TJ Admissions Roundup

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is funethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

What do you mean by the word “cultural”? I can’t think of any culture on earth that tell kids it’s okay to promise you will not do something and then do it anyway. My parents taught me that that’s dishonest and my experience has been that that is what children are taught all over the world.

Let me give you a couple of relatively extreme examples to show you why your reasoning doesn't make sense:

First, imagine that an authority figure touches a child in an inappropriate way, then tells them that they must not tell their parents. Anyone with a shred of morality should be able to see that it's ok if the child broke this "rule," and they would not consider the rule to have any inherent legitimacy because it would stand to violate deeper rights.

Second, the speed limit is a rule that everyone agrees to follow. Someone sees a 35mph speed limit sign. Is it fundamentally unacceptable for them to drive 4-5mph over the posted limit? You could say yes, but the vast majority of the Northern Virginia population does not, at least as far as empirical evidence would suggest. While it may technically be a rule, most people do not consider it serious enough of a violation to give a second thought.

How do these examples come into play in this situation? Depending on your culture, you may not see it as the testing company's business to require you to keep quiet about what you've seen. Since it's the only pathway to TJ, you don't have the option to avoid the test, thus the testing company doesn't have the right to make you keep quiet. Likewise, since talking about what you've seen on a test after everyone's done with the test is normal in some cultures, the idea that it might be violating some NDA may be viewed as a negligible offense - if they wanted a real NDA, wait until the students grow up and apply for real jobs.

You can moralize about dishonesty all you want, but in this case it is absolutely more of a reflection of your cultural perspective rather than of your integrity.

There is nothing illegal or immoral about requiring people to sign an NDA in order to take a particular test. No one is forcing anyone to take a test. The test taker can choose to not sign the NDA and then not take the test, or sign it and take the test. It is one or the other, but it is a choice. No one needs to go to a TJ type school, especially in Northern Virginia where their are so many excellent public schools.

Your examples show a very weird and very strained attempt at rationalizing actions which are clearly dishonest. (The molestation one is particularly odd and has no relevance at all to this situation- it is creepy to even posit that as a comparable situation.) You personally may not value honesty and integrity and you individually may only care about yourself, but that is not a cultural construct. No culture in the world teaches children to be dishonest.

Maybe you are a young person who has not lived along enough to develop a good character, or maybe you are an adult whose character development has been stunted for some reason, but you cannot blame “culture” for a practice of dishonesty. No culture teaches children that it is fine and dandy to be dishonest for your own personal gain.

That's an unreasonable stance to take. You're basically saying that just because someone has morals and ethics, they cannot attend a school like TJ because of choosing not to take the test. That's a fairly significant exclusion, and unreasonable to expect of someone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is funethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

What do you mean by the word “cultural”? I can’t think of any culture on earth that tell kids it’s okay to promise you will not do something and then do it anyway. My parents taught me that that’s dishonest and my experience has been that that is what children are taught all over the world.

Let me give you a couple of relatively extreme examples to show you why your reasoning doesn't make sense:

First, imagine that an authority figure touches a child in an inappropriate way, then tells them that they must not tell their parents. Anyone with a shred of morality should be able to see that it's ok if the child broke this "rule," and they would not consider the rule to have any inherent legitimacy because it would stand to violate deeper rights.

Second, the speed limit is a rule that everyone agrees to follow. Someone sees a 35mph speed limit sign. Is it fundamentally unacceptable for them to drive 4-5mph over the posted limit? You could say yes, but the vast majority of the Northern Virginia population does not, at least as far as empirical evidence would suggest. While it may technically be a rule, most people do not consider it serious enough of a violation to give a second thought.

How do these examples come into play in this situation? Depending on your culture, you may not see it as the testing company's business to require you to keep quiet about what you've seen. Since it's the only pathway to TJ, you don't have the option to avoid the test, thus the testing company doesn't have the right to make you keep quiet. Likewise, since talking about what you've seen on a test after everyone's done with the test is normal in some cultures, the idea that it might be violating some NDA may be viewed as a negligible offense - if they wanted a real NDA, wait until the students grow up and apply for real jobs.

You can moralize about dishonesty all you want, but in this case it is absolutely more of a reflection of your cultural perspective rather than of your integrity.

What are you trying to say here? That if someone comes from a culture where lying/cheating is okay, then they should be allowed to lie/cheat in situations outside of that culture? Are you saying it’s okay to lie/cheat if you were taught as a child that it’s okay?

No, I'm saying that in the example, the person taking the test is the one with morals, and the insistence that they the test they are taking is subject to an NDA is not. I realize that cross-cultural perception is not easy for everyone, but go ahead and try.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is funethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

What do you mean by the word “cultural”? I can’t think of any culture on earth that tell kids it’s okay to promise you will not do something and then do it anyway. My parents taught me that that’s dishonest and my experience has been that that is what children are taught all over the world.

Let me give you a couple of relatively extreme examples to show you why your reasoning doesn't make sense:

First, imagine that an authority figure touches a child in an inappropriate way, then tells them that they must not tell their parents. Anyone with a shred of morality should be able to see that it's ok if the child broke this "rule," and they would not consider the rule to have any inherent legitimacy because it would stand to violate deeper rights.

Second, the speed limit is a rule that everyone agrees to follow. Someone sees a 35mph speed limit sign. Is it fundamentally unacceptable for them to drive 4-5mph over the posted limit? You could say yes, but the vast majority of the Northern Virginia population does not, at least as far as empirical evidence would suggest. While it may technically be a rule, most people do not consider it serious enough of a violation to give a second thought.

How do these examples come into play in this situation? Depending on your culture, you may not see it as the testing company's business to require you to keep quiet about what you've seen. Since it's the only pathway to TJ, you don't have the option to avoid the test, thus the testing company doesn't have the right to make you keep quiet. Likewise, since talking about what you've seen on a test after everyone's done with the test is normal in some cultures, the idea that it might be violating some NDA may be viewed as a negligible offense - if they wanted a real NDA, wait until the students grow up and apply for real jobs.

You can moralize about dishonesty all you want, but in this case it is absolutely more of a reflection of your cultural perspective rather than of your integrity.

Hope you didn’t injure yourself with all of that wild mental gymnastics, distorting and rationalizing behavior that is unethical in just about any culture. DP.

I'm sorry that you lack the mental acuity to perceive this perfectly reasonable argument as normal.

LOL. It wasn't that hard to follow your distorted view of ethics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is funethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

What do you mean by the word “cultural”? I can’t think of any culture on earth that tell kids it’s okay to promise you will not do something and then do it anyway. My parents taught me that that’s dishonest and my experience has been that that is what children are taught all over the world.

Let me give you a couple of relatively extreme examples to show you why your reasoning doesn't make sense:

First, imagine that an authority figure touches a child in an inappropriate way, then tells them that they must not tell their parents. Anyone with a shred of morality should be able to see that it's ok if the child broke this "rule," and they would not consider the rule to have any inherent legitimacy because it would stand to violate deeper rights.

Second, the speed limit is a rule that everyone agrees to follow. Someone sees a 35mph speed limit sign. Is it fundamentally unacceptable for them to drive 4-5mph over the posted limit? You could say yes, but the vast majority of the Northern Virginia population does not, at least as far as empirical evidence would suggest. While it may technically be a rule, most people do not consider it serious enough of a violation to give a second thought.

How do these examples come into play in this situation? Depending on your culture, you may not see it as the testing company's business to require you to keep quiet about what you've seen. Since it's the only pathway to TJ, you don't have the option to avoid the test, thus the testing company doesn't have the right to make you keep quiet. Likewise, since talking about what you've seen on a test after everyone's done with the test is normal in some cultures, the idea that it might be violating some NDA may be viewed as a negligible offense - if they wanted a real NDA, wait until the students grow up and apply for real jobs.

You can moralize about dishonesty all you want, but in this case it is absolutely more of a reflection of your cultural perspective rather than of your integrity.

There is nothing illegal or immoral about requiring people to sign an NDA in order to take a particular test. No one is forcing anyone to take a test. The test taker can choose to not sign the NDA and then not take the test, or sign it and take the test. It is one or the other, but it is a choice. No one needs to go to a TJ type school, especially in Northern Virginia where their are so many excellent public schools.

Your examples show a very weird and very strained attempt at rationalizing actions which are clearly dishonest. (The molestation one is particularly odd and has no relevance at all to this situation- it is creepy to even posit that as a comparable situation.) You personally may not value honesty and integrity and you individually may only care about yourself, but that is not a cultural construct. No culture in the world teaches children to be dishonest.

Maybe you are a young person who has not lived along enough to develop a good character, or maybe you are an adult whose character development has been stunted for some reason, but you cannot blame “culture” for a practice of dishonesty. No culture teaches children that it is fine and dandy to be dishonest for your own personal gain.

That's an unreasonable stance to take. You're basically saying that just because someone has morals and ethics, they cannot attend a school like TJ because of choosing not to take the test. That's a fairly significant exclusion, and unreasonable to expect of someone.

You are very confused about what is ethical in this situation. A business owns its intellectual property and has the legal right to require certain conditions to make use of their property.

It is immoral to use that property under false pretenses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is funethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

What do you mean by the word “cultural”? I can’t think of any culture on earth that tell kids it’s okay to promise you will not do something and then do it anyway. My parents taught me that that’s dishonest and my experience has been that that is what children are taught all over the world.

Let me give you a couple of relatively extreme examples to show you why your reasoning doesn't make sense:

First, imagine that an authority figure touches a child in an inappropriate way, then tells them that they must not tell their parents. Anyone with a shred of morality should be able to see that it's ok if the child broke this "rule," and they would not consider the rule to have any inherent legitimacy because it would stand to violate deeper rights.

Second, the speed limit is a rule that everyone agrees to follow. Someone sees a 35mph speed limit sign. Is it fundamentally unacceptable for them to drive 4-5mph over the posted limit? You could say yes, but the vast majority of the Northern Virginia population does not, at least as far as empirical evidence would suggest. While it may technically be a rule, most people do not consider it serious enough of a violation to give a second thought.

How do these examples come into play in this situation? Depending on your culture, you may not see it as the testing company's business to require you to keep quiet about what you've seen. Since it's the only pathway to TJ, you don't have the option to avoid the test, thus the testing company doesn't have the right to make you keep quiet. Likewise, since talking about what you've seen on a test after everyone's done with the test is normal in some cultures, the idea that it might be violating some NDA may be viewed as a negligible offense - if they wanted a real NDA, wait until the students grow up and apply for real jobs.

You can moralize about dishonesty all you want, but in this case it is absolutely more of a reflection of your cultural perspective rather than of your integrity.

What are you trying to say here? That if someone comes from a culture where lying/cheating is okay, then they should be allowed to lie/cheat in situations outside of that culture? Are you saying it’s okay to lie/cheat if you were taught as a child that it’s okay?

No, I'm saying that in the example, the person taking the test is the one with morals, and the insistence that they the test they are taking is subject to an NDA is not. I realize that cross-cultural perception is not easy for everyone, but go ahead and try.

Are you talking about a particular culture? Or just your own personal made-up “culture”?

There is no morality in stating that you will do something that is legal and appropriate and then doing the opposite. Even a child of 12 or 13 can understand that it is wrong to lie about their intentions.

Please tell us all what culture you believe teaches children that it is okay to sign a legal statement and not follow through on the promise made in that statement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is unethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

1. When you have doctors peppering the American medical field who can ace the MCATs but can't listen to a patient and accept that the way that their body is responding to treatment doesn't match what they learned in books... you start to understand why native problem-solving ability is so important in STEM.

2. Any person who genuinely deserves to go to TJ should be able to understand the concept of "this test will be less than worthless if kids come in already knowing how to do the problems, so don't share it". That's not the same as "Hey, the solution to this problem will help solve other problems for people, so you should share the solution!"

3. This statement is one of hundreds that ascribe this nebulous concept of "merit" exclusively to test-taking ability. When I am seeking to ascribe merit, I ask one simple question: What did you do with the resources you were provided? If child A gets a 90 on an admissions exam and benefited from boutique prep and a stable, economically sound home situation, and child B gets an 88 with no such supports, I'm selecting child B 100 times out of 100, as is proper. But the moment you use a standardized exam as a data point, you invite bad actors to manipulate that data to suggest that "the bar for Asian students is unfairly higher", when in fact, the overwhelming majority of Asian applicants to TJ are not in disadvantaged economic situations and the preponderance of Black and Hispanic applicants are.

When you misuse data, you incentivize selective schools to take it away from you as a weapon to use.

Cracking the test? You mean studying?
If a test relies on ignorance to be valid it is an invalid test.
If the test was a measure of affluence, there would be a lot more white kids making the cut. They literally had to move towards a lottery to increase the white population.

Yes, they mean studying the ill-gotten test answers.

Noone had access to the answers, just the questions.
Just understanding the types of questions being asked helps people prepare the the exam.
But prep only goes so far without academic ability and knowledge.
The fact of the matter is that affluence correlates with many things including parents education level; Parent's education level correlates to focus on education within the home, etc.
If we want to pretend that these things don't result in very real and measurable improvements in academic activity because it would be racist, then we will never get at the issue.

Any system that requires 3000 teenagers to keep a secret is a system doomed to failure.
If you want a lottery for equal access to education, make the lottery a lot sooner. Have a lottery for charter schools that start at pre-K.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Misses the point entirely. It's not about whether you have a moral obligation to do that the school trar company tells you. You don't.

It's about whether you are contributing to a more fair society.

Giving questions to Cutie and not to everyone is immoral. TJ admissions admin themselves were immoral form refusing to prelare the full community for the exam.

Yes, you obviously do have a moral obligation not to steal copyrighted work. WTH?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Misses the point entirely. It's not about whether you have a moral obligation to do that the school trar company tells you. You don't.

It's about whether you are contributing to a more fair society.

Giving questions to Cutie and not to everyone is immoral. TJ admissions admin themselves were immoral form refusing to prelare the full community for the exam.

Yes, you obviously do have a moral obligation not to steal copyrighted work. WTH?

Math problems probably cannot be copyrighted, especially individual math problems. An entire exam might be, an entire math workbook might be but individual math problems? Probably not. They encountered this issue at the Art of Problem Solving and they didn't think they would prevail when people copied individual problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is funethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

What do you mean by the word “cultural”? I can’t think of any culture on earth that tell kids it’s okay to promise you will not do something and then do it anyway. My parents taught me that that’s dishonest and my experience has been that that is what children are taught all over the world.

Let me give you a couple of relatively extreme examples to show you why your reasoning doesn't make sense:

First, imagine that an authority figure touches a child in an inappropriate way, then tells them that they must not tell their parents. Anyone with a shred of morality should be able to see that it's ok if the child broke this "rule," and they would not consider the rule to have any inherent legitimacy because it would stand to violate deeper rights.

Second, the speed limit is a rule that everyone agrees to follow. Someone sees a 35mph speed limit sign. Is it fundamentally unacceptable for them to drive 4-5mph over the posted limit? You could say yes, but the vast majority of the Northern Virginia population does not, at least as far as empirical evidence would suggest. While it may technically be a rule, most people do not consider it serious enough of a violation to give a second thought.

How do these examples come into play in this situation? Depending on your culture, you may not see it as the testing company's business to require you to keep quiet about what you've seen. Since it's the only pathway to TJ, you don't have the option to avoid the test, thus the testing company doesn't have the right to make you keep quiet. Likewise, since talking about what you've seen on a test after everyone's done with the test is normal in some cultures, the idea that it might be violating some NDA may be viewed as a negligible offense - if they wanted a real NDA, wait until the students grow up and apply for real jobs.

You can moralize about dishonesty all you want, but in this case it is absolutely more of a reflection of your cultural perspective rather than of your integrity.

What are you trying to say here? That if someone comes from a culture where lying/cheating is okay, then they should be allowed to lie/cheat in situations outside of that culture? Are you saying it’s okay to lie/cheat if you were taught as a child that it’s okay?

No, I'm saying that in the example, the person taking the test is the one with morals, and the insistence that they the test they are taking is subject to an NDA is not. I realize that cross-cultural perception is not easy for everyone, but go ahead and try.

Wait, is the argument here that sharing test problems is what caused the change to the admissions process? Because the entire all the email correspondence about the change between board members seemed to be pretty focused on race.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is unethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

1. When you have doctors peppering the American medical field who can ace the MCATs but can't listen to a patient and accept that the way that their body is responding to treatment doesn't match what they learned in books... you start to understand why native problem-solving ability is so important in STEM.

2. Any person who genuinely deserves to go to TJ should be able to understand the concept of "this test will be less than worthless if kids come in already knowing how to do the problems, so don't share it". That's not the same as "Hey, the solution to this problem will help solve other problems for people, so you should share the solution!"

3. This statement is one of hundreds that ascribe this nebulous concept of "merit" exclusively to test-taking ability. When I am seeking to ascribe merit, I ask one simple question: What did you do with the resources you were provided? If child A gets a 90 on an admissions exam and benefited from boutique prep and a stable, economically sound home situation, and child B gets an 88 with no such supports, I'm selecting child B 100 times out of 100, as is proper. But the moment you use a standardized exam as a data point, you invite bad actors to manipulate that data to suggest that "the bar for Asian students is unfairly higher", when in fact, the overwhelming majority of Asian applicants to TJ are not in disadvantaged economic situations and the preponderance of Black and Hispanic applicants are.

When you misuse data, you incentivize selective schools to take it away from you as a weapon to use.

Cracking the test? You mean studying?
If a test relies on ignorance to be valid it is an invalid test.
If the test was a measure of affluence, there would be a lot more white kids making the cut. They literally had to move towards a lottery to increase the white population.

Yes, they mean studying the ill-gotten test answers.

Noone had access to the answers, just the questions.
Just understanding the types of questions being asked helps people prepare the the exam.
But prep only goes so far without academic ability and knowledge.
The fact of the matter is that affluence correlates with many things including parents education level; Parent's education level correlates to focus on education within the home, etc.
If we want to pretend that these things don't result in very real and measurable improvements in academic activity because it would be racist, then we will never get at the issue.

Any system that requires 3000 teenagers to keep a secret is a system doomed to failure.
If you want a lottery for equal access to education, make the lottery a lot sooner. Have a lottery for charter schools that start at pre-K.

It was an ethics test. You failed.

And that’s why we no longer have quant-q.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is funethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

What do you mean by the word “cultural”? I can’t think of any culture on earth that tell kids it’s okay to promise you will not do something and then do it anyway. My parents taught me that that’s dishonest and my experience has been that that is what children are taught all over the world.

Let me give you a couple of relatively extreme examples to show you why your reasoning doesn't make sense:

First, imagine that an authority figure touches a child in an inappropriate way, then tells them that they must not tell their parents. Anyone with a shred of morality should be able to see that it's ok if the child broke this "rule," and they would not consider the rule to have any inherent legitimacy because it would stand to violate deeper rights.

Second, the speed limit is a rule that everyone agrees to follow. Someone sees a 35mph speed limit sign. Is it fundamentally unacceptable for them to drive 4-5mph over the posted limit? You could say yes, but the vast majority of the Northern Virginia population does not, at least as far as empirical evidence would suggest. While it may technically be a rule, most people do not consider it serious enough of a violation to give a second thought.

How do these examples come into play in this situation? Depending on your culture, you may not see it as the testing company's business to require you to keep quiet about what you've seen. Since it's the only pathway to TJ, you don't have the option to avoid the test, thus the testing company doesn't have the right to make you keep quiet. Likewise, since talking about what you've seen on a test after everyone's done with the test is normal in some cultures, the idea that it might be violating some NDA may be viewed as a negligible offense - if they wanted a real NDA, wait until the students grow up and apply for real jobs.

You can moralize about dishonesty all you want, but in this case it is absolutely more of a reflection of your cultural perspective rather than of your integrity.

What are you trying to say here? That if someone comes from a culture where lying/cheating is okay, then they should be allowed to lie/cheat in situations outside of that culture? Are you saying it’s okay to lie/cheat if you were taught as a child that it’s okay?

No, I'm saying that in the example, the person taking the test is the one with morals, and the insistence that they the test they are taking is subject to an NDA is not. I realize that cross-cultural perception is not easy for everyone, but go ahead and try.

Wait, is the argument here that sharing test problems is what caused the change to the admissions process? Because the entire all the email correspondence about the change between board members seemed to be pretty focused on race.

It was one reason.

1. CHANGES TO TJ ADMISSIONS PROCESS
FCPS has changed the TJ admissions process multiple times over the years to address systemic inequalities.

https://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/8W9QET68F25B/$file/Changes%20to%20TJHSST%20Admissions%20Since%202004.pdf

https://www.fcag.org/tjadmissions.shtml

https://virginiamercury.com/2024/02/20/supreme-court-wont-hear-thomas-jefferson-admissions-case/

Before the most recent change, the class of 2024 had less than 1% (0.6%) of the students came from economically-disadvantaged families. There was also very little representation from the less affluent schools.



2. CONCERN ABOUT TJ PREP INDUSTRY
There was also public concern about the TJ test prep industry that led, in part, to changes in the admissions process. By reverse engineering the admissions criteria/process, prep companies offered kids an unfair advantage in admissions. In fact, back in 2017 the SB switched to quant-q, which intentionally didn’t share prep, in an effort to reduce this unfair advantage.

https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“ “Is it gonna once again advantage those kids whose parents can pay to sign them up for special prep camps to now be prepping for science testing as well?” Megan McLaughlin asked when presented with the new plan.

Admissions director Jeremy Shughart doesn’t think so. The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

This has all been discussed countless times on DCUM. Feel free to go read old threads for more details.

It was well known in my affluent area that you could greatly improve chances of admissions by paying $$$ for prep classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is unethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

1. When you have doctors peppering the American medical field who can ace the MCATs but can't listen to a patient and accept that the way that their body is responding to treatment doesn't match what they learned in books... you start to understand why native problem-solving ability is so important in STEM.

2. Any person who genuinely deserves to go to TJ should be able to understand the concept of "this test will be less than worthless if kids come in already knowing how to do the problems, so don't share it". That's not the same as "Hey, the solution to this problem will help solve other problems for people, so you should share the solution!"

3. This statement is one of hundreds that ascribe this nebulous concept of "merit" exclusively to test-taking ability. When I am seeking to ascribe merit, I ask one simple question: What did you do with the resources you were provided? If child A gets a 90 on an admissions exam and benefited from boutique prep and a stable, economically sound home situation, and child B gets an 88 with no such supports, I'm selecting child B 100 times out of 100, as is proper. But the moment you use a standardized exam as a data point, you invite bad actors to manipulate that data to suggest that "the bar for Asian students is unfairly higher", when in fact, the overwhelming majority of Asian applicants to TJ are not in disadvantaged economic situations and the preponderance of Black and Hispanic applicants are.

When you misuse data, you incentivize selective schools to take it away from you as a weapon to use.

Cracking the test? You mean studying?
If a test relies on ignorance to be valid it is an invalid test.
If the test was a measure of affluence, there would be a lot more white kids making the cut. They literally had to move towards a lottery to increase the white population.

Yes, they mean studying the ill-gotten test answers.

Noone had access to the answers, just the questions.
Just understanding the types of questions being asked helps people prepare the the exam.
But prep only goes so far without academic ability and knowledge.
The fact of the matter is that affluence correlates with many things including parents education level; Parent's education level correlates to focus on education within the home, etc.
If we want to pretend that these things don't result in very real and measurable improvements in academic activity because it would be racist, then we will never get at the issue.

Any system that requires 3000 teenagers to keep a secret is a system doomed to failure.
If you want a lottery for equal access to education, make the lottery a lot sooner. Have a lottery for charter schools that start at pre-K.

It was an ethics test. You failed.

And that’s why we no longer have quant-q.

Clearly it was the test that failed, otherwise we would still have quant q.

A test that relies on 3000 teenagers keeping a secret is dumb AF.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is funethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

What do you mean by the word “cultural”? I can’t think of any culture on earth that tell kids it’s okay to promise you will not do something and then do it anyway. My parents taught me that that’s dishonest and my experience has been that that is what children are taught all over the world.

Let me give you a couple of relatively extreme examples to show you why your reasoning doesn't make sense:

First, imagine that an authority figure touches a child in an inappropriate way, then tells them that they must not tell their parents. Anyone with a shred of morality should be able to see that it's ok if the child broke this "rule," and they would not consider the rule to have any inherent legitimacy because it would stand to violate deeper rights.

Second, the speed limit is a rule that everyone agrees to follow. Someone sees a 35mph speed limit sign. Is it fundamentally unacceptable for them to drive 4-5mph over the posted limit? You could say yes, but the vast majority of the Northern Virginia population does not, at least as far as empirical evidence would suggest. While it may technically be a rule, most people do not consider it serious enough of a violation to give a second thought.

How do these examples come into play in this situation? Depending on your culture, you may not see it as the testing company's business to require you to keep quiet about what you've seen. Since it's the only pathway to TJ, you don't have the option to avoid the test, thus the testing company doesn't have the right to make you keep quiet. Likewise, since talking about what you've seen on a test after everyone's done with the test is normal in some cultures, the idea that it might be violating some NDA may be viewed as a negligible offense - if they wanted a real NDA, wait until the students grow up and apply for real jobs.

You can moralize about dishonesty all you want, but in this case it is absolutely more of a reflection of your cultural perspective rather than of your integrity.

What are you trying to say here? That if someone comes from a culture where lying/cheating is okay, then they should be allowed to lie/cheat in situations outside of that culture? Are you saying it’s okay to lie/cheat if you were taught as a child that it’s okay?

No, I'm saying that in the example, the person taking the test is the one with morals, and the insistence that they the test they are taking is subject to an NDA is not. I realize that cross-cultural perception is not easy for everyone, but go ahead and try.

Wait, is the argument here that sharing test problems is what caused the change to the admissions process? Because the entire all the email correspondence about the change between board members seemed to be pretty focused on race.

It was one reason.

1. CHANGES TO TJ ADMISSIONS PROCESS
FCPS has changed the TJ admissions process multiple times over the years to address systemic inequalities.

https://www.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/8W9QET68F25B/$file/Changes%20to%20TJHSST%20Admissions%20Since%202004.pdf

https://www.fcag.org/tjadmissions.shtml

https://virginiamercury.com/2024/02/20/supreme-court-wont-hear-thomas-jefferson-admissions-case/

Before the most recent change, the class of 2024 had less than 1% (0.6%) of the students came from economically-disadvantaged families. There was also very little representation from the less affluent schools.



2. CONCERN ABOUT TJ PREP INDUSTRY
There was also public concern about the TJ test prep industry that led, in part, to changes in the admissions process. By reverse engineering the admissions criteria/process, prep companies offered kids an unfair advantage in admissions. In fact, back in 2017 the SB switched to quant-q, which intentionally didn’t share prep, in an effort to reduce this unfair advantage.

https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“ “Is it gonna once again advantage those kids whose parents can pay to sign them up for special prep camps to now be prepping for science testing as well?” Megan McLaughlin asked when presented with the new plan.

Admissions director Jeremy Shughart doesn’t think so. The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

This has all been discussed countless times on DCUM. Feel free to go read old threads for more details.

It was well known in my affluent area that you could greatly improve chances of admissions by paying $$$ for prep classes.

I don't see any articles focusing on the test prep industry and the 2020 changes to the admissions process.

There is a consensus that the recent changes were about race and little else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is unethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

1. When you have doctors peppering the American medical field who can ace the MCATs but can't listen to a patient and accept that the way that their body is responding to treatment doesn't match what they learned in books... you start to understand why native problem-solving ability is so important in STEM.

2. Any person who genuinely deserves to go to TJ should be able to understand the concept of "this test will be less than worthless if kids come in already knowing how to do the problems, so don't share it". That's not the same as "Hey, the solution to this problem will help solve other problems for people, so you should share the solution!"

3. This statement is one of hundreds that ascribe this nebulous concept of "merit" exclusively to test-taking ability. When I am seeking to ascribe merit, I ask one simple question: What did you do with the resources you were provided? If child A gets a 90 on an admissions exam and benefited from boutique prep and a stable, economically sound home situation, and child B gets an 88 with no such supports, I'm selecting child B 100 times out of 100, as is proper. But the moment you use a standardized exam as a data point, you invite bad actors to manipulate that data to suggest that "the bar for Asian students is unfairly higher", when in fact, the overwhelming majority of Asian applicants to TJ are not in disadvantaged economic situations and the preponderance of Black and Hispanic applicants are.

When you misuse data, you incentivize selective schools to take it away from you as a weapon to use.

Cracking the test? You mean studying?
If a test relies on ignorance to be valid it is an invalid test.
If the test was a measure of affluence, there would be a lot more white kids making the cut. They literally had to move towards a lottery to increase the white population.

Yes, they mean studying the ill-gotten test answers.

Noone had access to the answers, just the questions.
Just understanding the types of questions being asked helps people prepare the the exam.
But prep only goes so far without academic ability and knowledge.
The fact of the matter is that affluence correlates with many things including parents education level; Parent's education level correlates to focus on education within the home, etc.
If we want to pretend that these things don't result in very real and measurable improvements in academic activity because it would be racist, then we will never get at the issue.

Any system that requires 3000 teenagers to keep a secret is a system doomed to failure.
If you want a lottery for equal access to education, make the lottery a lot sooner. Have a lottery for charter schools that start at pre-K.

It was an ethics test. You failed.

And that’s why we no longer have quant-q.

Clearly it was the test that failed, otherwise we would still have quant q.

A test that relies on 3000 teenagers keeping a secret is dumb AF.

You keep trying to make excuses for people lying and cheating. Now it’s the fault of the test company because they should have expected teenagers to lie? Come on.

Most of these kids probably wouldn’t have lied were it not for adults asking them to describe the copyrighted material. They wouldn’t have had any reason to if adults in their lives hadn’t fed them some of this twisted reasoning for why it’s fine to lie about promising not to disclose copyrighted information.

The test isn’t used anymore because it was compromised. And the fault for the compromising lies with the adults who convinced young teens that they didn’t need to honor the promise they signed when they sat down to take the test. It is not the fault of FCPS, the testing company, or the “culture.”

I feel sorry for kids who have families with plenty of money to spend on education but apparently not enough time to give thought what it means to be a person of integrity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?

There is a market, and there will be solutions. Capitalism. Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism. Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality. Supply and demand, like a machine.

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here.

it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign. It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable. HOLD MY BEER.

No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job.

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who had been shown how to do the problems beforehand.

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to generate a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families: the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.

It didn't really have the desired effect. QuantQ made an impact but probably not a big enough impact to satisfy folks that wanted more equity. Before QuantQ 3% of the entering class was URM. The first year of QuantQ pushed that number up to 7%.

What you call "cracking the process" is usually referred to as studying in most places where effort is rewarded. I do think you have to be cautious about pushing your kid into the most competitive environment you can possibly squeak them into.

“Cracking the test” so that kids could know what the questions would be like in advance is in no way the same as “studying.”
Test takers are not supposed to have access to the types of questions in advance because part of the usefulness of the test is seeing how students handle new to them problems.

Having access to the types of problems in advance when the test is meant to be a secure instrument is unethical. In no way is it the same as “studying.”

Having access to the question format and question types is absolutely the same thing as studying.

Advertising a test as non-preppable is dishonest if it relies on noone ever discussing what the format of the test is. I mean every standardized test would be unpreppable if noone ever knew what the test looked like. How effective would an SAT class be if they didn't know reading comprehension, and analogies were going to be on the test?

Believing that a test's format remaining secret is naive. The test had a mild effect the first year it was administered but that was about it. Even if they came up witgh a new format every year, FCPS would have changed the admissions process because they were not concerned about the prepping, there is prepping going on right now. They were concerned about the race of the students.

The company that offers Quant-Q intentionally does NOT release materials to the public - it’s very different than SAT, ACT, etc.

1. They want to “measure your natural ability”.
"Remember that the goal of a critical thinking assessment is to measure your natural ability to think critically"

2. Test takers agreed to not share any parts of the test.
"Non-Disclosure and Non-Compete Agreement: The user agrees not to copy, disclose, describe, imitate, replicate, or mirror this interface or this instrument(s) in whole or in part for any purpose."

3. Quant-Q was selected because FCPS was looking for ways to level the playing field - so kids who can't afford expensive test prep programs would have a chance:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

That stance walks on cultural thin ice:

1. Some will believe that it is unethical to reward "natural ability" independent of one's dedication to self-improvement through studying. The idea that there is a notion of independent "natural ability" that should be rewarded will be viewed as inherently supremicist thinking by some.

2. Requiring school kids to sign an NDA to take a test would be considered unethical by some, given than academia is inherently dedicated to the principle of sharing of information. Some might prefer to refuse to sign such an NDA on principle, but to do so would be impossible if the student values admission to TJ.

3. To someone who has studied psychology, it might seem a bit gauche that FCPS's response to feeling inadequate due to due an increasingly competitive applicant pool would be to start empathizing with supposed merit-based limitations of Blacks and Hispanics.

1. When you have doctors peppering the American medical field who can ace the MCATs but can't listen to a patient and accept that the way that their body is responding to treatment doesn't match what they learned in books... you start to understand why native problem-solving ability is so important in STEM.

2. Any person who genuinely deserves to go to TJ should be able to understand the concept of "this test will be less than worthless if kids come in already knowing how to do the problems, so don't share it". That's not the same as "Hey, the solution to this problem will help solve other problems for people, so you should share the solution!"

3. This statement is one of hundreds that ascribe this nebulous concept of "merit" exclusively to test-taking ability. When I am seeking to ascribe merit, I ask one simple question: What did you do with the resources you were provided? If child A gets a 90 on an admissions exam and benefited from boutique prep and a stable, economically sound home situation, and child B gets an 88 with no such supports, I'm selecting child B 100 times out of 100, as is proper. But the moment you use a standardized exam as a data point, you invite bad actors to manipulate that data to suggest that "the bar for Asian students is unfairly higher", when in fact, the overwhelming majority of Asian applicants to TJ are not in disadvantaged economic situations and the preponderance of Black and Hispanic applicants are.

When you misuse data, you incentivize selective schools to take it away from you as a weapon to use.

Cracking the test? You mean studying?
If a test relies on ignorance to be valid it is an invalid test.
If the test was a measure of affluence, there would be a lot more white kids making the cut. They literally had to move towards a lottery to increase the white population.

Yes, they mean studying the ill-gotten test answers.

Noone had access to the answers, just the questions.
Just understanding the types of questions being asked helps people prepare the the exam.
But prep only goes so far without academic ability and knowledge.
The fact of the matter is that affluence correlates with many things including parents education level; Parent's education level correlates to focus on education within the home, etc.
If we want to pretend that these things don't result in very real and measurable improvements in academic activity because it would be racist, then we will never get at the issue.

Any system that requires 3000 teenagers to keep a secret is a system doomed to failure.
If you want a lottery for equal access to education, make the lottery a lot sooner. Have a lottery for charter schools that start at pre-K.

The bolded is very true. The fact of the matter also is that babies do not choose the families they are born into. All children have inherent value: babies born into well off, educated families are not any more valuable than babies born into less well off, less educated families.

Children should not have an advantage in access to a *public* school because the family they happened to be born into focused on education within the home. Children with less well educated parents need to be given the same opportunities. Bright kids exist in all kinds of families: the ones who didn’t luck out with well off and educated parents should have just as much of the opportunity to go to TJ, a public school, as kids who gave them all the educational advantages.