neighborhoods. No matter where your politics land, its not fair to these kids. However on the plus side, its easier to stand out in the base school, which helps in college admissions.

Elite colleges are moving away from standardized exams as a requirement. An approach that could work for TJ is optional exam submission - there are no end of excellent exams that students can take on their own that could be used as a piece of a portfolio. SSAT comes to mind, in addition to all of the competitions. This would allow TJ to set aside a few spaces for the kids who truly are phenomenal test takers, as a few of them would have significant value to the school environment.

"Test Optional" does not mean Test Blind.
Someone who tests well is still at a distinct advantage over someone who doesn't test. The non-tester really has to burnish his/her other traits.

But this is precisely the point.

No college in America evaluates all of their applicants through the same lens. By and large they are looking for a diverse group of candidates who fill different types of intelligence buckets as well as different types of skill sets.

For too long TJ has mandated that in order to get into the school, you must be an outstanding test taker - which is how they’ve artificially gained all of those “number one public high school” accolades. But test-taking is a very limited measure of intellectual ability.

Witness - in the old admissions process, a student could achieve perfect scores on the Quant Q and the ACT Science, but if they were in the 74th percentile on the ACT English, still WELL above average, they would not even qualify as a semifinalist. Perhaps that student inadvertently skipped a question out of nerves and simply miscoded their scantron sheet. That’s a potentially phenomenal applicant whose entire life track was thrown to a different course by a single mistake that they might have noticed with only two minutes left in the exam.

And that’s part of the problem with the old process. Even if you believe in test taking as some end all be all measure of merit (which I believe it is a piece of) giving it an outsized importance can really muddle your ability to identify the gems.

This is already obvious, but you haven't said a single thing about how exactly are these "gems" as you call them being identified? The main issue is that there is no rigorous process for identifying outstanding students, no interviews, no recommendations (really??), no test, no high gpa requirements, etc. It's very watered down which makes it particularly problematic to generating false positives. The application process should have been modified to make a harder test or even tests in multiple differing areas to identify kids and give them a chance to shine, as well more comprehensive recommendations, etc. The problem is that's way more work for FCPS, and they've been going in the opposite direction regarding doing work for many years now (not just with TJ, but more importantly with the learning standards in schools).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it acceptable, within the applicants for a particular school, to rank based on extracurriculars like MathCounts, AMC 8, AMC 10, Science Olympiad, Robotics, FLL, etc?

We live in a different jurisdiction, but I cannot process why choice of EC would be a factor? Almost nobody in the top academic classes at our school does those contests. It's a "thing" with some kids who don't have otherwise busy schedules, but it is not a marker of the brightest students by a long shot. It a choice about how to spend your free time.

DP. The trouble here is that many of those specific ECs have been historically seen as tickets to TJ because they theoretically provide evidence of “passion for STEM”. They were part of a very narrow path that families could rely on to position their children for the TJ admissions process as well as possible.

But when you have a very narrow path that is successful, you end up with a significant percentage of the students who enter TJ with VERY similar backgrounds and resumes because so many families have tried to optimize their child’s application in the same way.

It might make some sense to have this sort of process for a class of 100-150, like at a Blair in Maryland. But for a class of 550, you have to have more diverse interests and goals and backgrounds or you end up with a hyper-competitive environment where too many students are pursuing the same endpoint.

Exactly. We benefit from having diverse STEM talent from across the county, not just cookie-cutter applicants who are all following the same TJ checklist.

Right, we don't need cookie-cutter applicants. We need to accept the best and the brightest period.

Objective criteria and a transparent process results in cookie-cutter applicants. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand how admissions processes work and how they incentivize problematic behavior.

I do think it’s contributing to negative behaviors. Maybe it does need to be more holistic approach.

It is all about percentages. Holistic is not perfect. Tests are a way of distilling human experience to make things more fair and increase the probability of better decisions. There are tests to screen for cancers, driving tests, tests before someone is able to be a doctor and do neurosurgery.

I am a progressive liberal but sometimes I just don't understand the whiny, non-solution oriented approach of many progressives.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it acceptable, within the applicants for a particular school, to rank based on extracurriculars like MathCounts, AMC 8, AMC 10, Science Olympiad, Robotics, FLL, etc?

We live in a different jurisdiction, but I cannot process why choice of EC would be a factor? Almost nobody in the top academic classes at our school does those contests. It's a "thing" with some kids who don't have otherwise busy schedules, but it is not a marker of the brightest students by a long shot. It a choice about how to spend your free time.

DP. The trouble here is that many of those specific ECs have been historically seen as tickets to TJ because they theoretically provide evidence of “passion for STEM”. They were part of a very narrow path that families could rely on to position their children for the TJ admissions process as well as possible.

But when you have a very narrow path that is successful, you end up with a significant percentage of the students who enter TJ with VERY similar backgrounds and resumes because so many families have tried to optimize their child’s application in the same way.

It might make some sense to have this sort of process for a class of 100-150, like at a Blair in Maryland. But for a class of 550, you have to have more diverse interests and goals and backgrounds or you end up with a hyper-competitive environment where too many students are pursuing the same endpoint.

Exactly. We benefit from having diverse STEM talent from across the county, not just cookie-cutter applicants who are all following the same TJ checklist.

Right, we don't need cookie-cutter applicants. We need to accept the best and the brightest period.

Objective criteria and a transparent process results in cookie-cutter applicants. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand how admissions processes work and how they incentivize problematic behavior.

Seems like your statement comes from a place of deep ignorance and extreme small-mindedness - at best.

Cookie cutter applicants? Because all Asians look similar to you? Asians are a racially diverse group and the kids are far from cookie cutter. Just India and China alone have 2.5b people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One day we’ll have a school board that actually has guts and believes what it says and TJHSST will be eliminated and returned to use as a community school. Until then these clowns can just twist in the wind as they try to suck up to their base and end up pleasing no one except the few dozen progressive activists who themselves went to TJ and spend all their waking hours defending an inherently snobby, elitist (just not too Asian, please) school.

This seems to be your morning and evening prayer dude. You must be praying to the wrong god

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it acceptable, within the applicants for a particular school, to rank based on extracurriculars like MathCounts, AMC 8, AMC 10, Science Olympiad, Robotics, FLL, etc?

We live in a different jurisdiction, but I cannot process why choice of EC would be a factor? Almost nobody in the top academic classes at our school does those contests. It's a "thing" with some kids who don't have otherwise busy schedules, but it is not a marker of the brightest students by a long shot. It a choice about how to spend your free time.

DP. The trouble here is that many of those specific ECs have been historically seen as tickets to TJ because they theoretically provide evidence of “passion for STEM”. They were part of a very narrow path that families could rely on to position their children for the TJ admissions process as well as possible.

But when you have a very narrow path that is successful, you end up with a significant percentage of the students who enter TJ with VERY similar backgrounds and resumes because so many families have tried to optimize their child’s application in the same way.

It might make some sense to have this sort of process for a class of 100-150, like at a Blair in Maryland. But for a class of 550, you have to have more diverse interests and goals and backgrounds or you end up with a hyper-competitive environment where too many students are pursuing the same endpoint.

Exactly. We benefit from having diverse STEM talent from across the county, not just cookie-cutter applicants who are all following the same TJ checklist.

Right, we don't need cookie-cutter applicants. We need to accept the best and the brightest period.

Objective criteria and a transparent process results in cookie-cutter applicants. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand how admissions processes work and how they incentivize problematic behavior.

Subjective criteria and opaque processes result in grift, corruption and lack of accountability. I'd rather have cookie-cutter applications.