Race and TJ admissions

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.

After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Which black kid is being kept out of school? Can’t help your hyperbole?

There have been fewer Black students in the entire 35-year history of TJ than there were Asian students in the Class of 2024.

The new admissions process resulted in an increase of 70% in Black applications and over a 500% increase in Black students.

But Neson Mandela would apparently be against it, so no more black kids at TJ

Your attempt at humor is lost on me.

Mandela had the power and could have brute forced his way. He did not. He made sure change happened in a manner that was fair to all.

You won’t get it. You see the world as black, white and Asian. I see the world as fair and unfair, process-driven and arbitrary. Different perspective.

DP. I don't get why you that the old admissions were 100% better than the new admissions. I am not sold on the "underrepresented school" bump and I think the process was rushed too quickly to properly adjust geographic set-asides for base schools and center schools. I am aware that the intent of legislation is examined during these challenges but I also think the result, the new admissions guidelines, are solid, after some possible/probable tweaking.

I have never said the previous process was better. I believe it was flawed as is the new one. The Board could have and should have done better. Consulted with more of the impacted folks and designed a better process. No way you are pleasing everyone but you could try to at least reach out.

Instead we had an administration that was painting a whole community as “cheaters” only to defend their poor decisions. So no - the previous process sucked as does the current one. My beef is with the ideology driven folks who are wasting our tax dollars defending this half-baked process that is discriminatory in the first place.

Is that really a thing? I mean, I know FCPS and other school districts send out surveys, that may or may not be read by somebody somewhere. But if a high school were to switch from AP to IB, or a new magnet program or Academy were to be created in a high school, would the school district consult with -- students at the existing building, every high school student in the district who might be an applicant, everyone everywhere?

Upper-middle class Asians (and especially South Asians) in Northern Virginia believe that TJ belongs to them, and as such, they believe that they should have a say in the direction of the school. When you hear them talk about being "the families impacted by the changes", the underlying message is "we're the ones who deserve the seats and we're the ones who have gotten them for generations, so you're stealing them from us if you change the process to eliminate our advantages".

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.

After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Which black kid is being kept out of school? Can’t help your hyperbole?

There have been fewer Black students in the entire 35-year history of TJ than there were Asian students in the Class of 2024.

The new admissions process resulted in an increase of 70% in Black applications and over a 500% increase in Black students.

But Neson Mandela would apparently be against it, so no more black kids at TJ

Your attempt at humor is lost on me.

Mandela had the power and could have brute forced his way. He did not. He made sure change happened in a manner that was fair to all.

You won’t get it. You see the world as black, white and Asian. I see the world as fair and unfair, process-driven and arbitrary. Different perspective.

I agree with this poster. 1 year of artificially elevated number of Black kids does nothing for the long-term goal of increasing achievement of underrepresented student population. It also divides communities and may have a very detrimental long term effect. This is not a smart way to change the way we admit students to TJ. The way it was done indicates a quick political point to be gained. Kids were never at the center of the decision making process, just read the TJ papers.

Oh please. Any change would cause great hue and outcry. Someone upthread (or maybe on a different thread) proposed phasing in changes in the admissions process over several years. So that children would have time to curate their resumes properly, apparently. That certainly doesn't put children "at the center of the decision making process".

all the communities should have been invited to comment. Instead, FCPS school board rushed the process and excluded parents completely. Arrogant, to say the least. Now they are dealing with the fall out. I used to work in university admissions and any kind of change in the process involved 2 years of advanced notice. This allowed for a smooth implementation. Stop being defensive and clean up your mess. Present a transparent and fair process and we might just get behind you. Get down from your pedestal. We are the constituents and our taxes pay for your salaries. Please try to remember that you are supposed to represent us, the parents.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.

After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Which black kid is being kept out of school? Can’t help your hyperbole?

There have been fewer Black students in the entire 35-year history of TJ than there were Asian students in the Class of 2024.

The new admissions process resulted in an increase of 70% in Black applications and over a 500% increase in Black students.

But Neson Mandela would apparently be against it, so no more black kids at TJ

Your attempt at humor is lost on me.

Mandela had the power and could have brute forced his way. He did not. He made sure change happened in a manner that was fair to all.

You won’t get it. You see the world as black, white and Asian. I see the world as fair and unfair, process-driven and arbitrary. Different perspective.

I agree with this poster. 1 year of artificially elevated number of Black kids does nothing for the long-term goal of increasing achievement of underrepresented student population. It also divides communities and may have a very detrimental long term effect. This is not a smart way to change the way we admit students to TJ. The way it was done indicates a quick political point to be gained. Kids were never at the center of the decision making process, just read the TJ papers.

Oh please. Any change would cause great hue and outcry. Someone upthread (or maybe on a different thread) proposed phasing in changes in the admissions process over several years. So that children would have time to curate their resumes properly, apparently. That certainly doesn't put children "at the center of the decision making process".

all the communities should have been invited to comment. Instead, FCPS school board rushed the process and excluded parents completely. Arrogant, to say the least. Now they are dealing with the fall out. I used to work in university admissions and any kind of change in the process involved 2 years of advanced notice. This allowed for a smooth implementation. Stop being defensive and clean up your mess. Present a transparent and fair process and we might just get behind you. Get down from your pedestal. We are the constituents and our taxes pay for your salaries. Please try to remember that you are supposed to represent us, the parents.

Please stop acting as though the fall-out would have been any different had parents been granted to ability to comment on the new process more than they already were. They did more than enough commenting throughout the process on platforms outside of School Board meetings.

Regardless of their motives, they were going to have to come up with a new process to account for the fact that doing an exam during the worst of COVID would have been impossible. 2 years notice wasn't realistic and the entire purpose of making the change was to limit the amount of "resume-crafting" or "process gaming" that would be possible.

The C4TJ folks were going to scream bloody murder on this no matter what the end result was if it created a more representative TJ population. They might have a stronger leg to stand on legally because the School Board couldn't get out of its own way as far as messaging and discipline, but it's not as if their anger is some sort of righteous response that is generated by some level of disrespect. This is about the zero-sum game of spaces at TJ and the continued ability to hoard opportunities away from less fortunate students.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.




After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Which black kid is being kept out of school? Can’t help your hyperbole?

There have been fewer Black students in the entire 35-year history of TJ than there were Asian students in the Class of 2024.

The new admissions process resulted in an increase of 70% in Black applications and over a 500% increase in Black students.

But Neson Mandela would apparently be against it, so no more black kids at TJ

Your attempt at humor is lost on me.

Mandela had the power and could have brute forced his way. He did not. He made sure change happened in a manner that was fair to all.

You won’t get it. You see the world as black, white and Asian. I see the world as fair and unfair, process-driven and arbitrary. Different perspective.

DP. I don't get why you that the old admissions were 100% better than the new admissions. I am not sold on the "underrepresented school" bump and I think the process was rushed too quickly to properly adjust geographic set-asides for base schools and center schools. I am aware that the intent of legislation is examined during these challenges but I also think the result, the new admissions guidelines, are solid, after some possible/probable tweaking.

I have never said the previous process was better. I believe it was flawed as is the new one. The Board could have and should have done better. Consulted with more of the impacted folks and designed a better process. No way you are pleasing everyone but you could try to at least reach out.

Instead we had an administration that was painting a whole community as “cheaters” only to defend their poor decisions. So no - the previous process sucked as does the current one. My beef is with the ideology driven folks who are wasting our tax dollars defending this half-baked process that is discriminatory in the first place.

Were families of low socioeconomic means consulted before the original admissions policies were introduced - which resulted in less than 1% of students at TJ historically falling into that category?

No. Upper-middle class Asians wanted to be consulted as to what process could be used that would effectively reduce their numbers without hurting their feelings. You still occupy 54% of the most recent class - a percentage that tracks almost perfectly with your percentage of the applicant pool. You're not being discriminated against - you're simply not being benefiting from that previous discrimination anymore.

I dont think you get it. This is not a tit for tat. Because a wrong was committed earlier, the response should not be another wrong. The Blacks in Africa were not consulted when apartheid was instituted but Mandela still gave due space to the whites when he brought freedom to South Africa. He was building a community and winner take the spoils approach never builds a community. And that is the problem with this school board (and especially Braband). You think this change is sustainable? You have got to be kidding. You have Asians now seeking 20% of everything in the county (on this board) Once victorious in some of those endeavors, they will kick-start their partisan agenda. And you will get some hard core partisans getting elected in the next school board elections. Brace yourself. The pendulum swings in both directions.

I am Asian. My feelings are not hurt if the Asian numbers at TJ go down. I only want a fair process that is not targeted to reduce Asian by hook or by crook. Most Asians are recent immigrants (maybe at most 2 generations). You cannot be successful as an immigrant if you have a sense of entitlement. You just have to work around obstacles and not complain. So most Asians will be resilient and will move on. Asians have been by and large apathetic when it comes to politics - they vote Dems by default because Republicans tend to be tolerant of xenophobic talk. But Asians care a lot about education and this TJ episode has got many engaged politically (all the anti-Asian "pay-to-play" talk is demeaning). Asians are 20% of the population and the fastest growing segment and they are well resourced and educated. So it is not about discrimination in the admission process alone, it is the tonality of the reformers on this forum and elsewhere that you should be concerned about. That we should be satisfied with our 54% is insulting. Not because it is 54% but because folks like you think it is your benevolence that accounts for our success (Here take your 54% and be seen not heard; unlike you we have "experience" raising "well-rounded" kids.) It's coming - brace for it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.




After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Which black kid is being kept out of school? Can’t help your hyperbole?

There have been fewer Black students in the entire 35-year history of TJ than there were Asian students in the Class of 2024.

The new admissions process resulted in an increase of 70% in Black applications and over a 500% increase in Black students.

But Neson Mandela would apparently be against it, so no more black kids at TJ

Your attempt at humor is lost on me.

Mandela had the power and could have brute forced his way. He did not. He made sure change happened in a manner that was fair to all.

You won’t get it. You see the world as black, white and Asian. I see the world as fair and unfair, process-driven and arbitrary. Different perspective.

DP. I don't get why you that the old admissions were 100% better than the new admissions. I am not sold on the "underrepresented school" bump and I think the process was rushed too quickly to properly adjust geographic set-asides for base schools and center schools. I am aware that the intent of legislation is examined during these challenges but I also think the result, the new admissions guidelines, are solid, after some possible/probable tweaking.

I have never said the previous process was better. I believe it was flawed as is the new one. The Board could have and should have done better. Consulted with more of the impacted folks and designed a better process. No way you are pleasing everyone but you could try to at least reach out.

Instead we had an administration that was painting a whole community as “cheaters” only to defend their poor decisions. So no - the previous process sucked as does the current one. My beef is with the ideology driven folks who are wasting our tax dollars defending this half-baked process that is discriminatory in the first place.

Were families of low socioeconomic means consulted before the original admissions policies were introduced - which resulted in less than 1% of students at TJ historically falling into that category?

No. Upper-middle class Asians wanted to be consulted as to what process could be used that would effectively reduce their numbers without hurting their feelings. You still occupy 54% of the most recent class - a percentage that tracks almost perfectly with your percentage of the applicant pool. You're not being discriminated against - you're simply not being benefiting from that previous discrimination anymore.

I dont think you get it. This is not a tit for tat. Because a wrong was committed earlier, the response should not be another wrong. The Blacks in Africa were not consulted when apartheid was instituted but Mandela still gave due space to the whites when he brought freedom to South Africa. He was building a community and winner take the spoils approach never builds a community. And that is the problem with this school board (and especially Braband). You think this change is sustainable? You have got to be kidding. You have Asians now seeking 20% of everything in the county (on this board) Once victorious in some of those endeavors, they will kick-start their partisan agenda. And you will get some hard core partisans getting elected in the next school board elections. Brace yourself. The pendulum swings in both directions.

I am Asian. My feelings are not hurt if the Asian numbers at TJ go down. I only want a fair process that is not targeted to reduce Asian by hook or by crook. Most Asians are recent immigrants (maybe at most 2 generations). You cannot be successful as an immigrant if you have a sense of entitlement. You just have to work around obstacles and not complain. So most Asians will be resilient and will move on. Asians have been by and large apathetic when it comes to politics - they vote Dems by default because Republicans tend to be tolerant of xenophobic talk. But Asians care a lot about education and this TJ episode has got many engaged politically (all the anti-Asian "pay-to-play" talk is demeaning). Asians are 20% of the population and the fastest growing segment and they are well resourced and educated. So it is not about discrimination in the admission process alone, it is the tonality of the reformers on this forum and elsewhere that you should be concerned about. That we should be satisfied with our 54% is insulting. Not because it is 54% but because folks like you think it is your benevolence that accounts for our success (Here take your 54% and be seen not heard; unlike you we have "experience" raising "well-rounded" kids.) It's coming - brace for it.

DP. My kids go to a not-a-TJ-feeder school and all the Asian kids in my kids' classes were previously shut out of TJ. I guess no one should be interested in those kids?

PS - the "20% of everything" poster is a troll, not a partisan

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.

After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Which black kid is being kept out of school? Can’t help your hyperbole?

There have been fewer Black students in the entire 35-year history of TJ than there were Asian students in the Class of 2024.

The new admissions process resulted in an increase of 70% in Black applications and over a 500% increase in Black students.

But Neson Mandela would apparently be against it, so no more black kids at TJ

Your attempt at humor is lost on me.

Mandela had the power and could have brute forced his way. He did not. He made sure change happened in a manner that was fair to all.

You won’t get it. You see the world as black, white and Asian. I see the world as fair and unfair, process-driven and arbitrary. Different perspective.

I agree with this poster. 1 year of artificially elevated number of Black kids does nothing for the long-term goal of increasing achievement of underrepresented student population. It also divides communities and may have a very detrimental long term effect. This is not a smart way to change the way we admit students to TJ. The way it was done indicates a quick political point to be gained. Kids were never at the center of the decision making process, just read the TJ papers.

Oh please. Any change would cause great hue and outcry. Someone upthread (or maybe on a different thread) proposed phasing in changes in the admissions process over several years. So that children would have time to curate their resumes properly, apparently. That certainly doesn't put children "at the center of the decision making process".

all the communities should have been invited to comment. Instead, FCPS school board rushed the process and excluded parents completely. Arrogant, to say the least. Now they are dealing with the fall out. I used to work in university admissions and any kind of change in the process involved 2 years of advanced notice. This allowed for a smooth implementation. Stop being defensive and clean up your mess. Present a transparent and fair process and we might just get behind you. Get down from your pedestal. We are the constituents and our taxes pay for your salaries. Please try to remember that you are supposed to represent us, the parents.

Please stop acting as though the fall-out would have been any different had parents been granted to ability to comment on the new process more than they already were. They did more than enough commenting throughout the process on platforms outside of School Board meetings.

Regardless of their motives, they were going to have to come up with a new process to account for the fact that doing an exam during the worst of COVID would have been impossible. 2 years notice wasn't realistic and the entire purpose of making the change was to limit the amount of "resume-crafting" or "process gaming" that would be possible.

The C4TJ folks were going to scream bloody murder on this no matter what the end result was if it created a more representative TJ population. They might have a stronger leg to stand on legally because the School Board couldn't get out of its own way as far as messaging and discipline, but it's not as if their anger is some sort of righteous response that is generated by some level of disrespect. This is about the zero-sum game of spaces at TJ and the continued ability to hoard opportunities away from less fortunate students.

you don't get it, do you? The FCPS board acknowledged their racist motivations in their texts. This is not about their lack of disciple in their messaging. This is about them 1. being morally corrupt 2. breaking the law. As per the judge.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.




After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Which black kid is being kept out of school? Can’t help your hyperbole?

There have been fewer Black students in the entire 35-year history of TJ than there were Asian students in the Class of 2024.

The new admissions process resulted in an increase of 70% in Black applications and over a 500% increase in Black students.

But Neson Mandela would apparently be against it, so no more black kids at TJ

Your attempt at humor is lost on me.

Mandela had the power and could have brute forced his way. He did not. He made sure change happened in a manner that was fair to all.

You won’t get it. You see the world as black, white and Asian. I see the world as fair and unfair, process-driven and arbitrary. Different perspective.

DP. I don't get why you that the old admissions were 100% better than the new admissions. I am not sold on the "underrepresented school" bump and I think the process was rushed too quickly to properly adjust geographic set-asides for base schools and center schools. I am aware that the intent of legislation is examined during these challenges but I also think the result, the new admissions guidelines, are solid, after some possible/probable tweaking.

I have never said the previous process was better. I believe it was flawed as is the new one. The Board could have and should have done better. Consulted with more of the impacted folks and designed a better process. No way you are pleasing everyone but you could try to at least reach out.

Instead we had an administration that was painting a whole community as “cheaters” only to defend their poor decisions. So no - the previous process sucked as does the current one. My beef is with the ideology driven folks who are wasting our tax dollars defending this half-baked process that is discriminatory in the first place.

Were families of low socioeconomic means consulted before the original admissions policies were introduced - which resulted in less than 1% of students at TJ historically falling into that category?

No. Upper-middle class Asians wanted to be consulted as to what process could be used that would effectively reduce their numbers without hurting their feelings. You still occupy 54% of the most recent class - a percentage that tracks almost perfectly with your percentage of the applicant pool. You're not being discriminated against - you're simply not being benefiting from that previous discrimination anymore.

I dont think you get it. This is not a tit for tat. Because a wrong was committed earlier, the response should not be another wrong. The Blacks in Africa were not consulted when apartheid was instituted but Mandela still gave due space to the whites when he brought freedom to South Africa. He was building a community and winner take the spoils approach never builds a community. And that is the problem with this school board (and especially Braband). You think this change is sustainable? You have got to be kidding. You have Asians now seeking 20% of everything in the county (on this board) Once victorious in some of those endeavors, they will kick-start their partisan agenda. And you will get some hard core partisans getting elected in the next school board elections. Brace yourself. The pendulum swings in both directions.

I am Asian. My feelings are not hurt if the Asian numbers at TJ go down. I only want a fair process that is not targeted to reduce Asian by hook or by crook. Most Asians are recent immigrants (maybe at most 2 generations). You cannot be successful as an immigrant if you have a sense of entitlement. You just have to work around obstacles and not complain. So most Asians will be resilient and will move on. Asians have been by and large apathetic when it comes to politics - they vote Dems by default because Republicans tend to be tolerant of xenophobic talk. But Asians care a lot about education and this TJ episode has got many engaged politically (all the anti-Asian "pay-to-play" talk is demeaning). Asians are 20% of the population and the fastest growing segment and they are well resourced and educated. So it is not about discrimination in the admission process alone, it is the tonality of the reformers on this forum and elsewhere that you should be concerned about. That we should be satisfied with our 54% is insulting. Not because it is 54% but because folks like you think it is your benevolence that accounts for our success (Here take your 54% and be seen not heard; unlike you we have "experience" raising "well-rounded" kids.) It's coming - brace for it.

DP. My kids go to a not-a-TJ-feeder school and all the Asian kids in my kids' classes were previously shut out of TJ. I guess no one should be interested in those kids?

PS - the "20% of everything" poster is a troll, not a partisan

Depends on what you mean by “Shutout”. Were they not interested? Did they not have resources to prep? Did they not qualify?
Any selective process will have people that don’t make the cut. Most reasonable achievement-oriented people understand that. When you start seeing everything from an entitlement prism, “shutout” take a different meaning.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.




After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Which black kid is being kept out of school? Can’t help your hyperbole?

There have been fewer Black students in the entire 35-year history of TJ than there were Asian students in the Class of 2024.

The new admissions process resulted in an increase of 70% in Black applications and over a 500% increase in Black students.

But Neson Mandela would apparently be against it, so no more black kids at TJ

Your attempt at humor is lost on me.

Mandela had the power and could have brute forced his way. He did not. He made sure change happened in a manner that was fair to all.

You won’t get it. You see the world as black, white and Asian. I see the world as fair and unfair, process-driven and arbitrary. Different perspective.

DP. I don't get why you that the old admissions were 100% better than the new admissions. I am not sold on the "underrepresented school" bump and I think the process was rushed too quickly to properly adjust geographic set-asides for base schools and center schools. I am aware that the intent of legislation is examined during these challenges but I also think the result, the new admissions guidelines, are solid, after some possible/probable tweaking.

I have never said the previous process was better. I believe it was flawed as is the new one. The Board could have and should have done better. Consulted with more of the impacted folks and designed a better process. No way you are pleasing everyone but you could try to at least reach out.

Instead we had an administration that was painting a whole community as “cheaters” only to defend their poor decisions. So no - the previous process sucked as does the current one. My beef is with the ideology driven folks who are wasting our tax dollars defending this half-baked process that is discriminatory in the first place.

Were families of low socioeconomic means consulted before the original admissions policies were introduced - which resulted in less than 1% of students at TJ historically falling into that category?

No. Upper-middle class Asians wanted to be consulted as to what process could be used that would effectively reduce their numbers without hurting their feelings. You still occupy 54% of the most recent class - a percentage that tracks almost perfectly with your percentage of the applicant pool. You're not being discriminated against - you're simply not being benefiting from that previous discrimination anymore.

I dont think you get it. This is not a tit for tat. Because a wrong was committed earlier, the response should not be another wrong. The Blacks in Africa were not consulted when apartheid was instituted but Mandela still gave due space to the whites when he brought freedom to South Africa. He was building a community and winner take the spoils approach never builds a community. And that is the problem with this school board (and especially Braband). You think this change is sustainable? You have got to be kidding. You have Asians now seeking 20% of everything in the county (on this board) Once victorious in some of those endeavors, they will kick-start their partisan agenda. And you will get some hard core partisans getting elected in the next school board elections. Brace yourself. The pendulum swings in both directions.

I am Asian. My feelings are not hurt if the Asian numbers at TJ go down. I only want a fair process that is not targeted to reduce Asian by hook or by crook. Most Asians are recent immigrants (maybe at most 2 generations). You cannot be successful as an immigrant if you have a sense of entitlement. You just have to work around obstacles and not complain. So most Asians will be resilient and will move on. Asians have been by and large apathetic when it comes to politics - they vote Dems by default because Republicans tend to be tolerant of xenophobic talk. But Asians care a lot about education and this TJ episode has got many engaged politically (all the anti-Asian "pay-to-play" talk is demeaning). Asians are 20% of the population and the fastest growing segment and they are well resourced and educated. So it is not about discrimination in the admission process alone, it is the tonality of the reformers on this forum and elsewhere that you should be concerned about. That we should be satisfied with our 54% is insulting. Not because it is 54% but because folks like you think it is your benevolence that accounts for our success (Here take your 54% and be seen not heard; unlike you we have "experience" raising "well-rounded" kids.) It's coming - brace for it.

Entitled immigrant. A complete oxymoron. Most of us have to fight for years with a convoluted legal immigration process to be even entitled to work for a living.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.




After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Which black kid is being kept out of school? Can’t help your hyperbole?

There have been fewer Black students in the entire 35-year history of TJ than there were Asian students in the Class of 2024.

The new admissions process resulted in an increase of 70% in Black applications and over a 500% increase in Black students.

But Neson Mandela would apparently be against it, so no more black kids at TJ

Your attempt at humor is lost on me.

Mandela had the power and could have brute forced his way. He did not. He made sure change happened in a manner that was fair to all.

You won’t get it. You see the world as black, white and Asian. I see the world as fair and unfair, process-driven and arbitrary. Different perspective.

DP. I don't get why you that the old admissions were 100% better than the new admissions. I am not sold on the "underrepresented school" bump and I think the process was rushed too quickly to properly adjust geographic set-asides for base schools and center schools. I am aware that the intent of legislation is examined during these challenges but I also think the result, the new admissions guidelines, are solid, after some possible/probable tweaking.

I have never said the previous process was better. I believe it was flawed as is the new one. The Board could have and should have done better. Consulted with more of the impacted folks and designed a better process. No way you are pleasing everyone but you could try to at least reach out.

Instead we had an administration that was painting a whole community as “cheaters” only to defend their poor decisions. So no - the previous process sucked as does the current one. My beef is with the ideology driven folks who are wasting our tax dollars defending this half-baked process that is discriminatory in the first place.

Were families of low socioeconomic means consulted before the original admissions policies were introduced - which resulted in less than 1% of students at TJ historically falling into that category?

No. Upper-middle class Asians wanted to be consulted as to what process could be used that would effectively reduce their numbers without hurting their feelings. You still occupy 54% of the most recent class - a percentage that tracks almost perfectly with your percentage of the applicant pool. You're not being discriminated against - you're simply not being benefiting from that previous discrimination anymore.

I dont think you get it. This is not a tit for tat. Because a wrong was committed earlier, the response should not be another wrong. The Blacks in Africa were not consulted when apartheid was instituted but Mandela still gave due space to the whites when he brought freedom to South Africa. He was building a community and winner take the spoils approach never builds a community. And that is the problem with this school board (and especially Braband). You think this change is sustainable? You have got to be kidding. You have Asians now seeking 20% of everything in the county (on this board) Once victorious in some of those endeavors, they will kick-start their partisan agenda. And you will get some hard core partisans getting elected in the next school board elections. Brace yourself. The pendulum swings in both directions.

I am Asian. My feelings are not hurt if the Asian numbers at TJ go down. I only want a fair process that is not targeted to reduce Asian by hook or by crook. Most Asians are recent immigrants (maybe at most 2 generations). You cannot be successful as an immigrant if you have a sense of entitlement. You just have to work around obstacles and not complain. So most Asians will be resilient and will move on. Asians have been by and large apathetic when it comes to politics - they vote Dems by default because Republicans tend to be tolerant of xenophobic talk. But Asians care a lot about education and this TJ episode has got many engaged politically (all the anti-Asian "pay-to-play" talk is demeaning). Asians are 20% of the population and the fastest growing segment and they are well resourced and educated. So it is not about discrimination in the admission process alone, it is the tonality of the reformers on this forum and elsewhere that you should be concerned about. That we should be satisfied with our 54% is insulting. Not because it is 54% but because folks like you think it is your benevolence that accounts for our success (Here take your 54% and be seen not heard; unlike you we have "experience" raising "well-rounded" kids.) It's coming - brace for it.

Entitled immigrant. A complete oxymoron. Most of us have to fight for years with a convoluted legal immigration process to be even entitled to work for a living.

Yeah, but you’re not the ones applying for TJ. A lot of parents seem to forget that.

[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:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.

After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Give me a break. You are insulting black kids that they can't do well in exams. It's the highest form of racism. It's the FCPS admin who kept black kids out of the school. There were enough black applicants in previous years. Why did FCS keep the admission rate so low for them? The admin could have let more black students in under holistic review. They don't have to target Asians to achieve that. For example class of 2019 saw 200 black students applied. A very selective process of 25% admission rate for black students would still result in 50 black students at TJ for that year.

Please remember it's white people who discriminate blacks for centuries. White people run the school board and the public schools for decades. They are responsible for whatever the problems black people have, not some immigrant Asians. Invoking Nelson Mandela in this context is actually quite appropriate.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.




After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Which black kid is being kept out of school? Can’t help your hyperbole?

There have been fewer Black students in the entire 35-year history of TJ than there were Asian students in the Class of 2024.

The new admissions process resulted in an increase of 70% in Black applications and over a 500% increase in Black students.

But Neson Mandela would apparently be against it, so no more black kids at TJ

Your attempt at humor is lost on me.

Mandela had the power and could have brute forced his way. He did not. He made sure change happened in a manner that was fair to all.

You won’t get it. You see the world as black, white and Asian. I see the world as fair and unfair, process-driven and arbitrary. Different perspective.

DP. I don't get why you that the old admissions were 100% better than the new admissions. I am not sold on the "underrepresented school" bump and I think the process was rushed too quickly to properly adjust geographic set-asides for base schools and center schools. I am aware that the intent of legislation is examined during these challenges but I also think the result, the new admissions guidelines, are solid, after some possible/probable tweaking.

I have never said the previous process was better. I believe it was flawed as is the new one. The Board could have and should have done better. Consulted with more of the impacted folks and designed a better process. No way you are pleasing everyone but you could try to at least reach out.

Instead we had an administration that was painting a whole community as “cheaters” only to defend their poor decisions. So no - the previous process sucked as does the current one. My beef is with the ideology driven folks who are wasting our tax dollars defending this half-baked process that is discriminatory in the first place.

Were families of low socioeconomic means consulted before the original admissions policies were introduced - which resulted in less than 1% of students at TJ historically falling into that category?

No. Upper-middle class Asians wanted to be consulted as to what process could be used that would effectively reduce their numbers without hurting their feelings. You still occupy 54% of the most recent class - a percentage that tracks almost perfectly with your percentage of the applicant pool. You're not being discriminated against - you're simply not being benefiting from that previous discrimination anymore.

I dont think you get it. This is not a tit for tat. Because a wrong was committed earlier, the response should not be another wrong. The Blacks in Africa were not consulted when apartheid was instituted but Mandela still gave due space to the whites when he brought freedom to South Africa. He was building a community and winner take the spoils approach never builds a community. And that is the problem with this school board (and especially Braband). You think this change is sustainable? You have got to be kidding. You have Asians now seeking 20% of everything in the county (on this board) Once victorious in some of those endeavors, they will kick-start their partisan agenda. And you will get some hard core partisans getting elected in the next school board elections. Brace yourself. The pendulum swings in both directions.

I am Asian. My feelings are not hurt if the Asian numbers at TJ go down. I only want a fair process that is not targeted to reduce Asian by hook or by crook. Most Asians are recent immigrants (maybe at most 2 generations). You cannot be successful as an immigrant if you have a sense of entitlement. You just have to work around obstacles and not complain. So most Asians will be resilient and will move on. Asians have been by and large apathetic when it comes to politics - they vote Dems by default because Republicans tend to be tolerant of xenophobic talk. But Asians care a lot about education and this TJ episode has got many engaged politically (all the anti-Asian "pay-to-play" talk is demeaning). Asians are 20% of the population and the fastest growing segment and they are well resourced and educated. So it is not about discrimination in the admission process alone, it is the tonality of the reformers on this forum and elsewhere that you should be concerned about. That we should be satisfied with our 54% is insulting. Not because it is 54% but because folks like you think it is your benevolence that accounts for our success (Here take your 54% and be seen not heard; unlike you we have "experience" raising "well-rounded" kids.) It's coming - brace for it.

Entitled immigrant. A complete oxymoron. Most of us have to fight for years with a convoluted legal immigration process to be even entitled to work for a living.

Yeah, but you’re not the ones applying for TJ. A lot of parents seem to forget that.

You are just spouting some imaginary grievance about how you think other parents think...

[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:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.

After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Give me a break. You are insulting black kids that they can't do well in exams. It's the highest form of racism. It's the FCPS admin who kept black kids out of the school. There were enough black applicants in previous years. Why did FCS keep the admission rate so low for them? The admin could have let more black students in under holistic review. They don't have to target Asians to achieve that. For example class of 2019 saw 200 black students applied. A very selective process of 25% admission rate for black students would still result in 50 black students at TJ for that year.

Please remember it's white people who discriminate blacks for centuries. White people run the school board and the public schools for decades. They are responsible for whatever the problems black people have, not some immigrant Asians. Invoking Nelson Mandela in this context is actually quite appropriate.

+ 1000

[Anonymous]

I wish board came up with a purely merit based selection process that applies equally to everyone with out quotas or other experience factors. I am sure board tried, couldn’t come up with any fair process even after removing the test, so they to had to debate/figure out how many free points should be added for the desired affect. Same way, if quotas were based on the ‘base’ school, they knew more asians will squeeze in from AAP and had to use attending school instead. So here we are with court case and all the mess. I wish the process didn’t start with the goal to cut down specific groups by any means possible - even if this weren’t true, it sure appears that way from the leaked correspondence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Upper-middle class Asians (and especially South Asians) in Northern Virginia believe that TJ belongs to them, and as such, they believe that they should have a say in the direction of the school. When you hear them talk about being "the families impacted by the changes", the underlying message is "we're the ones who deserve the seats and we're the ones who have gotten them for generations, so you're stealing them from us if you change the process to eliminate our advantages".

What a f'dup statement.

Thats all I have to say about the quote

[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:I am confused where this conversation is headed. The whole quota system at ANY level is stupid and discriminatory. The focus should be on how to bring everyone to the same level playing field, have a process that clearly recognizes the talent and not segregate people into different pools.

They've tried that for decades and it hasn't worked. Even assuming that it was possible, FCPS doesn't have anything approaching the budget that it would take to bring a kid with uneducated parents who don't care about education up to par with a kid whose parents hold graduate degrees and who expect their child to follow a similar path and know what boxes need to be checked along the way.

FCPS already does much more to elevate kids who are poor or are URMs than just about any other school district. Any FARMS or URM kid demonstrating any spark of anything will be placed in Young Scholars and receive enrichment therein. The URM and FARMS kids who impress anyone along the way will be placed in Level IV AAP and receive full-time AAP instruction through 8th grade. The equity report demonstrated that URM kids are being admitted into AAP with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. This is fine, because it is helping give a leg up to the kids who generally are not privileged.

After 8 years of being supported and mentored through Young Scholars and another 6 years of full-time gifted instruction, if the kids have not managed to distinguish themselves in any way and have done nothing to suggest TJ worthiness, it's likely that they're just not very exceptional.

It will take time before these measures are fully realized, but you do have a point.

Let's not make the mistake, however, of presuming that most kids admitted under the previous process had managed to distinguish themselves in any way other than test scores that were buffered by prep that they received outside of the advanced school environment, however.

I would estimate that about half of the kids distinguished themselves at the very least as kids who need or would greatly benefit from TJ, and the other half are undistinguished prep kids. At least the prep kids have demonstrated that they're hard workers.

I'm surprised that the old system didn't filter out the prep kids. High SES Schoo + perfect grades + high test scores + participation in a lot of STEM activities but without notable achievements + tepid teacher recommendations should pretty clearly indicate an otherwise unimpressive prep kid.

I genuinely don't think that the teacher recommendations did a good job of allowing teachers to compare their students with one another. At a place like Carson or Longfellow, that would have made all the difference in the world.

The private schools do this and it helps greatly.

The problem is they aren't objective or a reliable metric.

Genuine question: why the obsession with objectivity? Selection processes are almost never objective in nature for any field.

Enough said...but why have an obsessions with objectivity when you can be subjectively racist. Indeed.

That's not an answer.

That is an answer. Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it easier to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Correction: Subjectivity is a power play. Objectivity makes it tougher to oppress. Hence the obsession.

Objectivity makes it easier to use your resources to game the system.

You can't really argue oppression when the class selected by the new admissions process was significantly less resourced than the classes before it.

It's not oppression to have an avenue to buy one's way into TJ removed.

Communist revolutions everywhere relied on expropriation of the rich people’s wealth and redistribution of the same to the less fortunate. There is a reason we oppose communism. Transfer of resources from the have to the have nots is good but it has to be done in a manner that is just and equitable - not by the power of the gun or the (temporary) power of the ballot.

That is why Nelson Mandela is great. He had every reason to kick the whites to the curb. He did not. He brought the community together and still achieved his goal.

Nelson Mandela being invoked to keep black kids out of a school may be a first.

Give me a break. You are insulting black kids that they can't do well in exams. It's the highest form of racism. It's the FCPS admin who kept black kids out of the school. There were enough black applicants in previous years. Why did FCS keep the admission rate so low for them? The admin could have let more black students in under holistic review. They don't have to target Asians to achieve that. For example class of 2019 saw 200 black students applied. A very selective process of 25% admission rate for black students would still result in 50 black students at TJ for that year.

Please remember it's white people who discriminate blacks for centuries. White people run the school board and the public schools for decades. They are responsible for whatever the problems black people have, not some immigrant Asians. Invoking Nelson Mandela in this context is actually quite appropriate.

I don't know about TJ but unfortunately the published test scores for AAP for each demographic speak for themselves.