I push my kids and have NO shame! You should too!!!

[Anonymous]

So should I sign my child up for Curie starting in 1st or 2nd grade? I notice the classes have levels that don't correspond to grades and was hoping to get advice from my fellow pushers.

[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:So absolutely absurd to not push kids to do advanced stuff. Especially since some average people are deciding the standards.

Push your kids to do well in school, on screener tests, and everywhere, becait will make them better at the end. They will learn about themselves the most.

Go for Algebra in 7th, even in 6th if you can.

LA should have better acceleration too.

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! For goodness sake,where would Bill Gates be without a college degree ?! Push ! Push ! Push !

Bill Gates did programming in high school...when that was almost unheard of. sometimes it is good to be silent rather than parade your ignorance.

+1

Bill Gates was programming since he was 13 years old. He forgot to check his privilege, bow down to "equity officers" and stop his accelerated education. He should have studied "Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity".

Down with success.

These days, you get more "public support" if you are trans, queer or some minority group than if you are motivated passionate student.

That's what the pro-privilege parents like to tell themselves.

You are serious about "privilege" how about dropping preference for children of alumni at universities? That goes a long way in increasing the capacity that is available to others.

How about actually helping minorities and economically disadvantaged from pre-k and in FCPS from k onwards with extra additional support. Special after school programs, additional hours, tutors, etc. right from k. Actively put money towards education of these children, who deserve this kind of support at an early age which builds a solid foundation.

But no, what you want is really signal your woke status and pretend to help. Getting 50 kids to TJ from these groups would allow you to signal your own moral superiority. All the tens of thousands of other kids from these groups who need help are ignored. There is no story there.

My child and I help coach kids at an elementary school in math from 3rd grade and many kids show a big improvement and lose fear of math. Many are economically disadvantaged. Some actively love math competitions. It is very little effort on our part actually. FCPS could scale this 1000x with a little investment. But no this is too low level and not much woke signaling is possible here. So they would rather focus on getting a few more kids to TJ to signal their wokeness.

Good points. grunt work isn't woke/cool.

Agree, grunt work isn't cool, but if you're happy with your kid doing worksheets instead of learning something meaningful go for it.

This has always been my difficulty with the attitude of TJ parents. It always seems like they are more concerned with setting a high floor for their child's achievement and potential than cultivating the possibility of a high ceiling. It's as though they're terrified that if their child doesn't end up as a doctor, lawyer, or full-stack web developer, that they're going to be working at a 7-11 or a drive thru. It's so myopic and it results in their kids not achieving what they could.

The poster spoke about doing the grunt work early so that kids can be helped over a longer period of time, build a good foundation and lose their fear of math. You are just saying something different. some fancy high horse stuff. care to elaborate in any case - what is cultivating high ceiling? seems like fun. i am guessing it doesn't involve work(sheets).

I appreciate your acknowledgment that you're unfamiliar with the concept - too few on this board are willing to own up to it.

What I'm referring to by prioritizing a high floor over a high ceiling is the preference for financial security and stability over the pursuit of dreams and greatness. The two are not mutually exclusive goals but the tendency is for TJ parents to treat them as such and push their children toward the former.

you seem to mean well. but have no idea how dreams and greatness is achieved. it is never pretty.

It’s never pretty, but it also never involves parents forcing their kids into fields they don’t care about just to maintain a high floor for earning potential.

maybe. reflective of a scrappy immigrant population for whom education has been a key to achieving (or trying to achieve) the American dream. you will have more ballet dancers in the next generation.

Yeah. I buy that argument when you're talking about the under-resourced and economically disadvantaged Asian population that the new TJ admissions process was intended to - and successfully did! - help. (Remember, poor Asians were statistically the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process.)

I don't buy it when you're talking about families out in Ashburn who drive their kids to private school in their tricked-out Tesla while trying to shoehorn them into STEM.

Your selective choosing doesn't change the facts - these parents are mostly first gen immigrants. just because they are doing better than you, you are envious.

I highly doubt they’re doing better than me, based on how they treat their children. They might have more money than me, but I REALLY doubt that they’re doing better.

Clutching at straws.

Nope. Just really happy and fulfilled.

PP. You are being racist right now, regardless of how much your white self wants to deny it. If you faced even 25% of the discrimination that Asian-American professionals faced every day, you wouldn't bother posting such bigoted comments. Here's a peek, since you seem ignorant and oblivious:

The working Asian woman is often expected to be not only compliant and a workhorse but also neutral, innocuous, devoid of personality. To hire one of us is to hire someone you don’t have to worry about, as far as “bad behavior” goes, because we’re not really seen as people. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove.


[…]


I couldn’t help but be annoyed that, somehow, one of us had failed to live up to the image of the compliant Asian woman.

Millennial and woke culture demand that I not feel this way. I should push back against all stereotypes and force others to see Asians as much, much more. Of course, we are much, much more, but to erase the model minority completely would be to erase many people I know, including part of myself.

It would erase someone like my father, who, in China, in his thirties, wrote dozens of letters to Western professors, promising to work as hard as five grad students, etc., if his student visa was sponsored. My father ended up studying in Australia, where he impressed his adviser enough to earn a recommendation to a postdoctoral position in the States. Had my father not worked so hard to improve our means, would I have the luxury of writing these words about him today?


Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-work

PP. None of this is news to me, and none of it is relevant to this conversation.

I do not have a problem with Asian-American people. I have a problem with people who insist that the only acceptable ways to evaluate students for their suitability for an outstanding academic environment are measures that can be deeply influenced by wealth and family privilege. A fair number of those people are not Asians.

And a very strong number of the people who agree with me in my endeavors - which, to your chagrin, have been largely successful - are Asian themselves.

The key variable for me is your attitude, not your race. If you are a person who believes that exclusive access to elite educational opportunities should be added to the laundry list of other societal advantages enjoyed by people with high amounts of disposable income, then you and I are not going to agree on much.

But if the majority of the people who hold that backwards attitude happen to be Asian, understand that your race is not the reason for my animus towards you. It's your feudalist belief that the family into which you're born should determine your future.

absolutely the opposite. asians in general believe that you determine your future by the amount of hard focused work you can put in, despite your income and background. not some mispaced concept of innate genius or entitlement due to race. you seem misinformed or ignorant at best.

[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:So absolutely absurd to not push kids to do advanced stuff. Especially since some average people are deciding the standards.

Push your kids to do well in school, on screener tests, and everywhere, becait will make them better at the end. They will learn about themselves the most.

Go for Algebra in 7th, even in 6th if you can.

LA should have better acceleration too.

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! For goodness sake,where would Bill Gates be without a college degree ?! Push ! Push ! Push !

Bill Gates did programming in high school...when that was almost unheard of. sometimes it is good to be silent rather than parade your ignorance.

+1

Bill Gates was programming since he was 13 years old. He forgot to check his privilege, bow down to "equity officers" and stop his accelerated education. He should have studied "Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity".

Down with success.

These days, you get more "public support" if you are trans, queer or some minority group than if you are motivated passionate student.

That's what the pro-privilege parents like to tell themselves.

You are serious about "privilege" how about dropping preference for children of alumni at universities? That goes a long way in increasing the capacity that is available to others.

How about actually helping minorities and economically disadvantaged from pre-k and in FCPS from k onwards with extra additional support. Special after school programs, additional hours, tutors, etc. right from k. Actively put money towards education of these children, who deserve this kind of support at an early age which builds a solid foundation.

But no, what you want is really signal your woke status and pretend to help. Getting 50 kids to TJ from these groups would allow you to signal your own moral superiority. All the tens of thousands of other kids from these groups who need help are ignored. There is no story there.

My child and I help coach kids at an elementary school in math from 3rd grade and many kids show a big improvement and lose fear of math. Many are economically disadvantaged. Some actively love math competitions. It is very little effort on our part actually. FCPS could scale this 1000x with a little investment. But no this is too low level and not much woke signaling is possible here. So they would rather focus on getting a few more kids to TJ to signal their wokeness.

Good points. grunt work isn't woke/cool.

Agree, grunt work isn't cool, but if you're happy with your kid doing worksheets instead of learning something meaningful go for it.

This has always been my difficulty with the attitude of TJ parents. It always seems like they are more concerned with setting a high floor for their child's achievement and potential than cultivating the possibility of a high ceiling. It's as though they're terrified that if their child doesn't end up as a doctor, lawyer, or full-stack web developer, that they're going to be working at a 7-11 or a drive thru. It's so myopic and it results in their kids not achieving what they could.

The poster spoke about doing the grunt work early so that kids can be helped over a longer period of time, build a good foundation and lose their fear of math. You are just saying something different. some fancy high horse stuff. care to elaborate in any case - what is cultivating high ceiling? seems like fun. i am guessing it doesn't involve work(sheets).

I appreciate your acknowledgment that you're unfamiliar with the concept - too few on this board are willing to own up to it.

What I'm referring to by prioritizing a high floor over a high ceiling is the preference for financial security and stability over the pursuit of dreams and greatness. The two are not mutually exclusive goals but the tendency is for TJ parents to treat them as such and push their children toward the former.

you seem to mean well. but have no idea how dreams and greatness is achieved. it is never pretty.

It’s never pretty, but it also never involves parents forcing their kids into fields they don’t care about just to maintain a high floor for earning potential.

maybe. reflective of a scrappy immigrant population for whom education has been a key to achieving (or trying to achieve) the American dream. you will have more ballet dancers in the next generation.

Yeah. I buy that argument when you're talking about the under-resourced and economically disadvantaged Asian population that the new TJ admissions process was intended to - and successfully did! - help. (Remember, poor Asians were statistically the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process.)

I don't buy it when you're talking about families out in Ashburn who drive their kids to private school in their tricked-out Tesla while trying to shoehorn them into STEM.

Your selective choosing doesn't change the facts - these parents are mostly first gen immigrants. just because they are doing better than you, you are envious.

I highly doubt they’re doing better than me, based on how they treat their children. They might have more money than me, but I REALLY doubt that they’re doing better.

Clutching at straws.

Nope. Just really happy and fulfilled.

PP. You are being racist right now, regardless of how much your white self wants to deny it. If you faced even 25% of the discrimination that Asian-American professionals faced every day, you wouldn't bother posting such bigoted comments. Here's a peek, since you seem ignorant and oblivious:

The working Asian woman is often expected to be not only compliant and a workhorse but also neutral, innocuous, devoid of personality. To hire one of us is to hire someone you don’t have to worry about, as far as “bad behavior” goes, because we’re not really seen as people. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove.


[…]


I couldn’t help but be annoyed that, somehow, one of us had failed to live up to the image of the compliant Asian woman.

Millennial and woke culture demand that I not feel this way. I should push back against all stereotypes and force others to see Asians as much, much more. Of course, we are much, much more, but to erase the model minority completely would be to erase many people I know, including part of myself.

It would erase someone like my father, who, in China, in his thirties, wrote dozens of letters to Western professors, promising to work as hard as five grad students, etc., if his student visa was sponsored. My father ended up studying in Australia, where he impressed his adviser enough to earn a recommendation to a postdoctoral position in the States. Had my father not worked so hard to improve our means, would I have the luxury of writing these words about him today?


Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-work

PP. None of this is news to me, and none of it is relevant to this conversation.

I do not have a problem with Asian-American people. I have a problem with people who insist that the only acceptable ways to evaluate students for their suitability for an outstanding academic environment are measures that can be deeply influenced by wealth and family privilege. A fair number of those people are not Asians.

And a very strong number of the people who agree with me in my endeavors - which, to your chagrin, have been largely successful - are Asian themselves.

The key variable for me is your attitude, not your race. If you are a person who believes that exclusive access to elite educational opportunities should be added to the laundry list of other societal advantages enjoyed by people with high amounts of disposable income, then you and I are not going to agree on much.

But if the majority of the people who hold that backwards attitude happen to be Asian, understand that your race is not the reason for my animus towards you. It's your feudalist belief that the family into which you're born should determine your future.

I tend to find that most Asian families that are focused on achievement and test scores as markers are not basing the idea on family status but on test scores and test scores alone. Families sacrifice a lot so that the oldest child can receive tutoring and attend classes and receive the support in order to do well on exams and earn entry to the best schools and best jobs. It is easier for families with money then families that are struggling to get by but the emphasis is the same.

China is currently dealing with a population contraction and part of the reason is that parents understand that their kids have the best chance for success by doing well on the exams at different grade levels. Parents are pouring money into tutoring and enrichment to increase their childs chances of scoring high and moving onto the best level possible. The cost of this has led many parents to not have additional children even after the one child mandate was dropped. The Government has noticed this and has passed laws that prevent tutoring and after school enrichment in order to decrease the cost of having a child. People have found work arounds but there is additional stress for the tutors and the families because they are worried about being arrested for violating the law.

This is very much a cultural issue. You can find scrolls discussing people who were tutored for years, into their 30’s, in order to pass the tests needed for entering the government. They make that State Department Civil Service exam look reasonable by comparison. The same attitude exists in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and India. I am sure it exists in other Asian cultures but those are the ones I know of from personal experience and reading in the newspaper. South Korea shuts down airplane traffic at the time of the national exams so there are no distractions for the kids taking the exams.

It is culturally very different. It just is. And you can argue that the US is different then China/Japan/S Korea/India all you want but the US is about bringing people from different parts of the world and absorbing their cultures into ours. I don’t see the US ever becoming like Europe (A levels anyone) or Asia but it is foolish to think that there is not going to be a culture clash on something as important as education with families that come from cultures with a long standing history of placing an emphasis on merit through testing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So should I sign my child up for Curie starting in 1st or 2nd grade? I notice the classes have levels that don't correspond to grades and was hoping to get advice from my fellow pushers.

actually, you can get away with just spending time with your kid and making sure they read something and know their numbers/multiplication tables should work well. i am sure even you can manage 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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So absolutely absurd to not push kids to do advanced stuff. Especially since some average people are deciding the standards.

Push your kids to do well in school, on screener tests, and everywhere, becait will make them better at the end. They will learn about themselves the most.

Go for Algebra in 7th, even in 6th if you can.

LA should have better acceleration too.

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! For goodness sake,where would Bill Gates be without a college degree ?! Push ! Push ! Push !

Bill Gates did programming in high school...when that was almost unheard of. sometimes it is good to be silent rather than parade your ignorance.

+1

Bill Gates was programming since he was 13 years old. He forgot to check his privilege, bow down to "equity officers" and stop his accelerated education. He should have studied "Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity".

Down with success.

These days, you get more "public support" if you are trans, queer or some minority group than if you are motivated passionate student.

That's what the pro-privilege parents like to tell themselves.

You are serious about "privilege" how about dropping preference for children of alumni at universities? That goes a long way in increasing the capacity that is available to others.

How about actually helping minorities and economically disadvantaged from pre-k and in FCPS from k onwards with extra additional support. Special after school programs, additional hours, tutors, etc. right from k. Actively put money towards education of these children, who deserve this kind of support at an early age which builds a solid foundation.

But no, what you want is really signal your woke status and pretend to help. Getting 50 kids to TJ from these groups would allow you to signal your own moral superiority. All the tens of thousands of other kids from these groups who need help are ignored. There is no story there.

My child and I help coach kids at an elementary school in math from 3rd grade and many kids show a big improvement and lose fear of math. Many are economically disadvantaged. Some actively love math competitions. It is very little effort on our part actually. FCPS could scale this 1000x with a little investment. But no this is too low level and not much woke signaling is possible here. So they would rather focus on getting a few more kids to TJ to signal their wokeness.

Good points. grunt work isn't woke/cool.

Agree, grunt work isn't cool, but if you're happy with your kid doing worksheets instead of learning something meaningful go for it.

This has always been my difficulty with the attitude of TJ parents. It always seems like they are more concerned with setting a high floor for their child's achievement and potential than cultivating the possibility of a high ceiling. It's as though they're terrified that if their child doesn't end up as a doctor, lawyer, or full-stack web developer, that they're going to be working at a 7-11 or a drive thru. It's so myopic and it results in their kids not achieving what they could.

The poster spoke about doing the grunt work early so that kids can be helped over a longer period of time, build a good foundation and lose their fear of math. You are just saying something different. some fancy high horse stuff. care to elaborate in any case - what is cultivating high ceiling? seems like fun. i am guessing it doesn't involve work(sheets).

I appreciate your acknowledgment that you're unfamiliar with the concept - too few on this board are willing to own up to it.

What I'm referring to by prioritizing a high floor over a high ceiling is the preference for financial security and stability over the pursuit of dreams and greatness. The two are not mutually exclusive goals but the tendency is for TJ parents to treat them as such and push their children toward the former.

you seem to mean well. but have no idea how dreams and greatness is achieved. it is never pretty.

It’s never pretty, but it also never involves parents forcing their kids into fields they don’t care about just to maintain a high floor for earning potential.

maybe. reflective of a scrappy immigrant population for whom education has been a key to achieving (or trying to achieve) the American dream. you will have more ballet dancers in the next generation.

Yeah. I buy that argument when you're talking about the under-resourced and economically disadvantaged Asian population that the new TJ admissions process was intended to - and successfully did! - help. (Remember, poor Asians were statistically the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process.)

I don't buy it when you're talking about families out in Ashburn who drive their kids to private school in their tricked-out Tesla while trying to shoehorn them into STEM.

Your selective choosing doesn't change the facts - these parents are mostly first gen immigrants. just because they are doing better than you, you are envious.

I highly doubt they’re doing better than me, based on how they treat their children. They might have more money than me, but I REALLY doubt that they’re doing better.

Clutching at straws.

Nope. Just really happy and fulfilled.

PP. You are being racist right now, regardless of how much your white self wants to deny it. If you faced even 25% of the discrimination that Asian-American professionals faced every day, you wouldn't bother posting such bigoted comments. Here's a peek, since you seem ignorant and oblivious:

The working Asian woman is often expected to be not only compliant and a workhorse but also neutral, innocuous, devoid of personality. To hire one of us is to hire someone you don’t have to worry about, as far as “bad behavior” goes, because we’re not really seen as people. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove.


[…]


I couldn’t help but be annoyed that, somehow, one of us had failed to live up to the image of the compliant Asian woman.

Millennial and woke culture demand that I not feel this way. I should push back against all stereotypes and force others to see Asians as much, much more. Of course, we are much, much more, but to erase the model minority completely would be to erase many people I know, including part of myself.

It would erase someone like my father, who, in China, in his thirties, wrote dozens of letters to Western professors, promising to work as hard as five grad students, etc., if his student visa was sponsored. My father ended up studying in Australia, where he impressed his adviser enough to earn a recommendation to a postdoctoral position in the States. Had my father not worked so hard to improve our means, would I have the luxury of writing these words about him today?


Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-work

PP. None of this is news to me, and none of it is relevant to this conversation.

I do not have a problem with Asian-American people. I have a problem with people who insist that the only acceptable ways to evaluate students for their suitability for an outstanding academic environment are measures that can be deeply influenced by wealth and family privilege. A fair number of those people are not Asians.

And a very strong number of the people who agree with me in my endeavors - which, to your chagrin, have been largely successful - are Asian themselves.

The key variable for me is your attitude, not your race. If you are a person who believes that exclusive access to elite educational opportunities should be added to the laundry list of other societal advantages enjoyed by people with high amounts of disposable income, then you and I are not going to agree on much.

But if the majority of the people who hold that backwards attitude happen to be Asian, understand that your race is not the reason for my animus towards you. It's your feudalist belief that the family into which you're born should determine your future.

I tend to find that most Asian families that are focused on achievement and test scores as markers are not basing the idea on family status but on test scores and test scores alone. Families sacrifice a lot so that the oldest child can receive tutoring and attend classes and receive the support in order to do well on exams and earn entry to the best schools and best jobs. It is easier for families with money then families that are struggling to get by but the emphasis is the same.

China is currently dealing with a population contraction and part of the reason is that parents understand that their kids have the best chance for success by doing well on the exams at different grade levels. Parents are pouring money into tutoring and enrichment to increase their childs chances of scoring high and moving onto the best level possible. The cost of this has led many parents to not have additional children even after the one child mandate was dropped. The Government has noticed this and has passed laws that prevent tutoring and after school enrichment in order to decrease the cost of having a child. People have found work arounds but there is additional stress for the tutors and the families because they are worried about being arrested for violating the law.

This is very much a cultural issue. You can find scrolls discussing people who were tutored for years, into their 30’s, in order to pass the tests needed for entering the government. They make that State Department Civil Service exam look reasonable by comparison. The same attitude exists in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and India. I am sure it exists in other Asian cultures but those are the ones I know of from personal experience and reading in the newspaper. South Korea shuts down airplane traffic at the time of the national exams so there are no distractions for the kids taking the exams.

It is culturally very different. It just is. And you can argue that the US is different then China/Japan/S Korea/India all you want but the US is about bringing people from different parts of the world and absorbing their cultures into ours. I don’t see the US ever becoming like Europe (A levels anyone) or Asia but it is foolish to think that there is not going to be a culture clash on something as important as education with families that come from cultures with a long standing history of placing an emphasis on merit through testing.

maybe you should travel and interact with people outside your race to expand your world view and get some more nuance. human progress is about learning from each other. not statis. whether it is math, lanhuage, technology.

[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:So absolutely absurd to not push kids to do advanced stuff. Especially since some average people are deciding the standards.

Push your kids to do well in school, on screener tests, and everywhere, becait will make them better at the end. They will learn about themselves the most.

Go for Algebra in 7th, even in 6th if you can.

LA should have better acceleration too.

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! For goodness sake,where would Bill Gates be without a college degree ?! Push ! Push ! Push !

Bill Gates did programming in high school...when that was almost unheard of. sometimes it is good to be silent rather than parade your ignorance.

+1

Bill Gates was programming since he was 13 years old. He forgot to check his privilege, bow down to "equity officers" and stop his accelerated education. He should have studied "Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity".

Down with success.

These days, you get more "public support" if you are trans, queer or some minority group than if you are motivated passionate student.

That's what the pro-privilege parents like to tell themselves.

You are serious about "privilege" how about dropping preference for children of alumni at universities? That goes a long way in increasing the capacity that is available to others.

How about actually helping minorities and economically disadvantaged from pre-k and in FCPS from k onwards with extra additional support. Special after school programs, additional hours, tutors, etc. right from k. Actively put money towards education of these children, who deserve this kind of support at an early age which builds a solid foundation.

But no, what you want is really signal your woke status and pretend to help. Getting 50 kids to TJ from these groups would allow you to signal your own moral superiority. All the tens of thousands of other kids from these groups who need help are ignored. There is no story there.

My child and I help coach kids at an elementary school in math from 3rd grade and many kids show a big improvement and lose fear of math. Many are economically disadvantaged. Some actively love math competitions. It is very little effort on our part actually. FCPS could scale this 1000x with a little investment. But no this is too low level and not much woke signaling is possible here. So they would rather focus on getting a few more kids to TJ to signal their wokeness.

Good points. grunt work isn't woke/cool.

Agree, grunt work isn't cool, but if you're happy with your kid doing worksheets instead of learning something meaningful go for it.

This has always been my difficulty with the attitude of TJ parents. It always seems like they are more concerned with setting a high floor for their child's achievement and potential than cultivating the possibility of a high ceiling. It's as though they're terrified that if their child doesn't end up as a doctor, lawyer, or full-stack web developer, that they're going to be working at a 7-11 or a drive thru. It's so myopic and it results in their kids not achieving what they could.

The poster spoke about doing the grunt work early so that kids can be helped over a longer period of time, build a good foundation and lose their fear of math. You are just saying something different. some fancy high horse stuff. care to elaborate in any case - what is cultivating high ceiling? seems like fun. i am guessing it doesn't involve work(sheets).

I appreciate your acknowledgment that you're unfamiliar with the concept - too few on this board are willing to own up to it.

What I'm referring to by prioritizing a high floor over a high ceiling is the preference for financial security and stability over the pursuit of dreams and greatness. The two are not mutually exclusive goals but the tendency is for TJ parents to treat them as such and push their children toward the former.

you seem to mean well. but have no idea how dreams and greatness is achieved. it is never pretty.

It’s never pretty, but it also never involves parents forcing their kids into fields they don’t care about just to maintain a high floor for earning potential.

maybe. reflective of a scrappy immigrant population for whom education has been a key to achieving (or trying to achieve) the American dream. you will have more ballet dancers in the next generation.

Yeah. I buy that argument when you're talking about the under-resourced and economically disadvantaged Asian population that the new TJ admissions process was intended to - and successfully did! - help. (Remember, poor Asians were statistically the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process.)

I don't buy it when you're talking about families out in Ashburn who drive their kids to private school in their tricked-out Tesla while trying to shoehorn them into STEM.

Your selective choosing doesn't change the facts - these parents are mostly first gen immigrants. just because they are doing better than you, you are envious.

I highly doubt they’re doing better than me, based on how they treat their children. They might have more money than me, but I REALLY doubt that they’re doing better.

Clutching at straws.

Nope. Just really happy and fulfilled.

PP. You are being racist right now, regardless of how much your white self wants to deny it. If you faced even 25% of the discrimination that Asian-American professionals faced every day, you wouldn't bother posting such bigoted comments. Here's a peek, since you seem ignorant and oblivious:

The working Asian woman is often expected to be not only compliant and a workhorse but also neutral, innocuous, devoid of personality. To hire one of us is to hire someone you don’t have to worry about, as far as “bad behavior” goes, because we’re not really seen as people. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove.


[…]


I couldn’t help but be annoyed that, somehow, one of us had failed to live up to the image of the compliant Asian woman.

Millennial and woke culture demand that I not feel this way. I should push back against all stereotypes and force others to see Asians as much, much more. Of course, we are much, much more, but to erase the model minority completely would be to erase many people I know, including part of myself.

It would erase someone like my father, who, in China, in his thirties, wrote dozens of letters to Western professors, promising to work as hard as five grad students, etc., if his student visa was sponsored. My father ended up studying in Australia, where he impressed his adviser enough to earn a recommendation to a postdoctoral position in the States. Had my father not worked so hard to improve our means, would I have the luxury of writing these words about him today?


Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-work

PP. None of this is news to me, and none of it is relevant to this conversation.

I do not have a problem with Asian-American people. I have a problem with people who insist that the only acceptable ways to evaluate students for their suitability for an outstanding academic environment are measures that can be deeply influenced by wealth and family privilege. A fair number of those people are not Asians.

And a very strong number of the people who agree with me in my endeavors - which, to your chagrin, have been largely successful - are Asian themselves.

The key variable for me is your attitude, not your race. If you are a person who believes that exclusive access to elite educational opportunities should be added to the laundry list of other societal advantages enjoyed by people with high amounts of disposable income, then you and I are not going to agree on much.

But if the majority of the people who hold that backwards attitude happen to be Asian, understand that your race is not the reason for my animus towards you. It's your feudalist belief that the family into which you're born should determine your future.

I tend to find that most Asian families that are focused on achievement and test scores as markers are not basing the idea on family status but on test scores and test scores alone. Families sacrifice a lot so that the oldest child can receive tutoring and attend classes and receive the support in order to do well on exams and earn entry to the best schools and best jobs. It is easier for families with money then families that are struggling to get by but the emphasis is the same.

China is currently dealing with a population contraction and part of the reason is that parents understand that their kids have the best chance for success by doing well on the exams at different grade levels. Parents are pouring money into tutoring and enrichment to increase their childs chances of scoring high and moving onto the best level possible. The cost of this has led many parents to not have additional children even after the one child mandate was dropped. The Government has noticed this and has passed laws that prevent tutoring and after school enrichment in order to decrease the cost of having a child. People have found work arounds but there is additional stress for the tutors and the families because they are worried about being arrested for violating the law.

This is very much a cultural issue. You can find scrolls discussing people who were tutored for years, into their 30’s, in order to pass the tests needed for entering the government. They make that State Department Civil Service exam look reasonable by comparison. The same attitude exists in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and India. I am sure it exists in other Asian cultures but those are the ones I know of from personal experience and reading in the newspaper. South Korea shuts down airplane traffic at the time of the national exams so there are no distractions for the kids taking the exams.

It is culturally very different. It just is. And you can argue that the US is different then China/Japan/S Korea/India all you want but the US is about bringing people from different parts of the world and absorbing their cultures into ours. I don’t see the US ever becoming like Europe (A levels anyone) or Asia but it is foolish to think that there is not going to be a culture clash on something as important as education with families that come from cultures with a long standing history of placing an emphasis on merit through testing.

maybe you should travel and interact with people outside your race to expand your world view and get some more nuance. human progress is about learning from each other. not statis. whether it is math, lanhuage, technology.

In other words you think the cultural values of 1/3 of the people on this planet is backwards, and I don’t need to put in any work to understand them. They would be much better off if they were more like me.

[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:So absolutely absurd to not push kids to do advanced stuff. Especially since some average people are deciding the standards.

Push your kids to do well in school, on screener tests, and everywhere, becait will make them better at the end. They will learn about themselves the most.

Go for Algebra in 7th, even in 6th if you can.

LA should have better acceleration too.

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! For goodness sake,where would Bill Gates be without a college degree ?! Push ! Push ! Push !

Bill Gates did programming in high school...when that was almost unheard of. sometimes it is good to be silent rather than parade your ignorance.

+1

Bill Gates was programming since he was 13 years old. He forgot to check his privilege, bow down to "equity officers" and stop his accelerated education. He should have studied "Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity".

Down with success.

These days, you get more "public support" if you are trans, queer or some minority group than if you are motivated passionate student.

That's what the pro-privilege parents like to tell themselves.

You are serious about "privilege" how about dropping preference for children of alumni at universities? That goes a long way in increasing the capacity that is available to others.

How about actually helping minorities and economically disadvantaged from pre-k and in FCPS from k onwards with extra additional support. Special after school programs, additional hours, tutors, etc. right from k. Actively put money towards education of these children, who deserve this kind of support at an early age which builds a solid foundation.

But no, what you want is really signal your woke status and pretend to help. Getting 50 kids to TJ from these groups would allow you to signal your own moral superiority. All the tens of thousands of other kids from these groups who need help are ignored. There is no story there.

My child and I help coach kids at an elementary school in math from 3rd grade and many kids show a big improvement and lose fear of math. Many are economically disadvantaged. Some actively love math competitions. It is very little effort on our part actually. FCPS could scale this 1000x with a little investment. But no this is too low level and not much woke signaling is possible here. So they would rather focus on getting a few more kids to TJ to signal their wokeness.

Good points. grunt work isn't woke/cool.

Agree, grunt work isn't cool, but if you're happy with your kid doing worksheets instead of learning something meaningful go for it.

This has always been my difficulty with the attitude of TJ parents. It always seems like they are more concerned with setting a high floor for their child's achievement and potential than cultivating the possibility of a high ceiling. It's as though they're terrified that if their child doesn't end up as a doctor, lawyer, or full-stack web developer, that they're going to be working at a 7-11 or a drive thru. It's so myopic and it results in their kids not achieving what they could.

The poster spoke about doing the grunt work early so that kids can be helped over a longer period of time, build a good foundation and lose their fear of math. You are just saying something different. some fancy high horse stuff. care to elaborate in any case - what is cultivating high ceiling? seems like fun. i am guessing it doesn't involve work(sheets).

I appreciate your acknowledgment that you're unfamiliar with the concept - too few on this board are willing to own up to it.

What I'm referring to by prioritizing a high floor over a high ceiling is the preference for financial security and stability over the pursuit of dreams and greatness. The two are not mutually exclusive goals but the tendency is for TJ parents to treat them as such and push their children toward the former.

you seem to mean well. but have no idea how dreams and greatness is achieved. it is never pretty.

It’s never pretty, but it also never involves parents forcing their kids into fields they don’t care about just to maintain a high floor for earning potential.

maybe. reflective of a scrappy immigrant population for whom education has been a key to achieving (or trying to achieve) the American dream. you will have more ballet dancers in the next generation.

Yeah. I buy that argument when you're talking about the under-resourced and economically disadvantaged Asian population that the new TJ admissions process was intended to - and successfully did! - help. (Remember, poor Asians were statistically the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process.)

I don't buy it when you're talking about families out in Ashburn who drive their kids to private school in their tricked-out Tesla while trying to shoehorn them into STEM.

Your selective choosing doesn't change the facts - these parents are mostly first gen immigrants. just because they are doing better than you, you are envious.

I highly doubt they’re doing better than me, based on how they treat their children. They might have more money than me, but I REALLY doubt that they’re doing better.

Clutching at straws.

Nope. Just really happy and fulfilled.

PP. You are being racist right now, regardless of how much your white self wants to deny it. If you faced even 25% of the discrimination that Asian-American professionals faced every day, you wouldn't bother posting such bigoted comments. Here's a peek, since you seem ignorant and oblivious:

The working Asian woman is often expected to be not only compliant and a workhorse but also neutral, innocuous, devoid of personality. To hire one of us is to hire someone you don’t have to worry about, as far as “bad behavior” goes, because we’re not really seen as people. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove.


[…]


I couldn’t help but be annoyed that, somehow, one of us had failed to live up to the image of the compliant Asian woman.

Millennial and woke culture demand that I not feel this way. I should push back against all stereotypes and force others to see Asians as much, much more. Of course, we are much, much more, but to erase the model minority completely would be to erase many people I know, including part of myself.

It would erase someone like my father, who, in China, in his thirties, wrote dozens of letters to Western professors, promising to work as hard as five grad students, etc., if his student visa was sponsored. My father ended up studying in Australia, where he impressed his adviser enough to earn a recommendation to a postdoctoral position in the States. Had my father not worked so hard to improve our means, would I have the luxury of writing these words about him today?


Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-work

PP. None of this is news to me, and none of it is relevant to this conversation.

I do not have a problem with Asian-American people. I have a problem with people who insist that the only acceptable ways to evaluate students for their suitability for an outstanding academic environment are measures that can be deeply influenced by wealth and family privilege. A fair number of those people are not Asians.

And a very strong number of the people who agree with me in my endeavors - which, to your chagrin, have been largely successful - are Asian themselves.

The key variable for me is your attitude, not your race. If you are a person who believes that exclusive access to elite educational opportunities should be added to the laundry list of other societal advantages enjoyed by people with high amounts of disposable income, then you and I are not going to agree on much.

But if the majority of the people who hold that backwards attitude happen to be Asian, understand that your race is not the reason for my animus towards you. It's your feudalist belief that the family into which you're born should determine your future.

I tend to find that most Asian families that are focused on achievement and test scores as markers are not basing the idea on family status but on test scores and test scores alone. Families sacrifice a lot so that the oldest child can receive tutoring and attend classes and receive the support in order to do well on exams and earn entry to the best schools and best jobs. It is easier for families with money then families that are struggling to get by but the emphasis is the same.

China is currently dealing with a population contraction and part of the reason is that parents understand that their kids have the best chance for success by doing well on the exams at different grade levels. Parents are pouring money into tutoring and enrichment to increase their childs chances of scoring high and moving onto the best level possible. The cost of this has led many parents to not have additional children even after the one child mandate was dropped. The Government has noticed this and has passed laws that prevent tutoring and after school enrichment in order to decrease the cost of having a child. People have found work arounds but there is additional stress for the tutors and the families because they are worried about being arrested for violating the law.

This is very much a cultural issue. You can find scrolls discussing people who were tutored for years, into their 30’s, in order to pass the tests needed for entering the government. They make that State Department Civil Service exam look reasonable by comparison. The same attitude exists in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and India. I am sure it exists in other Asian cultures but those are the ones I know of from personal experience and reading in the newspaper. South Korea shuts down airplane traffic at the time of the national exams so there are no distractions for the kids taking the exams.

It is culturally very different. It just is. And you can argue that the US is different then China/Japan/S Korea/India all you want but the US is about bringing people from different parts of the world and absorbing their cultures into ours. I don’t see the US ever becoming like Europe (A levels anyone) or Asia but it is foolish to think that there is not going to be a culture clash on something as important as education with families that come from cultures with a long standing history of placing an emphasis on merit through testing.

This +1,000,000

It's why white folks have generally stopped caring about TJ

[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:So absolutely absurd to not push kids to do advanced stuff. Especially since some average people are deciding the standards.

Push your kids to do well in school, on screener tests, and everywhere, becait will make them better at the end. They will learn about themselves the most.

Go for Algebra in 7th, even in 6th if you can.

LA should have better acceleration too.

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! For goodness sake,where would Bill Gates be without a college degree ?! Push ! Push ! Push !

Bill Gates did programming in high school...when that was almost unheard of. sometimes it is good to be silent rather than parade your ignorance.

+1

Bill Gates was programming since he was 13 years old. He forgot to check his privilege, bow down to "equity officers" and stop his accelerated education. He should have studied "Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity".

Down with success.

These days, you get more "public support" if you are trans, queer or some minority group than if you are motivated passionate student.

That's what the pro-privilege parents like to tell themselves.

You are serious about "privilege" how about dropping preference for children of alumni at universities? That goes a long way in increasing the capacity that is available to others.

How about actually helping minorities and economically disadvantaged from pre-k and in FCPS from k onwards with extra additional support. Special after school programs, additional hours, tutors, etc. right from k. Actively put money towards education of these children, who deserve this kind of support at an early age which builds a solid foundation.

But no, what you want is really signal your woke status and pretend to help. Getting 50 kids to TJ from these groups would allow you to signal your own moral superiority. All the tens of thousands of other kids from these groups who need help are ignored. There is no story there.

My child and I help coach kids at an elementary school in math from 3rd grade and many kids show a big improvement and lose fear of math. Many are economically disadvantaged. Some actively love math competitions. It is very little effort on our part actually. FCPS could scale this 1000x with a little investment. But no this is too low level and not much woke signaling is possible here. So they would rather focus on getting a few more kids to TJ to signal their wokeness.

Good points. grunt work isn't woke/cool.

Agree, grunt work isn't cool, but if you're happy with your kid doing worksheets instead of learning something meaningful go for it.

This has always been my difficulty with the attitude of TJ parents. It always seems like they are more concerned with setting a high floor for their child's achievement and potential than cultivating the possibility of a high ceiling. It's as though they're terrified that if their child doesn't end up as a doctor, lawyer, or full-stack web developer, that they're going to be working at a 7-11 or a drive thru. It's so myopic and it results in their kids not achieving what they could.

The poster spoke about doing the grunt work early so that kids can be helped over a longer period of time, build a good foundation and lose their fear of math. You are just saying something different. some fancy high horse stuff. care to elaborate in any case - what is cultivating high ceiling? seems like fun. i am guessing it doesn't involve work(sheets).

I appreciate your acknowledgment that you're unfamiliar with the concept - too few on this board are willing to own up to it.

What I'm referring to by prioritizing a high floor over a high ceiling is the preference for financial security and stability over the pursuit of dreams and greatness. The two are not mutually exclusive goals but the tendency is for TJ parents to treat them as such and push their children toward the former.

you seem to mean well. but have no idea how dreams and greatness is achieved. it is never pretty.

It’s never pretty, but it also never involves parents forcing their kids into fields they don’t care about just to maintain a high floor for earning potential.

maybe. reflective of a scrappy immigrant population for whom education has been a key to achieving (or trying to achieve) the American dream. you will have more ballet dancers in the next generation.

Yeah. I buy that argument when you're talking about the under-resourced and economically disadvantaged Asian population that the new TJ admissions process was intended to - and successfully did! - help. (Remember, poor Asians were statistically the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process.)

I don't buy it when you're talking about families out in Ashburn who drive their kids to private school in their tricked-out Tesla while trying to shoehorn them into STEM.

Your selective choosing doesn't change the facts - these parents are mostly first gen immigrants. just because they are doing better than you, you are envious.

I highly doubt they’re doing better than me, based on how they treat their children. They might have more money than me, but I REALLY doubt that they’re doing better.

Clutching at straws.

Nope. Just really happy and fulfilled.

PP. You are being racist right now, regardless of how much your white self wants to deny it. If you faced even 25% of the discrimination that Asian-American professionals faced every day, you wouldn't bother posting such bigoted comments. Here's a peek, since you seem ignorant and oblivious:

The working Asian woman is often expected to be not only compliant and a workhorse but also neutral, innocuous, devoid of personality. To hire one of us is to hire someone you don’t have to worry about, as far as “bad behavior” goes, because we’re not really seen as people. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove.


[…]


I couldn’t help but be annoyed that, somehow, one of us had failed to live up to the image of the compliant Asian woman.

Millennial and woke culture demand that I not feel this way. I should push back against all stereotypes and force others to see Asians as much, much more. Of course, we are much, much more, but to erase the model minority completely would be to erase many people I know, including part of myself.

It would erase someone like my father, who, in China, in his thirties, wrote dozens of letters to Western professors, promising to work as hard as five grad students, etc., if his student visa was sponsored. My father ended up studying in Australia, where he impressed his adviser enough to earn a recommendation to a postdoctoral position in the States. Had my father not worked so hard to improve our means, would I have the luxury of writing these words about him today?


Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-work

PP. None of this is news to me, and none of it is relevant to this conversation.

I do not have a problem with Asian-American people. I have a problem with people who insist that the only acceptable ways to evaluate students for their suitability for an outstanding academic environment are measures that can be deeply influenced by wealth and family privilege. A fair number of those people are not Asians.

And a very strong number of the people who agree with me in my endeavors - which, to your chagrin, have been largely successful - are Asian themselves.

The key variable for me is your attitude, not your race. If you are a person who believes that exclusive access to elite educational opportunities should be added to the laundry list of other societal advantages enjoyed by people with high amounts of disposable income, then you and I are not going to agree on much.

But if the majority of the people who hold that backwards attitude happen to be Asian, understand that your race is not the reason for my animus towards you. It's your feudalist belief that the family into which you're born should determine your future.

I tend to find that most Asian families that are focused on achievement and test scores as markers are not basing the idea on family status but on test scores and test scores alone. Families sacrifice a lot so that the oldest child can receive tutoring and attend classes and receive the support in order to do well on exams and earn entry to the best schools and best jobs. It is easier for families with money then families that are struggling to get by but the emphasis is the same.

China is currently dealing with a population contraction and part of the reason is that parents understand that their kids have the best chance for success by doing well on the exams at different grade levels. Parents are pouring money into tutoring and enrichment to increase their childs chances of scoring high and moving onto the best level possible. The cost of this has led many parents to not have additional children even after the one child mandate was dropped. The Government has noticed this and has passed laws that prevent tutoring and after school enrichment in order to decrease the cost of having a child. People have found work arounds but there is additional stress for the tutors and the families because they are worried about being arrested for violating the law.

This is very much a cultural issue. You can find scrolls discussing people who were tutored for years, into their 30’s, in order to pass the tests needed for entering the government. They make that State Department Civil Service exam look reasonable by comparison. The same attitude exists in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and India. I am sure it exists in other Asian cultures but those are the ones I know of from personal experience and reading in the newspaper. South Korea shuts down airplane traffic at the time of the national exams so there are no distractions for the kids taking the exams.

It is culturally very different. It just is. And you can argue that the US is different then China/Japan/S Korea/India all you want but the US is about bringing people from different parts of the world and absorbing their cultures into ours. I don’t see the US ever becoming like Europe (A levels anyone) or Asia but it is foolish to think that there is not going to be a culture clash on something as important as education with families that come from cultures with a long standing history of placing an emphasis on merit through testing.

maybe you should travel and interact with people outside your race to expand your world view and get some more nuance. human progress is about learning from each other. not statis. whether it is math, lanhuage, technology.

I wrote the post you responded to and I am as white as a white person can be. I happen to have a wave top understanding of Asian cultures and how they differ from European and Latin American cultures. I have travelled, which is why I think it is important to look at things from different perspectives.

I don't agree with the pressures that are placed on many Asian kids, I think that it is too much and has its own set of issues, but I can understand why the various Asian communities in FCPS are focused on preparing for important exams and why they value those tests the way that they do. There are parts of the US culture that I am not a huge fan of, the over emphasis on sports in high schools and colleges for example. The debate over TJ selection is as much a discussion of cultures as it is how to choose kids for schools.

Maybe you need to travel more and understand other cultures so you can approach conversations like this with a bit more background and sensitivity.

I am fine with there not being a Qunat Q test. I am fine with SAT/ACTs no longer playing a huge roll in college admissions. I don't think those tests ever provided that much use, they were biased towards middle and upper middle class families from the get go. The language that is used, the cultural references in various elements all favored people who grew up in a specific environment. Now that there are a ton of prep options for the SAT/ACT you cannot really argue that the tests are demonstrating much of anything other then the fact that people who have enough money and/or desire can do really well on the tests because they can prepare for them properly. The Quant test for TJ has pretty much taken the same path as the SAT/ACT.

I think that the requirements should be based on classes and opportunities provided at the schools during the school day. I thin that TJ applicants should be in all honors classes for the core classes and should have completed Geometry by 8th grade. I think the GPA should be a 3.75 or higher.

I don't think that there should be an emphasis placed on extra curricular activities because not everyone has access to the same programs. Perhaps more importantly, not every kid has decided that they are interested enough in STEM as early as other kids so they don't have the time to develop the same resume. We are talking about 13 year olds here, some might not have really figured out that they liked STEM until they took Engineering as an elective in MS. Or they did not have the same exposure at home to STEM activities but found them in MS.

TJ is a public school so I think it is fair to expect that kids are coming from different background with different opportunities and that we cannot judge kids level of interest based on activities that they might not have even knew existed until they attended a MS that had some of those opportunities.

[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:So absolutely absurd to not push kids to do advanced stuff. Especially since some average people are deciding the standards.

Push your kids to do well in school, on screener tests, and everywhere, becait will make them better at the end. They will learn about themselves the most.

Go for Algebra in 7th, even in 6th if you can.

LA should have better acceleration too.

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! For goodness sake,where would Bill Gates be without a college degree ?! Push ! Push ! Push !

Bill Gates did programming in high school...when that was almost unheard of. sometimes it is good to be silent rather than parade your ignorance.

+1

Bill Gates was programming since he was 13 years old. He forgot to check his privilege, bow down to "equity officers" and stop his accelerated education. He should have studied "Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity".

Down with success.

These days, you get more "public support" if you are trans, queer or some minority group than if you are motivated passionate student.

That's what the pro-privilege parents like to tell themselves.

You are serious about "privilege" how about dropping preference for children of alumni at universities? That goes a long way in increasing the capacity that is available to others.

How about actually helping minorities and economically disadvantaged from pre-k and in FCPS from k onwards with extra additional support. Special after school programs, additional hours, tutors, etc. right from k. Actively put money towards education of these children, who deserve this kind of support at an early age which builds a solid foundation.

But no, what you want is really signal your woke status and pretend to help. Getting 50 kids to TJ from these groups would allow you to signal your own moral superiority. All the tens of thousands of other kids from these groups who need help are ignored. There is no story there.

My child and I help coach kids at an elementary school in math from 3rd grade and many kids show a big improvement and lose fear of math. Many are economically disadvantaged. Some actively love math competitions. It is very little effort on our part actually. FCPS could scale this 1000x with a little investment. But no this is too low level and not much woke signaling is possible here. So they would rather focus on getting a few more kids to TJ to signal their wokeness.

Good points. grunt work isn't woke/cool.

Agree, grunt work isn't cool, but if you're happy with your kid doing worksheets instead of learning something meaningful go for it.

This has always been my difficulty with the attitude of TJ parents. It always seems like they are more concerned with setting a high floor for their child's achievement and potential than cultivating the possibility of a high ceiling. It's as though they're terrified that if their child doesn't end up as a doctor, lawyer, or full-stack web developer, that they're going to be working at a 7-11 or a drive thru. It's so myopic and it results in their kids not achieving what they could.

The poster spoke about doing the grunt work early so that kids can be helped over a longer period of time, build a good foundation and lose their fear of math. You are just saying something different. some fancy high horse stuff. care to elaborate in any case - what is cultivating high ceiling? seems like fun. i am guessing it doesn't involve work(sheets).

I appreciate your acknowledgment that you're unfamiliar with the concept - too few on this board are willing to own up to it.

What I'm referring to by prioritizing a high floor over a high ceiling is the preference for financial security and stability over the pursuit of dreams and greatness. The two are not mutually exclusive goals but the tendency is for TJ parents to treat them as such and push their children toward the former.

you seem to mean well. but have no idea how dreams and greatness is achieved. it is never pretty.

It’s never pretty, but it also never involves parents forcing their kids into fields they don’t care about just to maintain a high floor for earning potential.

maybe. reflective of a scrappy immigrant population for whom education has been a key to achieving (or trying to achieve) the American dream. you will have more ballet dancers in the next generation.

Yeah. I buy that argument when you're talking about the under-resourced and economically disadvantaged Asian population that the new TJ admissions process was intended to - and successfully did! - help. (Remember, poor Asians were statistically the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process.)

I don't buy it when you're talking about families out in Ashburn who drive their kids to private school in their tricked-out Tesla while trying to shoehorn them into STEM.

Your selective choosing doesn't change the facts - these parents are mostly first gen immigrants. just because they are doing better than you, you are envious.

I highly doubt they’re doing better than me, based on how they treat their children. They might have more money than me, but I REALLY doubt that they’re doing better.

Clutching at straws.

Nope. Just really happy and fulfilled.

PP. You are being racist right now, regardless of how much your white self wants to deny it. If you faced even 25% of the discrimination that Asian-American professionals faced every day, you wouldn't bother posting such bigoted comments. Here's a peek, since you seem ignorant and oblivious:

The working Asian woman is often expected to be not only compliant and a workhorse but also neutral, innocuous, devoid of personality. To hire one of us is to hire someone you don’t have to worry about, as far as “bad behavior” goes, because we’re not really seen as people. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove.


[…]


I couldn’t help but be annoyed that, somehow, one of us had failed to live up to the image of the compliant Asian woman.

Millennial and woke culture demand that I not feel this way. I should push back against all stereotypes and force others to see Asians as much, much more. Of course, we are much, much more, but to erase the model minority completely would be to erase many people I know, including part of myself.

It would erase someone like my father, who, in China, in his thirties, wrote dozens of letters to Western professors, promising to work as hard as five grad students, etc., if his student visa was sponsored. My father ended up studying in Australia, where he impressed his adviser enough to earn a recommendation to a postdoctoral position in the States. Had my father not worked so hard to improve our means, would I have the luxury of writing these words about him today?


Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-work

PP. None of this is news to me, and none of it is relevant to this conversation.

I do not have a problem with Asian-American people. I have a problem with people who insist that the only acceptable ways to evaluate students for their suitability for an outstanding academic environment are measures that can be deeply influenced by wealth and family privilege. A fair number of those people are not Asians.

And a very strong number of the people who agree with me in my endeavors - which, to your chagrin, have been largely successful - are Asian themselves.

The key variable for me is your attitude, not your race. If you are a person who believes that exclusive access to elite educational opportunities should be added to the laundry list of other societal advantages enjoyed by people with high amounts of disposable income, then you and I are not going to agree on much.

But if the majority of the people who hold that backwards attitude happen to be Asian, understand that your race is not the reason for my animus towards you. It's your feudalist belief that the family into which you're born should determine your future.

I tend to find that most Asian families that are focused on achievement and test scores as markers are not basing the idea on family status but on test scores and test scores alone. Families sacrifice a lot so that the oldest child can receive tutoring and attend classes and receive the support in order to do well on exams and earn entry to the best schools and best jobs. It is easier for families with money then families that are struggling to get by but the emphasis is the same.

China is currently dealing with a population contraction and part of the reason is that parents understand that their kids have the best chance for success by doing well on the exams at different grade levels. Parents are pouring money into tutoring and enrichment to increase their childs chances of scoring high and moving onto the best level possible. The cost of this has led many parents to not have additional children even after the one child mandate was dropped. The Government has noticed this and has passed laws that prevent tutoring and after school enrichment in order to decrease the cost of having a child. People have found work arounds but there is additional stress for the tutors and the families because they are worried about being arrested for violating the law.

This is very much a cultural issue. You can find scrolls discussing people who were tutored for years, into their 30’s, in order to pass the tests needed for entering the government. They make that State Department Civil Service exam look reasonable by comparison. The same attitude exists in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and India. I am sure it exists in other Asian cultures but those are the ones I know of from personal experience and reading in the newspaper. South Korea shuts down airplane traffic at the time of the national exams so there are no distractions for the kids taking the exams.

It is culturally very different. It just is. And you can argue that the US is different then China/Japan/S Korea/India all you want but the US is about bringing people from different parts of the world and absorbing their cultures into ours. I don’t see the US ever becoming like Europe (A levels anyone) or Asia but it is foolish to think that there is not going to be a culture clash on something as important as education with families that come from cultures with a long standing history of placing an emphasis on merit through testing.

This +1,000,000

It's why white folks have generally stopped caring about TJ

True. and that's why they have stopped caring about STEM Phd programs too.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:So absolutely absurd to not push kids to do advanced stuff. Especially since some average people are deciding the standards.

Push your kids to do well in school, on screener tests, and everywhere, becait will make them better at the end. They will learn about themselves the most.

Go for Algebra in 7th, even in 6th if you can.

LA should have better acceleration too.

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! For goodness sake,where would Bill Gates be without a college degree ?! Push ! Push ! Push !

Bill Gates did programming in high school...when that was almost unheard of. sometimes it is good to be silent rather than parade your ignorance.

+1

Bill Gates was programming since he was 13 years old. He forgot to check his privilege, bow down to "equity officers" and stop his accelerated education. He should have studied "Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity".

Down with success.

These days, you get more "public support" if you are trans, queer or some minority group than if you are motivated passionate student.

That's what the pro-privilege parents like to tell themselves.

You are serious about "privilege" how about dropping preference for children of alumni at universities? That goes a long way in increasing the capacity that is available to others.

How about actually helping minorities and economically disadvantaged from pre-k and in FCPS from k onwards with extra additional support. Special after school programs, additional hours, tutors, etc. right from k. Actively put money towards education of these children, who deserve this kind of support at an early age which builds a solid foundation.

But no, what you want is really signal your woke status and pretend to help. Getting 50 kids to TJ from these groups would allow you to signal your own moral superiority. All the tens of thousands of other kids from these groups who need help are ignored. There is no story there.

My child and I help coach kids at an elementary school in math from 3rd grade and many kids show a big improvement and lose fear of math. Many are economically disadvantaged. Some actively love math competitions. It is very little effort on our part actually. FCPS could scale this 1000x with a little investment. But no this is too low level and not much woke signaling is possible here. So they would rather focus on getting a few more kids to TJ to signal their wokeness.

Good points. grunt work isn't woke/cool.

Agree, grunt work isn't cool, but if you're happy with your kid doing worksheets instead of learning something meaningful go for it.

This has always been my difficulty with the attitude of TJ parents. It always seems like they are more concerned with setting a high floor for their child's achievement and potential than cultivating the possibility of a high ceiling. It's as though they're terrified that if their child doesn't end up as a doctor, lawyer, or full-stack web developer, that they're going to be working at a 7-11 or a drive thru. It's so myopic and it results in their kids not achieving what they could.

The poster spoke about doing the grunt work early so that kids can be helped over a longer period of time, build a good foundation and lose their fear of math. You are just saying something different. some fancy high horse stuff. care to elaborate in any case - what is cultivating high ceiling? seems like fun. i am guessing it doesn't involve work(sheets).

I appreciate your acknowledgment that you're unfamiliar with the concept - too few on this board are willing to own up to it.

What I'm referring to by prioritizing a high floor over a high ceiling is the preference for financial security and stability over the pursuit of dreams and greatness. The two are not mutually exclusive goals but the tendency is for TJ parents to treat them as such and push their children toward the former.

you seem to mean well. but have no idea how dreams and greatness is achieved. it is never pretty.

It’s never pretty, but it also never involves parents forcing their kids into fields they don’t care about just to maintain a high floor for earning potential.

maybe. reflective of a scrappy immigrant population for whom education has been a key to achieving (or trying to achieve) the American dream. you will have more ballet dancers in the next generation.

Yeah. I buy that argument when you're talking about the under-resourced and economically disadvantaged Asian population that the new TJ admissions process was intended to - and successfully did! - help. (Remember, poor Asians were statistically the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process.)

I don't buy it when you're talking about families out in Ashburn who drive their kids to private school in their tricked-out Tesla while trying to shoehorn them into STEM.

Your selective choosing doesn't change the facts - these parents are mostly first gen immigrants. just because they are doing better than you, you are envious.

I highly doubt they’re doing better than me, based on how they treat their children. They might have more money than me, but I REALLY doubt that they’re doing better.

Clutching at straws.

Nope. Just really happy and fulfilled.

PP. You are being racist right now, regardless of how much your white self wants to deny it. If you faced even 25% of the discrimination that Asian-American professionals faced every day, you wouldn't bother posting such bigoted comments. Here's a peek, since you seem ignorant and oblivious:

The working Asian woman is often expected to be not only compliant and a workhorse but also neutral, innocuous, devoid of personality. To hire one of us is to hire someone you don’t have to worry about, as far as “bad behavior” goes, because we’re not really seen as people. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove.


[…]


I couldn’t help but be annoyed that, somehow, one of us had failed to live up to the image of the compliant Asian woman.

Millennial and woke culture demand that I not feel this way. I should push back against all stereotypes and force others to see Asians as much, much more. Of course, we are much, much more, but to erase the model minority completely would be to erase many people I know, including part of myself.

It would erase someone like my father, who, in China, in his thirties, wrote dozens of letters to Western professors, promising to work as hard as five grad students, etc., if his student visa was sponsored. My father ended up studying in Australia, where he impressed his adviser enough to earn a recommendation to a postdoctoral position in the States. Had my father not worked so hard to improve our means, would I have the luxury of writing these words about him today?


Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-work

PP. None of this is news to me, and none of it is relevant to this conversation.

I do not have a problem with Asian-American people. I have a problem with people who insist that the only acceptable ways to evaluate students for their suitability for an outstanding academic environment are measures that can be deeply influenced by wealth and family privilege. A fair number of those people are not Asians.

And a very strong number of the people who agree with me in my endeavors - which, to your chagrin, have been largely successful - are Asian themselves.

The key variable for me is your attitude, not your race. If you are a person who believes that exclusive access to elite educational opportunities should be added to the laundry list of other societal advantages enjoyed by people with high amounts of disposable income, then you and I are not going to agree on much.

But if the majority of the people who hold that backwards attitude happen to be Asian, understand that your race is not the reason for my animus towards you. It's your feudalist belief that the family into which you're born should determine your future.

I tend to find that most Asian families that are focused on achievement and test scores as markers are not basing the idea on family status but on test scores and test scores alone. Families sacrifice a lot so that the oldest child can receive tutoring and attend classes and receive the support in order to do well on exams and earn entry to the best schools and best jobs. It is easier for families with money then families that are struggling to get by but the emphasis is the same.

China is currently dealing with a population contraction and part of the reason is that parents understand that their kids have the best chance for success by doing well on the exams at different grade levels. Parents are pouring money into tutoring and enrichment to increase their childs chances of scoring high and moving onto the best level possible. The cost of this has led many parents to not have additional children even after the one child mandate was dropped. The Government has noticed this and has passed laws that prevent tutoring and after school enrichment in order to decrease the cost of having a child. People have found work arounds but there is additional stress for the tutors and the families because they are worried about being arrested for violating the law.

This is very much a cultural issue. You can find scrolls discussing people who were tutored for years, into their 30’s, in order to pass the tests needed for entering the government. They make that State Department Civil Service exam look reasonable by comparison. The same attitude exists in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and India. I am sure it exists in other Asian cultures but those are the ones I know of from personal experience and reading in the newspaper. South Korea shuts down airplane traffic at the time of the national exams so there are no distractions for the kids taking the exams.

It is culturally very different. It just is. And you can argue that the US is different then China/Japan/S Korea/India all you want but the US is about bringing people from different parts of the world and absorbing their cultures into ours. I don’t see the US ever becoming like Europe (A levels anyone) or Asia but it is foolish to think that there is not going to be a culture clash on something as important as education with families that come from cultures with a long standing history of placing an emphasis on merit through testing.

maybe you should travel and interact with people outside your race to expand your world view and get some more nuance. human progress is about learning from each other. not statis. whether it is math, lanhuage, technology.

I wrote the post you responded to and I am as white as a white person can be. I happen to have a wave top understanding of Asian cultures and how they differ from European and Latin American cultures. I have travelled, which is why I think it is important to look at things from different perspectives.

I don't agree with the pressures that are placed on many Asian kids, I think that it is too much and has its own set of issues, but I can understand why the various Asian communities in FCPS are focused on preparing for important exams and why they value those tests the way that they do. There are parts of the US culture that I am not a huge fan of, the over emphasis on sports in high schools and colleges for example. The debate over TJ selection is as much a discussion of cultures as it is how to choose kids for schools.

Maybe you need to travel more and understand other cultures so you can approach conversations like this with a bit more background and sensitivity.

I am fine with there not being a Qunat Q test. I am fine with SAT/ACTs no longer playing a huge roll in college admissions. I don't think those tests ever provided that much use, they were biased towards middle and upper middle class families from the get go. The language that is used, the cultural references in various elements all favored people who grew up in a specific environment. Now that there are a ton of prep options for the SAT/ACT you cannot really argue that the tests are demonstrating much of anything other then the fact that people who have enough money and/or desire can do really well on the tests because they can prepare for them properly. The Quant test for TJ has pretty much taken the same path as the SAT/ACT.

I think that the requirements should be based on classes and opportunities provided at the schools during the school day. I thin that TJ applicants should be in all honors classes for the core classes and should have completed Geometry by 8th grade. I think the GPA should be a 3.75 or higher.

I don't think that there should be an emphasis placed on extra curricular activities because not everyone has access to the same programs. Perhaps more importantly, not every kid has decided that they are interested enough in STEM as early as other kids so they don't have the time to develop the same resume. We are talking about 13 year olds here, some might not have really figured out that they liked STEM until they took Engineering as an elective in MS. Or they did not have the same exposure at home to STEM activities but found them in MS.

TJ is a public school so I think it is fair to expect that kids are coming from different background with different opportunities and that we cannot judge kids level of interest based on activities that they might not have even knew existed until they attended a MS that had some of those opportunities.

Race at the Top
Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools
Natasha Warikoo

An illuminating, in-depth look at competition in suburban high schools with growing numbers of Asian Americans, where white parents are determined to ensure that their children remain at the head of the class.

The American suburb conjures an image of picturesque privilege: manicured lawns, quiet streets, and—most important to parents—high-quality schools. These elite enclaves are also historically white, allowing many white Americans to safeguard their privileges by using public schools to help their children enter top colleges. That’s changing, however, as Asian American professionals increasingly move into wealthy suburban areas to give their kids that same leg up for their college applications and future careers.

As Natasha Warikoo shows in Race at the Top, white and Asian parents alike will do anything to help their children get to the top of the achievement pile. She takes us into the affluent suburban East Coast school she calls “Woodcrest High,” with a student body about one-half white and one-third Asian American. As increasing numbers of Woodcrest’s Asian American students earn star-pupil status, many whites feel displaced from the top of the academic hierarchy, and their frustrations grow. To maintain their children’s edge, some white parents complain to the school that schoolwork has become too rigorous. They also emphasize excellence in extracurriculars like sports and theater, which maintains their children’s advantage.

Warikoo reveals how, even when they are bested, white families in Woodcrest work to change the rules in their favor so they can remain the winners of the meritocracy game. Along the way, Warikoo explores urgent issues of racial and economic inequality that play out in affluent suburban American high schools. Caught in a race for power and privilege at the very top of society, what families in towns like Woodcrest fail to see is that everyone in their race is getting a medal—the children who actually lose are those living beyond their town’s boundaries.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:So absolutely absurd to not push kids to do advanced stuff. Especially since some average people are deciding the standards.

Push your kids to do well in school, on screener tests, and everywhere, becait will make them better at the end. They will learn about themselves the most.

Go for Algebra in 7th, even in 6th if you can.

LA should have better acceleration too.

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! For goodness sake,where would Bill Gates be without a college degree ?! Push ! Push ! Push !

Bill Gates did programming in high school...when that was almost unheard of. sometimes it is good to be silent rather than parade your ignorance.

+1

Bill Gates was programming since he was 13 years old. He forgot to check his privilege, bow down to "equity officers" and stop his accelerated education. He should have studied "Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity".

Down with success.

These days, you get more "public support" if you are trans, queer or some minority group than if you are motivated passionate student.

That's what the pro-privilege parents like to tell themselves.

You are serious about "privilege" how about dropping preference for children of alumni at universities? That goes a long way in increasing the capacity that is available to others.

How about actually helping minorities and economically disadvantaged from pre-k and in FCPS from k onwards with extra additional support. Special after school programs, additional hours, tutors, etc. right from k. Actively put money towards education of these children, who deserve this kind of support at an early age which builds a solid foundation.

But no, what you want is really signal your woke status and pretend to help. Getting 50 kids to TJ from these groups would allow you to signal your own moral superiority. All the tens of thousands of other kids from these groups who need help are ignored. There is no story there.

My child and I help coach kids at an elementary school in math from 3rd grade and many kids show a big improvement and lose fear of math. Many are economically disadvantaged. Some actively love math competitions. It is very little effort on our part actually. FCPS could scale this 1000x with a little investment. But no this is too low level and not much woke signaling is possible here. So they would rather focus on getting a few more kids to TJ to signal their wokeness.

Good points. grunt work isn't woke/cool.

Agree, grunt work isn't cool, but if you're happy with your kid doing worksheets instead of learning something meaningful go for it.

This has always been my difficulty with the attitude of TJ parents. It always seems like they are more concerned with setting a high floor for their child's achievement and potential than cultivating the possibility of a high ceiling. It's as though they're terrified that if their child doesn't end up as a doctor, lawyer, or full-stack web developer, that they're going to be working at a 7-11 or a drive thru. It's so myopic and it results in their kids not achieving what they could.

The poster spoke about doing the grunt work early so that kids can be helped over a longer period of time, build a good foundation and lose their fear of math. You are just saying something different. some fancy high horse stuff. care to elaborate in any case - what is cultivating high ceiling? seems like fun. i am guessing it doesn't involve work(sheets).

I appreciate your acknowledgment that you're unfamiliar with the concept - too few on this board are willing to own up to it.

What I'm referring to by prioritizing a high floor over a high ceiling is the preference for financial security and stability over the pursuit of dreams and greatness. The two are not mutually exclusive goals but the tendency is for TJ parents to treat them as such and push their children toward the former.

you seem to mean well. but have no idea how dreams and greatness is achieved. it is never pretty.

It’s never pretty, but it also never involves parents forcing their kids into fields they don’t care about just to maintain a high floor for earning potential.

maybe. reflective of a scrappy immigrant population for whom education has been a key to achieving (or trying to achieve) the American dream. you will have more ballet dancers in the next generation.

Yeah. I buy that argument when you're talking about the under-resourced and economically disadvantaged Asian population that the new TJ admissions process was intended to - and successfully did! - help. (Remember, poor Asians were statistically the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process.)

I don't buy it when you're talking about families out in Ashburn who drive their kids to private school in their tricked-out Tesla while trying to shoehorn them into STEM.

Your selective choosing doesn't change the facts - these parents are mostly first gen immigrants. just because they are doing better than you, you are envious.

I highly doubt they’re doing better than me, based on how they treat their children. They might have more money than me, but I REALLY doubt that they’re doing better.

Clutching at straws.

Nope. Just really happy and fulfilled.

PP. You are being racist right now, regardless of how much your white self wants to deny it. If you faced even 25% of the discrimination that Asian-American professionals faced every day, you wouldn't bother posting such bigoted comments. Here's a peek, since you seem ignorant and oblivious:

The working Asian woman is often expected to be not only compliant and a workhorse but also neutral, innocuous, devoid of personality. To hire one of us is to hire someone you don’t have to worry about, as far as “bad behavior” goes, because we’re not really seen as people. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove.


[…]


I couldn’t help but be annoyed that, somehow, one of us had failed to live up to the image of the compliant Asian woman.

Millennial and woke culture demand that I not feel this way. I should push back against all stereotypes and force others to see Asians as much, much more. Of course, we are much, much more, but to erase the model minority completely would be to erase many people I know, including part of myself.

It would erase someone like my father, who, in China, in his thirties, wrote dozens of letters to Western professors, promising to work as hard as five grad students, etc., if his student visa was sponsored. My father ended up studying in Australia, where he impressed his adviser enough to earn a recommendation to a postdoctoral position in the States. Had my father not worked so hard to improve our means, would I have the luxury of writing these words about him today?


Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-work

PP. None of this is news to me, and none of it is relevant to this conversation.

I do not have a problem with Asian-American people. I have a problem with people who insist that the only acceptable ways to evaluate students for their suitability for an outstanding academic environment are measures that can be deeply influenced by wealth and family privilege. A fair number of those people are not Asians.

And a very strong number of the people who agree with me in my endeavors - which, to your chagrin, have been largely successful - are Asian themselves.

The key variable for me is your attitude, not your race. If you are a person who believes that exclusive access to elite educational opportunities should be added to the laundry list of other societal advantages enjoyed by people with high amounts of disposable income, then you and I are not going to agree on much.

But if the majority of the people who hold that backwards attitude happen to be Asian, understand that your race is not the reason for my animus towards you. It's your feudalist belief that the family into which you're born should determine your future.

I tend to find that most Asian families that are focused on achievement and test scores as markers are not basing the idea on family status but on test scores and test scores alone. Families sacrifice a lot so that the oldest child can receive tutoring and attend classes and receive the support in order to do well on exams and earn entry to the best schools and best jobs. It is easier for families with money then families that are struggling to get by but the emphasis is the same.

China is currently dealing with a population contraction and part of the reason is that parents understand that their kids have the best chance for success by doing well on the exams at different grade levels. Parents are pouring money into tutoring and enrichment to increase their childs chances of scoring high and moving onto the best level possible. The cost of this has led many parents to not have additional children even after the one child mandate was dropped. The Government has noticed this and has passed laws that prevent tutoring and after school enrichment in order to decrease the cost of having a child. People have found work arounds but there is additional stress for the tutors and the families because they are worried about being arrested for violating the law.

This is very much a cultural issue. You can find scrolls discussing people who were tutored for years, into their 30’s, in order to pass the tests needed for entering the government. They make that State Department Civil Service exam look reasonable by comparison. The same attitude exists in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and India. I am sure it exists in other Asian cultures but those are the ones I know of from personal experience and reading in the newspaper. South Korea shuts down airplane traffic at the time of the national exams so there are no distractions for the kids taking the exams.

It is culturally very different. It just is. And you can argue that the US is different then China/Japan/S Korea/India all you want but the US is about bringing people from different parts of the world and absorbing their cultures into ours. I don’t see the US ever becoming like Europe (A levels anyone) or Asia but it is foolish to think that there is not going to be a culture clash on something as important as education with families that come from cultures with a long standing history of placing an emphasis on merit through testing.

maybe you should travel and interact with people outside your race to expand your world view and get some more nuance. human progress is about learning from each other. not statis. whether it is math, lanhuage, technology.

I wrote the post you responded to and I am as white as a white person can be. I happen to have a wave top understanding of Asian cultures and how they differ from European and Latin American cultures. I have travelled, which is why I think it is important to look at things from different perspectives.

I don't agree with the pressures that are placed on many Asian kids, I think that it is too much and has its own set of issues, but I can understand why the various Asian communities in FCPS are focused on preparing for important exams and why they value those tests the way that they do. There are parts of the US culture that I am not a huge fan of, the over emphasis on sports in high schools and colleges for example. The debate over TJ selection is as much a discussion of cultures as it is how to choose kids for schools.

Maybe you need to travel more and understand other cultures so you can approach conversations like this with a bit more background and sensitivity.

I am fine with there not being a Qunat Q test. I am fine with SAT/ACTs no longer playing a huge roll in college admissions. I don't think those tests ever provided that much use, they were biased towards middle and upper middle class families from the get go. The language that is used, the cultural references in various elements all favored people who grew up in a specific environment. Now that there are a ton of prep options for the SAT/ACT you cannot really argue that the tests are demonstrating much of anything other then the fact that people who have enough money and/or desire can do really well on the tests because they can prepare for them properly. The Quant test for TJ has pretty much taken the same path as the SAT/ACT.

I think that the requirements should be based on classes and opportunities provided at the schools during the school day. I thin that TJ applicants should be in all honors classes for the core classes and should have completed Geometry by 8th grade. I think the GPA should be a 3.75 or higher.

I don't think that there should be an emphasis placed on extra curricular activities because not everyone has access to the same programs. Perhaps more importantly, not every kid has decided that they are interested enough in STEM as early as other kids so they don't have the time to develop the same resume. We are talking about 13 year olds here, some might not have really figured out that they liked STEM until they took Engineering as an elective in MS. Or they did not have the same exposure at home to STEM activities but found them in MS.

TJ is a public school so I think it is fair to expect that kids are coming from different background with different opportunities and that we cannot judge kids level of interest based on activities that they might not have even knew existed until they attended a MS that had some of those opportunities.

I had no doubt you are white. That's why you are bothered as you are being bested. It was all ok until you were at the tiop. Now we need to be egalitarian and bring down the Asians. I see you!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So should I sign my child up for Curie starting in 1st or 2nd grade? I notice the classes have levels that don't correspond to grades and was hoping to get advice from my fellow pushers.

actually, you can get away with just spending time with your kid and making sure they read something and know their numbers/multiplication tables should work well. i am sure even you can manage that.

True you can do that but your kid will be lightyears behind those who attended Curie.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:So absolutely absurd to not push kids to do advanced stuff. Especially since some average people are deciding the standards.

Push your kids to do well in school, on screener tests, and everywhere, becait will make them better at the end. They will learn about themselves the most.

Go for Algebra in 7th, even in 6th if you can.

LA should have better acceleration too.

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! For goodness sake,where would Bill Gates be without a college degree ?! Push ! Push ! Push !

Bill Gates did programming in high school...when that was almost unheard of. sometimes it is good to be silent rather than parade your ignorance.

+1

Bill Gates was programming since he was 13 years old. He forgot to check his privilege, bow down to "equity officers" and stop his accelerated education. He should have studied "Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity".

Down with success.

These days, you get more "public support" if you are trans, queer or some minority group than if you are motivated passionate student.

That's what the pro-privilege parents like to tell themselves.

You are serious about "privilege" how about dropping preference for children of alumni at universities? That goes a long way in increasing the capacity that is available to others.

How about actually helping minorities and economically disadvantaged from pre-k and in FCPS from k onwards with extra additional support. Special after school programs, additional hours, tutors, etc. right from k. Actively put money towards education of these children, who deserve this kind of support at an early age which builds a solid foundation.

But no, what you want is really signal your woke status and pretend to help. Getting 50 kids to TJ from these groups would allow you to signal your own moral superiority. All the tens of thousands of other kids from these groups who need help are ignored. There is no story there.

My child and I help coach kids at an elementary school in math from 3rd grade and many kids show a big improvement and lose fear of math. Many are economically disadvantaged. Some actively love math competitions. It is very little effort on our part actually. FCPS could scale this 1000x with a little investment. But no this is too low level and not much woke signaling is possible here. So they would rather focus on getting a few more kids to TJ to signal their wokeness.

Good points. grunt work isn't woke/cool.

Agree, grunt work isn't cool, but if you're happy with your kid doing worksheets instead of learning something meaningful go for it.

This has always been my difficulty with the attitude of TJ parents. It always seems like they are more concerned with setting a high floor for their child's achievement and potential than cultivating the possibility of a high ceiling. It's as though they're terrified that if their child doesn't end up as a doctor, lawyer, or full-stack web developer, that they're going to be working at a 7-11 or a drive thru. It's so myopic and it results in their kids not achieving what they could.

The poster spoke about doing the grunt work early so that kids can be helped over a longer period of time, build a good foundation and lose their fear of math. You are just saying something different. some fancy high horse stuff. care to elaborate in any case - what is cultivating high ceiling? seems like fun. i am guessing it doesn't involve work(sheets).

I appreciate your acknowledgment that you're unfamiliar with the concept - too few on this board are willing to own up to it.

What I'm referring to by prioritizing a high floor over a high ceiling is the preference for financial security and stability over the pursuit of dreams and greatness. The two are not mutually exclusive goals but the tendency is for TJ parents to treat them as such and push their children toward the former.

you seem to mean well. but have no idea how dreams and greatness is achieved. it is never pretty.

It’s never pretty, but it also never involves parents forcing their kids into fields they don’t care about just to maintain a high floor for earning potential.

maybe. reflective of a scrappy immigrant population for whom education has been a key to achieving (or trying to achieve) the American dream. you will have more ballet dancers in the next generation.

Yeah. I buy that argument when you're talking about the under-resourced and economically disadvantaged Asian population that the new TJ admissions process was intended to - and successfully did! - help. (Remember, poor Asians were statistically the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process.)

I don't buy it when you're talking about families out in Ashburn who drive their kids to private school in their tricked-out Tesla while trying to shoehorn them into STEM.

Your selective choosing doesn't change the facts - these parents are mostly first gen immigrants. just because they are doing better than you, you are envious.

I highly doubt they’re doing better than me, based on how they treat their children. They might have more money than me, but I REALLY doubt that they’re doing better.

Clutching at straws.

Nope. Just really happy and fulfilled.

PP. You are being racist right now, regardless of how much your white self wants to deny it. If you faced even 25% of the discrimination that Asian-American professionals faced every day, you wouldn't bother posting such bigoted comments. Here's a peek, since you seem ignorant and oblivious:

The working Asian woman is often expected to be not only compliant and a workhorse but also neutral, innocuous, devoid of personality. To hire one of us is to hire someone you don’t have to worry about, as far as “bad behavior” goes, because we’re not really seen as people. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove.


[…]


I couldn’t help but be annoyed that, somehow, one of us had failed to live up to the image of the compliant Asian woman.

Millennial and woke culture demand that I not feel this way. I should push back against all stereotypes and force others to see Asians as much, much more. Of course, we are much, much more, but to erase the model minority completely would be to erase many people I know, including part of myself.

It would erase someone like my father, who, in China, in his thirties, wrote dozens of letters to Western professors, promising to work as hard as five grad students, etc., if his student visa was sponsored. My father ended up studying in Australia, where he impressed his adviser enough to earn a recommendation to a postdoctoral position in the States. Had my father not worked so hard to improve our means, would I have the luxury of writing these words about him today?


Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-work

PP. None of this is news to me, and none of it is relevant to this conversation.

I do not have a problem with Asian-American people. I have a problem with people who insist that the only acceptable ways to evaluate students for their suitability for an outstanding academic environment are measures that can be deeply influenced by wealth and family privilege. A fair number of those people are not Asians.

And a very strong number of the people who agree with me in my endeavors - which, to your chagrin, have been largely successful - are Asian themselves.

The key variable for me is your attitude, not your race. If you are a person who believes that exclusive access to elite educational opportunities should be added to the laundry list of other societal advantages enjoyed by people with high amounts of disposable income, then you and I are not going to agree on much.

But if the majority of the people who hold that backwards attitude happen to be Asian, understand that your race is not the reason for my animus towards you. It's your feudalist belief that the family into which you're born should determine your future.

I tend to find that most Asian families that are focused on achievement and test scores as markers are not basing the idea on family status but on test scores and test scores alone. Families sacrifice a lot so that the oldest child can receive tutoring and attend classes and receive the support in order to do well on exams and earn entry to the best schools and best jobs. It is easier for families with money then families that are struggling to get by but the emphasis is the same.

China is currently dealing with a population contraction and part of the reason is that parents understand that their kids have the best chance for success by doing well on the exams at different grade levels. Parents are pouring money into tutoring and enrichment to increase their childs chances of scoring high and moving onto the best level possible. The cost of this has led many parents to not have additional children even after the one child mandate was dropped. The Government has noticed this and has passed laws that prevent tutoring and after school enrichment in order to decrease the cost of having a child. People have found work arounds but there is additional stress for the tutors and the families because they are worried about being arrested for violating the law.

This is very much a cultural issue. You can find scrolls discussing people who were tutored for years, into their 30’s, in order to pass the tests needed for entering the government. They make that State Department Civil Service exam look reasonable by comparison. The same attitude exists in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and India. I am sure it exists in other Asian cultures but those are the ones I know of from personal experience and reading in the newspaper. South Korea shuts down airplane traffic at the time of the national exams so there are no distractions for the kids taking the exams.

It is culturally very different. It just is. And you can argue that the US is different then China/Japan/S Korea/India all you want but the US is about bringing people from different parts of the world and absorbing their cultures into ours. I don’t see the US ever becoming like Europe (A levels anyone) or Asia but it is foolish to think that there is not going to be a culture clash on something as important as education with families that come from cultures with a long standing history of placing an emphasis on merit through testing.

maybe you should travel and interact with people outside your race to expand your world view and get some more nuance. human progress is about learning from each other. not statis. whether it is math, lanhuage, technology.

I wrote the post you responded to and I am as white as a white person can be. I happen to have a wave top understanding of Asian cultures and how they differ from European and Latin American cultures. I have travelled, which is why I think it is important to look at things from different perspectives.

I don't agree with the pressures that are placed on many Asian kids, I think that it is too much and has its own set of issues, but I can understand why the various Asian communities in FCPS are focused on preparing for important exams and why they value those tests the way that they do. There are parts of the US culture that I am not a huge fan of, the over emphasis on sports in high schools and colleges for example. The debate over TJ selection is as much a discussion of cultures as it is how to choose kids for schools.

Maybe you need to travel more and understand other cultures so you can approach conversations like this with a bit more background and sensitivity.

I am fine with there not being a Qunat Q test. I am fine with SAT/ACTs no longer playing a huge roll in college admissions. I don't think those tests ever provided that much use, they were biased towards middle and upper middle class families from the get go. The language that is used, the cultural references in various elements all favored people who grew up in a specific environment. Now that there are a ton of prep options for the SAT/ACT you cannot really argue that the tests are demonstrating much of anything other then the fact that people who have enough money and/or desire can do really well on the tests because they can prepare for them properly. The Quant test for TJ has pretty much taken the same path as the SAT/ACT.

I think that the requirements should be based on classes and opportunities provided at the schools during the school day. I thin that TJ applicants should be in all honors classes for the core classes and should have completed Geometry by 8th grade. I think the GPA should be a 3.75 or higher.

I don't think that there should be an emphasis placed on extra curricular activities because not everyone has access to the same programs. Perhaps more importantly, not every kid has decided that they are interested enough in STEM as early as other kids so they don't have the time to develop the same resume. We are talking about 13 year olds here, some might not have really figured out that they liked STEM until they took Engineering as an elective in MS. Or they did not have the same exposure at home to STEM activities but found them in MS.

TJ is a public school so I think it is fair to expect that kids are coming from different background with different opportunities and that we cannot judge kids level of interest based on activities that they might not have even knew existed until they attended a MS that had some of those opportunities.

I agree with most everything you wrote. The biggest issue I see with the old system wasn't the Quant-Q per se but that some had access to the test while others did not which means it isn't really equitable which is an issue for publicly funded schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So absolutely absurd to not push kids to do advanced stuff. Especially since some average people are deciding the standards.

Push your kids to do well in school, on screener tests, and everywhere, becait will make them better at the end. They will learn about themselves the most.

Go for Algebra in 7th, even in 6th if you can.

LA should have better acceleration too.

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! For goodness sake,where would Bill Gates be without a college degree ?! Push ! Push ! Push !

Bill Gates did programming in high school...when that was almost unheard of. sometimes it is good to be silent rather than parade your ignorance.

+1

Bill Gates was programming since he was 13 years old. He forgot to check his privilege, bow down to "equity officers" and stop his accelerated education. He should have studied "Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity".

Down with success.

These days, you get more "public support" if you are trans, queer or some minority group than if you are motivated passionate student.

That's what the pro-privilege parents like to tell themselves.

You are serious about "privilege" how about dropping preference for children of alumni at universities? That goes a long way in increasing the capacity that is available to others.

How about actually helping minorities and economically disadvantaged from pre-k and in FCPS from k onwards with extra additional support. Special after school programs, additional hours, tutors, etc. right from k. Actively put money towards education of these children, who deserve this kind of support at an early age which builds a solid foundation.

But no, what you want is really signal your woke status and pretend to help. Getting 50 kids to TJ from these groups would allow you to signal your own moral superiority. All the tens of thousands of other kids from these groups who need help are ignored. There is no story there.

My child and I help coach kids at an elementary school in math from 3rd grade and many kids show a big improvement and lose fear of math. Many are economically disadvantaged. Some actively love math competitions. It is very little effort on our part actually. FCPS could scale this 1000x with a little investment. But no this is too low level and not much woke signaling is possible here. So they would rather focus on getting a few more kids to TJ to signal their wokeness.

Good points. grunt work isn't woke/cool.

Agree, grunt work isn't cool, but if you're happy with your kid doing worksheets instead of learning something meaningful go for it.

This has always been my difficulty with the attitude of TJ parents. It always seems like they are more concerned with setting a high floor for their child's achievement and potential than cultivating the possibility of a high ceiling. It's as though they're terrified that if their child doesn't end up as a doctor, lawyer, or full-stack web developer, that they're going to be working at a 7-11 or a drive thru. It's so myopic and it results in their kids not achieving what they could.

The poster spoke about doing the grunt work early so that kids can be helped over a longer period of time, build a good foundation and lose their fear of math. You are just saying something different. some fancy high horse stuff. care to elaborate in any case - what is cultivating high ceiling? seems like fun. i am guessing it doesn't involve work(sheets).

I appreciate your acknowledgment that you're unfamiliar with the concept - too few on this board are willing to own up to it.

What I'm referring to by prioritizing a high floor over a high ceiling is the preference for financial security and stability over the pursuit of dreams and greatness. The two are not mutually exclusive goals but the tendency is for TJ parents to treat them as such and push their children toward the former.

you seem to mean well. but have no idea how dreams and greatness is achieved. it is never pretty.

It’s never pretty, but it also never involves parents forcing their kids into fields they don’t care about just to maintain a high floor for earning potential.

maybe. reflective of a scrappy immigrant population for whom education has been a key to achieving (or trying to achieve) the American dream. you will have more ballet dancers in the next generation.

Yeah. I buy that argument when you're talking about the under-resourced and economically disadvantaged Asian population that the new TJ admissions process was intended to - and successfully did! - help. (Remember, poor Asians were statistically the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process.)

I don't buy it when you're talking about families out in Ashburn who drive their kids to private school in their tricked-out Tesla while trying to shoehorn them into STEM.

Your selective choosing doesn't change the facts - these parents are mostly first gen immigrants. just because they are doing better than you, you are envious.

I highly doubt they’re doing better than me, based on how they treat their children. They might have more money than me, but I REALLY doubt that they’re doing better.

Clutching at straws.

Nope. Just really happy and fulfilled.

PP. You are being racist right now, regardless of how much your white self wants to deny it. If you faced even 25% of the discrimination that Asian-American professionals faced every day, you wouldn't bother posting such bigoted comments. Here's a peek, since you seem ignorant and oblivious:

The working Asian woman is often expected to be not only compliant and a workhorse but also neutral, innocuous, devoid of personality. To hire one of us is to hire someone you don’t have to worry about, as far as “bad behavior” goes, because we’re not really seen as people. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove.


[…]


I couldn’t help but be annoyed that, somehow, one of us had failed to live up to the image of the compliant Asian woman.

Millennial and woke culture demand that I not feel this way. I should push back against all stereotypes and force others to see Asians as much, much more. Of course, we are much, much more, but to erase the model minority completely would be to erase many people I know, including part of myself.

It would erase someone like my father, who, in China, in his thirties, wrote dozens of letters to Western professors, promising to work as hard as five grad students, etc., if his student visa was sponsored. My father ended up studying in Australia, where he impressed his adviser enough to earn a recommendation to a postdoctoral position in the States. Had my father not worked so hard to improve our means, would I have the luxury of writing these words about him today?


Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-work

PP. None of this is news to me, and none of it is relevant to this conversation.

I do not have a problem with Asian-American people. I have a problem with people who insist that the only acceptable ways to evaluate students for their suitability for an outstanding academic environment are measures that can be deeply influenced by wealth and family privilege. A fair number of those people are not Asians.

And a very strong number of the people who agree with me in my endeavors - which, to your chagrin, have been largely successful - are Asian themselves.

The key variable for me is your attitude, not your race. If you are a person who believes that exclusive access to elite educational opportunities should be added to the laundry list of other societal advantages enjoyed by people with high amounts of disposable income, then you and I are not going to agree on much.

But if the majority of the people who hold that backwards attitude happen to be Asian, understand that your race is not the reason for my animus towards you. It's your feudalist belief that the family into which you're born should determine your future.

I tend to find that most Asian families that are focused on achievement and test scores as markers are not basing the idea on family status but on test scores and test scores alone. Families sacrifice a lot so that the oldest child can receive tutoring and attend classes and receive the support in order to do well on exams and earn entry to the best schools and best jobs. It is easier for families with money then families that are struggling to get by but the emphasis is the same.

China is currently dealing with a population contraction and part of the reason is that parents understand that their kids have the best chance for success by doing well on the exams at different grade levels. Parents are pouring money into tutoring and enrichment to increase their childs chances of scoring high and moving onto the best level possible. The cost of this has led many parents to not have additional children even after the one child mandate was dropped. The Government has noticed this and has passed laws that prevent tutoring and after school enrichment in order to decrease the cost of having a child. People have found work arounds but there is additional stress for the tutors and the families because they are worried about being arrested for violating the law.

This is very much a cultural issue. You can find scrolls discussing people who were tutored for years, into their 30’s, in order to pass the tests needed for entering the government. They make that State Department Civil Service exam look reasonable by comparison. The same attitude exists in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and India. I am sure it exists in other Asian cultures but those are the ones I know of from personal experience and reading in the newspaper. South Korea shuts down airplane traffic at the time of the national exams so there are no distractions for the kids taking the exams.

It is culturally very different. It just is. And you can argue that the US is different then China/Japan/S Korea/India all you want but the US is about bringing people from different parts of the world and absorbing their cultures into ours. I don’t see the US ever becoming like Europe (A levels anyone) or Asia but it is foolish to think that there is not going to be a culture clash on something as important as education with families that come from cultures with a long standing history of placing an emphasis on merit through testing.

maybe you should travel and interact with people outside your race to expand your world view and get some more nuance. human progress is about learning from each other. not statis. whether it is math, lanhuage, technology.

I wrote the post you responded to and I am as white as a white person can be. I happen to have a wave top understanding of Asian cultures and how they differ from European and Latin American cultures. I have travelled, which is why I think it is important to look at things from different perspectives.

I don't agree with the pressures that are placed on many Asian kids, I think that it is too much and has its own set of issues, but I can understand why the various Asian communities in FCPS are focused on preparing for important exams and why they value those tests the way that they do. There are parts of the US culture that I am not a huge fan of, the over emphasis on sports in high schools and colleges for example. The debate over TJ selection is as much a discussion of cultures as it is how to choose kids for schools.

Maybe you need to travel more and understand other cultures so you can approach conversations like this with a bit more background and sensitivity.

I am fine with there not being a Qunat Q test. I am fine with SAT/ACTs no longer playing a huge roll in college admissions. I don't think those tests ever provided that much use, they were biased towards middle and upper middle class families from the get go. The language that is used, the cultural references in various elements all favored people who grew up in a specific environment. Now that there are a ton of prep options for the SAT/ACT you cannot really argue that the tests are demonstrating much of anything other then the fact that people who have enough money and/or desire can do really well on the tests because they can prepare for them properly. The Quant test for TJ has pretty much taken the same path as the SAT/ACT.

I think that the requirements should be based on classes and opportunities provided at the schools during the school day. I thin that TJ applicants should be in all honors classes for the core classes and should have completed Geometry by 8th grade. I think the GPA should be a 3.75 or higher.

I don't think that there should be an emphasis placed on extra curricular activities because not everyone has access to the same programs. Perhaps more importantly, not every kid has decided that they are interested enough in STEM as early as other kids so they don't have the time to develop the same resume. We are talking about 13 year olds here, some might not have really figured out that they liked STEM until they took Engineering as an elective in MS. Or they did not have the same exposure at home to STEM activities but found them in MS.

TJ is a public school so I think it is fair to expect that kids are coming from different background with different opportunities and that we cannot judge kids level of interest based on activities that they might not have even knew existed until they attended a MS that had some of those opportunities.

I had no doubt you are white. That's why you are bothered as you are being bested. It was all ok until you were at the tiop. Now we need to be egalitarian and bring down the Asians. I see you!

What makes you think that I see acceptance at TJ as important to me or my family? I never would have attended TJ. I did not have the interest to attend a school like TJ nor did I have the math ability to attend a school like TJ. Hell, I flunked 8th grade science and didn't take Algebra until 9th grade. It didn't bother me then and it doesn't bother me now. I attended a normal high school, a small liberal arts college, and a top tier graduate school to earn my PhD. I am very well aware that what high school you attend is not all that important for your future. Same for college. I did more then enough that my grades and abilities stood out and allowed me to earn the degrees I was interested in.

My child might be interested in TJ so I follow the threads. I am a parent in FCPS so I have a voice in the conversation. If you want to assume that anyone who disagrees with the importance of testing is simply afraid of being "bested" then you are the one who needs to broaden your horizon and understand where other people are coming from.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So absolutely absurd to not push kids to do advanced stuff. Especially since some average people are deciding the standards.

Push your kids to do well in school, on screener tests, and everywhere, becait will make them better at the end. They will learn about themselves the most.

Go for Algebra in 7th, even in 6th if you can.

LA should have better acceleration too.

Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! For goodness sake,where would Bill Gates be without a college degree ?! Push ! Push ! Push !

Bill Gates did programming in high school...when that was almost unheard of. sometimes it is good to be silent rather than parade your ignorance.

+1

Bill Gates was programming since he was 13 years old. He forgot to check his privilege, bow down to "equity officers" and stop his accelerated education. He should have studied "Equity, Inclusivity and Diversity".

Down with success.

These days, you get more "public support" if you are trans, queer or some minority group than if you are motivated passionate student.

That's what the pro-privilege parents like to tell themselves.

You are serious about "privilege" how about dropping preference for children of alumni at universities? That goes a long way in increasing the capacity that is available to others.

How about actually helping minorities and economically disadvantaged from pre-k and in FCPS from k onwards with extra additional support. Special after school programs, additional hours, tutors, etc. right from k. Actively put money towards education of these children, who deserve this kind of support at an early age which builds a solid foundation.

But no, what you want is really signal your woke status and pretend to help. Getting 50 kids to TJ from these groups would allow you to signal your own moral superiority. All the tens of thousands of other kids from these groups who need help are ignored. There is no story there.

My child and I help coach kids at an elementary school in math from 3rd grade and many kids show a big improvement and lose fear of math. Many are economically disadvantaged. Some actively love math competitions. It is very little effort on our part actually. FCPS could scale this 1000x with a little investment. But no this is too low level and not much woke signaling is possible here. So they would rather focus on getting a few more kids to TJ to signal their wokeness.

Good points. grunt work isn't woke/cool.

Agree, grunt work isn't cool, but if you're happy with your kid doing worksheets instead of learning something meaningful go for it.

This has always been my difficulty with the attitude of TJ parents. It always seems like they are more concerned with setting a high floor for their child's achievement and potential than cultivating the possibility of a high ceiling. It's as though they're terrified that if their child doesn't end up as a doctor, lawyer, or full-stack web developer, that they're going to be working at a 7-11 or a drive thru. It's so myopic and it results in their kids not achieving what they could.

The poster spoke about doing the grunt work early so that kids can be helped over a longer period of time, build a good foundation and lose their fear of math. You are just saying something different. some fancy high horse stuff. care to elaborate in any case - what is cultivating high ceiling? seems like fun. i am guessing it doesn't involve work(sheets).

I appreciate your acknowledgment that you're unfamiliar with the concept - too few on this board are willing to own up to it.

What I'm referring to by prioritizing a high floor over a high ceiling is the preference for financial security and stability over the pursuit of dreams and greatness. The two are not mutually exclusive goals but the tendency is for TJ parents to treat them as such and push their children toward the former.

you seem to mean well. but have no idea how dreams and greatness is achieved. it is never pretty.

It’s never pretty, but it also never involves parents forcing their kids into fields they don’t care about just to maintain a high floor for earning potential.

maybe. reflective of a scrappy immigrant population for whom education has been a key to achieving (or trying to achieve) the American dream. you will have more ballet dancers in the next generation.

Yeah. I buy that argument when you're talking about the under-resourced and economically disadvantaged Asian population that the new TJ admissions process was intended to - and successfully did! - help. (Remember, poor Asians were statistically the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process.)

I don't buy it when you're talking about families out in Ashburn who drive their kids to private school in their tricked-out Tesla while trying to shoehorn them into STEM.

Your selective choosing doesn't change the facts - these parents are mostly first gen immigrants. just because they are doing better than you, you are envious.

I highly doubt they’re doing better than me, based on how they treat their children. They might have more money than me, but I REALLY doubt that they’re doing better.

Clutching at straws.

Nope. Just really happy and fulfilled.

PP. You are being racist right now, regardless of how much your white self wants to deny it. If you faced even 25% of the discrimination that Asian-American professionals faced every day, you wouldn't bother posting such bigoted comments. Here's a peek, since you seem ignorant and oblivious:

The working Asian woman is often expected to be not only compliant and a workhorse but also neutral, innocuous, devoid of personality. To hire one of us is to hire someone you don’t have to worry about, as far as “bad behavior” goes, because we’re not really seen as people. The obvious but tedious fact is that some of us are conditioned to work much harder than others because some of us have a lot more to prove.


[…]


I couldn’t help but be annoyed that, somehow, one of us had failed to live up to the image of the compliant Asian woman.

Millennial and woke culture demand that I not feel this way. I should push back against all stereotypes and force others to see Asians as much, much more. Of course, we are much, much more, but to erase the model minority completely would be to erase many people I know, including part of myself.

It would erase someone like my father, who, in China, in his thirties, wrote dozens of letters to Western professors, promising to work as hard as five grad students, etc., if his student visa was sponsored. My father ended up studying in Australia, where he impressed his adviser enough to earn a recommendation to a postdoctoral position in the States. Had my father not worked so hard to improve our means, would I have the luxury of writing these words about him today?


Source: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/personal-history/notes-on-work

PP. None of this is news to me, and none of it is relevant to this conversation.

I do not have a problem with Asian-American people. I have a problem with people who insist that the only acceptable ways to evaluate students for their suitability for an outstanding academic environment are measures that can be deeply influenced by wealth and family privilege. A fair number of those people are not Asians.

And a very strong number of the people who agree with me in my endeavors - which, to your chagrin, have been largely successful - are Asian themselves.

The key variable for me is your attitude, not your race. If you are a person who believes that exclusive access to elite educational opportunities should be added to the laundry list of other societal advantages enjoyed by people with high amounts of disposable income, then you and I are not going to agree on much.

But if the majority of the people who hold that backwards attitude happen to be Asian, understand that your race is not the reason for my animus towards you. It's your feudalist belief that the family into which you're born should determine your future.

I tend to find that most Asian families that are focused on achievement and test scores as markers are not basing the idea on family status but on test scores and test scores alone. Families sacrifice a lot so that the oldest child can receive tutoring and attend classes and receive the support in order to do well on exams and earn entry to the best schools and best jobs. It is easier for families with money then families that are struggling to get by but the emphasis is the same.

China is currently dealing with a population contraction and part of the reason is that parents understand that their kids have the best chance for success by doing well on the exams at different grade levels. Parents are pouring money into tutoring and enrichment to increase their childs chances of scoring high and moving onto the best level possible. The cost of this has led many parents to not have additional children even after the one child mandate was dropped. The Government has noticed this and has passed laws that prevent tutoring and after school enrichment in order to decrease the cost of having a child. People have found work arounds but there is additional stress for the tutors and the families because they are worried about being arrested for violating the law.

This is very much a cultural issue. You can find scrolls discussing people who were tutored for years, into their 30’s, in order to pass the tests needed for entering the government. They make that State Department Civil Service exam look reasonable by comparison. The same attitude exists in South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and India. I am sure it exists in other Asian cultures but those are the ones I know of from personal experience and reading in the newspaper. South Korea shuts down airplane traffic at the time of the national exams so there are no distractions for the kids taking the exams.

It is culturally very different. It just is. And you can argue that the US is different then China/Japan/S Korea/India all you want but the US is about bringing people from different parts of the world and absorbing their cultures into ours. I don’t see the US ever becoming like Europe (A levels anyone) or Asia but it is foolish to think that there is not going to be a culture clash on something as important as education with families that come from cultures with a long standing history of placing an emphasis on merit through testing.

maybe you should travel and interact with people outside your race to expand your world view and get some more nuance. human progress is about learning from each other. not statis. whether it is math, lanhuage, technology.

I wrote the post you responded to and I am as white as a white person can be. I happen to have a wave top understanding of Asian cultures and how they differ from European and Latin American cultures. I have travelled, which is why I think it is important to look at things from different perspectives.

I don't agree with the pressures that are placed on many Asian kids, I think that it is too much and has its own set of issues, but I can understand why the various Asian communities in FCPS are focused on preparing for important exams and why they value those tests the way that they do. There are parts of the US culture that I am not a huge fan of, the over emphasis on sports in high schools and colleges for example. The debate over TJ selection is as much a discussion of cultures as it is how to choose kids for schools.

Maybe you need to travel more and understand other cultures so you can approach conversations like this with a bit more background and sensitivity.

I am fine with there not being a Qunat Q test. I am fine with SAT/ACTs no longer playing a huge roll in college admissions. I don't think those tests ever provided that much use, they were biased towards middle and upper middle class families from the get go. The language that is used, the cultural references in various elements all favored people who grew up in a specific environment. Now that there are a ton of prep options for the SAT/ACT you cannot really argue that the tests are demonstrating much of anything other then the fact that people who have enough money and/or desire can do really well on the tests because they can prepare for them properly. The Quant test for TJ has pretty much taken the same path as the SAT/ACT.

I think that the requirements should be based on classes and opportunities provided at the schools during the school day. I thin that TJ applicants should be in all honors classes for the core classes and should have completed Geometry by 8th grade. I think the GPA should be a 3.75 or higher.

I don't think that there should be an emphasis placed on extra curricular activities because not everyone has access to the same programs. Perhaps more importantly, not every kid has decided that they are interested enough in STEM as early as other kids so they don't have the time to develop the same resume. We are talking about 13 year olds here, some might not have really figured out that they liked STEM until they took Engineering as an elective in MS. Or they did not have the same exposure at home to STEM activities but found them in MS.

TJ is a public school so I think it is fair to expect that kids are coming from different background with different opportunities and that we cannot judge kids level of interest based on activities that they might not have even knew existed until they attended a MS that had some of those opportunities.

I had no doubt you are white. That's why you are bothered as you are being bested. It was all ok until you were at the tiop. Now we need to be egalitarian and bring down the Asians. I see you!

What makes you think that I see acceptance at TJ as important to me or my family? I never would have attended TJ. I did not have the interest to attend a school like TJ nor did I have the math ability to attend a school like TJ. Hell, I flunked 8th grade science and didn't take Algebra until 9th grade. It didn't bother me then and it doesn't bother me now. I attended a normal high school, a small liberal arts college, and a top tier graduate school to earn my PhD. I am very well aware that what high school you attend is not all that important for your future. Same for college. I did more then enough that my grades and abilities stood out and allowed me to earn the degrees I was interested in.

My child might be interested in TJ so I follow the threads. I am a parent in FCPS so I have a voice in the conversation. If you want to assume that anyone who disagrees with the importance of testing is simply afraid of being "bested" then you are the one who needs to broaden your horizon and understand where other people are coming from.

DP, Thanks for taking the time to comment here you write very well. I'm guilty of not taking enough time when I post sometimes. I agree with almost everything that you are saying.

Other poster, I've been following education for a while and I recognize that Atlantic article you posted, I think it was mainly about schools in Georgia. What's going on there is a universal principal. Folks of any race don't like it when they aren't in the majority. White folks started leaving when schools were becoming increasingly Asian. The same thing has happened at TJ.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out at colleges over the next generation or so. It's already happening where whites are avoiding certain schools because of the numbers. The California system is the clearest example, MIT is a lesser example.

To close, no culture has the formula figured out for life success. Personally, I think it's a combination of innate ability/intelligence, hard work/grit and yes people skills to make and keep connections both personally and professionally. That last piece is key and many folks haunting this forum still don't understand its importance. Pretty soon there will be more self-help books and high brow articles about soft skills I'm sure. Similar to leadership, I'm not sure if it can be taught.