Anonymous wrote:Perhaps by now many have read the "TJ Papers" - a collection of materials obtained from FCPS during discovery in the civil litigation by the plaintiffs challenging the changes to the TJ admissions process. Many are available at https://defendinged.org/incidents/tjpapers/
Some take-aways:
1. The three main forces behind the TJ admissions change were Scott Brabrand (Superintendent), Karen Corbett Sanders (School Board member from Mount Vernon District), and Scott Surovell (member of Virginia Senate from the 36th District, which includes the Mount Vernon area).
2. Brabrand was in major "white savior" mode, as if his legacy depending on his personally pushing through radical changes in the TJ admissions process. At various times, Brabrand's interactions with staff indicated that his goal was simply to adjust the process, by whatever means necessary, to guarantee the admission of more Black and Hispanic students to TJ, regardless of whether they were otherwise the most qualified candidates.
3. Corbett-Sanders and Surovell have no guiding principles; they are just retail pork-barrel politicians who seized upon the moment to grab more TJ seats for students in their own part of the county.
4. Brabrand misled School Board members about the possibility that the VDOE might come down hard on FCPS if they didn't make major changes to TJ admissions, whereas over time it emerged that VDOE did not necessarily expect FCPS's "diversity plan" (which FCPS was required to submit by October 2020) to include changes to the TJ admissions process by 2021.
5. The process was rushed, incoherent, and marked by School Board members sniping at each other and at Brabrand. Sizemore-Heizer complained that Keys Gamarra was calling other School Board members racist. Pekarsky and Omeish referred to Frisch as a liar. Omeish referred to Brabrand as "too dumb and too white." Pekarsky and Omeish openly acknowledged that the changes under consideration were "anti-asian." McLaughlin told a constituent that Brabrand's handling of the admissions changes was the worst process she had encountered in her many years as a School Board member. Cohen and other School Board members admitted after the fact that they hadn't paid attention as to whether the middle school admissions quotas would be based on a student's "base school" or "attending school," even though this had major implications on 8th grade students attending AAP centers. And so on.
6. The two School Board members representing the districts with the most TJ students - Pekarsky and Tholen - had reservations but patted themselves on the back for effecting a "compromise" (i.e., rejecting Brabrand's initial "lottery" proposal in favor of a "holistic" approach that might lead to a higher number of Sully and Dranesville kids continuing to get into TJ), but never seriously grappled with (a) whether they should have opposed any changes as a matter of principle or (b) whether the change they ultimately supported would end up chewing up even more of FCPS's time and resources, to the detriment of FCPS's ability to address challenges at other schools. Ultimately, they were swept along with the tide for fear of being criticized by their colleagues.
7. Many of the most embarrassing exchanges between School Board members were reflected in text messages produced during discovery in the civil litigation. This suggests that (a) School Board members often text each other to avoid using their FCPS email accounts to conduct official School Board business; and/or (2) no one in FCPS's legal department ever cautioned these folks that text messages are just as discoverable in civil litigation as emails.
No one who objectively reads these materials can conclude this School Board is competent, principled, or deserving of another term in office. They embarrass not only themselves, but also everyone in the county who wants Fairfax County to stand for good governance. If they had any dignity, they would resign now, but in any event they should step aside and let others replace them in 2023.
Interesting... but as far as I can tell the changes weren't radical at all and well within best practice guidelines for GT admissions.
Superficially race-neutral changes are not okay if used with the intent and result of racist discrimination.
What if they're used with the intent and result of ending racist discrimination that previously took place through a superficially race-neutral but demonstrably discriminatory process that had the impact of shutting out Black, Hispanic, and low-income Asian students?
They weren't. The prior process was race-neutral, not "superficially race-neutral."
And if you really want to go down the path of insisting on measuring everything by its "impact," then you should be worrying about the "process" that leads to FCPS operating Langley High School as a 3% FARMS school with few Black and Hispanic students. Or the "process" that leads to the under-representation of Asian administrators at senior levels within FCPS. And so on.
Change TJ to an Academy program, or shut it down entirely if you must, but your arguments are frivolous and the "new" process a sham that has already been deemed invalid by someone with far more legal training than you apparently have.
1) False. A process that virtually eliminates Black and Hispanic students may be "race-blind", but by definition cannot be "race-neutral".
2) The process that leads to FCPS operating a neighborhood high school that has 3% FARMS students has to do with geography. We are in agreement that they could probably redraw the boundaries of that school somewhat to include more Black/Hispanic/FARMS students, but the impact would be minimal at best because there are no poor or Black/Hispanic enclaves anywhere near Langley. Those processes are not comparable. Nor are the processes for hiring people for jobs - but by all means, advocate in those areas if they're your fight. We will support you.
3) TJ is not built to be an academy. It is built to be a full-service high school that goes beyond its exceptional STEM offerings. Hilton absolutely has more legal training than I do, but I have far more educational and TJ experience than even the folks who came up with the admissions process that you so despise. It's far from ideal, but it's a significant improvement over the previous system.
The problem is #3. You had a flawed system and you replaced it with a "less" flawed system. As has been said, two wrongs dont make a right. There was no reason to rush this through during the Pandemic . There was not enough consultation. I am sure a better system would have come about if the process had been conducted with inputs from everyone and the impacted had been consulted. thatb would have taken time. But this reform was triggered by ideology and dogma - the TJ papers reveal that the Board wanted to capitalize of the George Floyd sentiment.
Student welfare is secondary to political ideology to this school board. While I don't believe CRT, et al is being taught today at FCPS, I am convinced that if left unchecked this School Board will introduce all of that. 2 years ago in would have thought all of this was right-wing noise - not any more.
I dont believe anyone on this Board - (many affiliated with the School Board and the reform) when they say they know more and they have "experience". You cannot see beyond your ideology and deserve your comeuppance at the next election(s)
What specifically would be your problem with some areas of education being informed by Critical Race Theory?
I am all for "some areas of education" being informed by CRT. I don't believe it should be taught in K-12. In fact it should be taught to everyone in college. It deals with a painful part of our history and our development as a nation (and all our flaws). There is a lot of merit there.
But CRT is too amorphous to form part of a K-12 curriculum. Radical teachers (and some not all will be radical) and impressionable students make for a toxic combination. Leave it to college where kids are mature enough to sieve content from ideology.
Would you agree with the idea of presenting a direct through line from, say, slavery to "separate but equal" to redlining to educational inequality? For say, AP US History students?
I would keep all contentious issues outside of K-12 schools. Not because they are right or wrong but because there has to be a consensus built around these issues in the public domain. Schools should not be a battleground for ideological issues. We are already too polarized.
If we allow contentious issues to get a mention then you open a Pandora's box and you may be forced to make mention of creationism for example. we can use our kids as a sandbox to battle on ideological grounds. There is much merit in CRT among believers (I am one) and much merit among the faithful in creationism (I am not one but i dont douby anybody's faith). But these issues do not belong n school. Not yet not till we establish consensus in the broader publ;ic and political domain.
How on earth do you teach US history without touching on slavery or Jim Crow or the civil rights movement? How do you teach AP US history without including the Klan or Japanese internment or Tulsa or the Chinese Exclusion Act or the stonewall riots?
CRT is not the history of civil rights. Let us not conflate the two. Absolutely slavery is something all students should know about. However unless there is braid consensus that history needs to be taught through the lens of CRT, we should stay away.
I was pretty satisfied with the way history was being taught 5 years ago. We definitely taught the wrongs of history and the social injustice over the years with respect to immigrants, minorities, Black people, and women. We just didn't add the alleged systemic part and the alleged irredeemable racism of people born with white skin.
Anonymous wrote:Perhaps by now many have read the "TJ Papers" - a collection of materials obtained from FCPS during discovery in the civil litigation by the plaintiffs challenging the changes to the TJ admissions process. Many are available at https://defendinged.org/incidents/tjpapers/
Some take-aways:
1. The three main forces behind the TJ admissions change were Scott Brabrand (Superintendent), Karen Corbett Sanders (School Board member from Mount Vernon District), and Scott Surovell (member of Virginia Senate from the 36th District, which includes the Mount Vernon area).
2. Brabrand was in major "white savior" mode, as if his legacy depending on his personally pushing through radical changes in the TJ admissions process. At various times, Brabrand's interactions with staff indicated that his goal was simply to adjust the process, by whatever means necessary, to guarantee the admission of more Black and Hispanic students to TJ, regardless of whether they were otherwise the most qualified candidates.
3. Corbett-Sanders and Surovell have no guiding principles; they are just retail pork-barrel politicians who seized upon the moment to grab more TJ seats for students in their own part of the county.
4. Brabrand misled School Board members about the possibility that the VDOE might come down hard on FCPS if they didn't make major changes to TJ admissions, whereas over time it emerged that VDOE did not necessarily expect FCPS's "diversity plan" (which FCPS was required to submit by October 2020) to include changes to the TJ admissions process by 2021.
5. The process was rushed, incoherent, and marked by School Board members sniping at each other and at Brabrand. Sizemore-Heizer complained that Keys Gamarra was calling other School Board members racist. Pekarsky and Omeish referred to Frisch as a liar. Omeish referred to Brabrand as "too dumb and too white." Pekarsky and Omeish openly acknowledged that the changes under consideration were "anti-asian." McLaughlin told a constituent that Brabrand's handling of the admissions changes was the worst process she had encountered in her many years as a School Board member. Cohen and other School Board members admitted after the fact that they hadn't paid attention as to whether the middle school admissions quotas would be based on a student's "base school" or "attending school," even though this had major implications on 8th grade students attending AAP centers. And so on.
6. The two School Board members representing the districts with the most TJ students - Pekarsky and Tholen - had reservations but patted themselves on the back for effecting a "compromise" (i.e., rejecting Brabrand's initial "lottery" proposal in favor of a "holistic" approach that might lead to a higher number of Sully and Dranesville kids continuing to get into TJ), but never seriously grappled with (a) whether they should have opposed any changes as a matter of principle or (b) whether the change they ultimately supported would end up chewing up even more of FCPS's time and resources, to the detriment of FCPS's ability to address challenges at other schools. Ultimately, they were swept along with the tide for fear of being criticized by their colleagues.
7. Many of the most embarrassing exchanges between School Board members were reflected in text messages produced during discovery in the civil litigation. This suggests that (a) School Board members often text each other to avoid using their FCPS email accounts to conduct official School Board business; and/or (2) no one in FCPS's legal department ever cautioned these folks that text messages are just as discoverable in civil litigation as emails.
No one who objectively reads these materials can conclude this School Board is competent, principled, or deserving of another term in office. They embarrass not only themselves, but also everyone in the county who wants Fairfax County to stand for good governance. If they had any dignity, they would resign now, but in any event they should step aside and let others replace them in 2023.
Interesting... but as far as I can tell the changes weren't radical at all and well within best practice guidelines for GT admissions.
Superficially race-neutral changes are not okay if used with the intent and result of racist discrimination.
What if they're used with the intent and result of ending racist discrimination that previously took place through a superficially race-neutral but demonstrably discriminatory process that had the impact of shutting out Black, Hispanic, and low-income Asian students?
They weren't. The prior process was race-neutral, not "superficially race-neutral."
And if you really want to go down the path of insisting on measuring everything by its "impact," then you should be worrying about the "process" that leads to FCPS operating Langley High School as a 3% FARMS school with few Black and Hispanic students. Or the "process" that leads to the under-representation of Asian administrators at senior levels within FCPS. And so on.
Change TJ to an Academy program, or shut it down entirely if you must, but your arguments are frivolous and the "new" process a sham that has already been deemed invalid by someone with far more legal training than you apparently have.
1) False. A process that virtually eliminates Black and Hispanic students may be "race-blind", but by definition cannot be "race-neutral".
2) The process that leads to FCPS operating a neighborhood high school that has 3% FARMS students has to do with geography. We are in agreement that they could probably redraw the boundaries of that school somewhat to include more Black/Hispanic/FARMS students, but the impact would be minimal at best because there are no poor or Black/Hispanic enclaves anywhere near Langley. Those processes are not comparable. Nor are the processes for hiring people for jobs - but by all means, advocate in those areas if they're your fight. We will support you.
3) TJ is not built to be an academy. It is built to be a full-service high school that goes beyond its exceptional STEM offerings. Hilton absolutely has more legal training than I do, but I have far more educational and TJ experience than even the folks who came up with the admissions process that you so despise. It's far from ideal, but it's a significant improvement over the previous system.
The problem is #3. You had a flawed system and you replaced it with a "less" flawed system. As has been said, two wrongs dont make a right. There was no reason to rush this through during the Pandemic . There was not enough consultation. I am sure a better system would have come about if the process had been conducted with inputs from everyone and the impacted had been consulted. thatb would have taken time. But this reform was triggered by ideology and dogma - the TJ papers reveal that the Board wanted to capitalize of the George Floyd sentiment.
Student welfare is secondary to political ideology to this school board. While I don't believe CRT, et al is being taught today at FCPS, I am convinced that if left unchecked this School Board will introduce all of that. 2 years ago in would have thought all of this was right-wing noise - not any more.
I dont believe anyone on this Board - (many affiliated with the School Board and the reform) when they say they know more and they have "experience". You cannot see beyond your ideology and deserve your comeuppance at the next election(s)
What specifically would be your problem with some areas of education being informed by Critical Race Theory?
I am all for "some areas of education" being informed by CRT. I don't believe it should be taught in K-12. In fact it should be taught to everyone in college. It deals with a painful part of our history and our development as a nation (and all our flaws). There is a lot of merit there.
But CRT is too amorphous to form part of a K-12 curriculum. Radical teachers (and some not all will be radical) and impressionable students make for a toxic combination. Leave it to college where kids are mature enough to sieve content from ideology.
Would you agree with the idea of presenting a direct through line from, say, slavery to "separate but equal" to redlining to educational inequality? For say, AP US History students?
I would keep all contentious issues outside of K-12 schools. Not because they are right or wrong but because there has to be a consensus built around these issues in the public domain. Schools should not be a battleground for ideological issues. We are already too polarized.
If we allow contentious issues to get a mention then you open a Pandora's box and you may be forced to make mention of creationism for example. we can use our kids as a sandbox to battle on ideological grounds. There is much merit in CRT among believers (I am one) and much merit among the faithful in creationism (I am not one but i dont douby anybody's faith). But these issues do not belong n school. Not yet not till we establish consensus in the broader publ;ic and political domain.
How on earth do you teach US history without touching on slavery or Jim Crow or the civil rights movement? How do you teach AP US history without including the Klan or Japanese internment or Tulsa or the Chinese Exclusion Act or the stonewall riots?
CRT is not the history of civil rights. Let us not conflate the two. Absolutely slavery is something all students should know about. However unless there is braid consensus that history needs to be taught through the lens of CRT, we should stay away.
I was pretty satisfied with the way history was being taught 5 years ago. We definitely taught the wrongs of history and the social injustice over the years with respect to immigrants, minorities, Black people, and women. We just didn't add the alleged systemic part and the alleged irredeemable racism of people born with white skin.
We may still get to a place where CRT becomes the default approach to US history. But we are not there yet. Let the proponents of CRT drive broad consensus around CRT in forums outside the classroom. Once that happens introduce it to classrooms.
It is particularly insidious to inteoduce contentitious ideologies to K-12 impressionable minds.
Anonymous wrote:
Then why are we having this argument about removing a test that focused on advanced math techniques and discussing the number of students who need “remedial” math? It is totally fine to let in students who demonstrate STEM ability but not acceleration in math. Even desirable. Of course students who are math geniuses should also be admitted. But I am not sure math acceleration is the way to identify that talent.
The problem now is that the math geniuses are not being identified and admitted. The current admissions process is so sparse that all above average kids look more or less the same. Removing the Quant test is just another way that the math geniuses were not identified. The number of students who need "remedial" math would be fine if those kids demonstrated high level STEM ability in other areas. They did not do so. There was nothing in the application to allow them to do so.
Again, no one has suggested looking at math acceleration as the only factor in identifying extreme math talent. Math acceleration + grades in these higher level math classes + teacher recommendations + math awards/achievements in math extracurriculars is what you'd use to identify extreme math talent. I'd be very suspicious of a kid who was highly accelerated and got As, but had no notable math achievements and a meh teacher recommendation.
Previous poster doesn’t understand the point of the Quant-Q or why the prep programs basically made it a pointless exam.
My DC is in the class of 2022. DC didn’t do one second of preparation and I certainly did not pay for a prep class. Plus sometime I feel that the prep class angle is over played. Those showing a desire to put in extra work in whatever it is (sports trainers, tutors, outside classes/camps in a particular subject, street play, etc) should count for something. When it comes to education we should be intervening in the early years not creating policy to adjust for our inability to create a more diverse student body from early on.
It's a red herring. Sure some kids "prepped". But the vast majority of students under previous admission system were simply just smart kids. TJ produces hundreds of national merit semi-finalists. They represents top students in STEM nationally. They went on to perform well in colleges and grad schools. You can't "prep" that. If the "prep" was so easy to do, the rich white parents wouldn't have paid hundreds of thousands to cheat on SATs as varsity blues showed.
The bolded is correct - but there were also hundreds of other kids who were every bit as smart - or smarter - who got leapfrogged because they were competing with kids who walked into an exam designed to test your native problem-solving ability with techniques that were handed to them at a cost of $5K or more to their family. And it was a timed exam where being able to figure out the problems quickly was of tremendous advantage.
FCPS is 100% to blame for that. They knew that was exactly going to happen, but they didn't care to provide that prep to those kids who didn't have the money, awareness, or even access to information. Where were the after school prep programs to help teach them problem solving skills? Were any practice materials even handed out at school? If they wanted to actually help, they would have put $$ instead of empty words. Let's face it, FCPS doesn't give a hoot about minority students applying to TJ.
The admissions process provided links to free prep for the two ACT exams, but the makers of the Quant-Q force anyone who sees it to sign an NDA. So no, FCPS could not provide any sort of free practice materials or prep to the end of improving performance on the Quant-Q. And besides, the purpose of that exam is to test how well and quickly student can identify a complex problem that they haven't seen before and develop a solution for it. When the prep programs got hold of the questions from their previous students, they then charged huge amounts of money to parents so that they could teach students how to solve those problems - making the Quant-Q a pointless exam.
If you go into the Quant-Q already knowing how to solve the types of problems that are on the Quant-Q, it ceases to have any value. It's designed for students to have to struggle with it.
Whre is the proof?
The proof is in the form of students who posted on a forum called TJ Vents on Facebook back in August of 2020. They are members of the Class of 2023 and 2024 whose names appeared on Curie's lists of successful TJ applicants who confirmed in the comment thread of a related post that they were surprised to see questions on the Quant-Q when they took it that they had seen before in their classes at Curie.
The original post was the first public expression of Curie's impact on the TJ admissions process, which was a well-known secret among TJ's South Asian community until a student posted the original anonymous vent.
Dat ain't no proof. GTFO.
I mean, the students at TJ accept it as proof. They believe their colleagues and actually congratulated them on their bravery.
This is fake news. If there was any truth this it would have come up in the lawsuit. FCPS never raised this as a reason the admissions process was changed. Nowhere in the record, the briefs, the TJ papers, etc. does anybody every state they believe Curie had acquired the Quant-Q questions or questions that showed up on the actual TJ test.
Denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt.
I will never understand why FCPS did not pursue the Curie cheating scandal. They had first and last names. They had kids stating that they saw the test ahead of time.
I wonder if there was some kind of pay-to-play going on internally within FCPS and they did not want to embarrass/expose their own staff? Or possibly the company that they fired threatened to sue if they embarrassed them?
Whatever the reasons, the FCPS lawyers clearly gave terrible advice during the admissions “reform” process.
The reality is that there wasn’t anything to prosecute. Curie exploited an apparent gap in the process to tremendous profit. And it worked.
In the process, they made it obvious that change was necessary. If you think FCPS and TJ Admissions didn’t know about their 133 kids in 2024, you’re naïve.
Many prep companies pay some admittees to top universities as well as TJ in this case to say they got in because of ABC prep Co. This is a well know fact. Almost always inflated, exaggerated and not very reliable since we will never know. It is called marketing folks. Nothing burger and happens all the time.
Probably, Curie paid some if not most of the TJ students listed on FB to say they got in because of Curie. Move on and stop wasting time on this issue.
More non-falsifiable speculation that conveniently serves a helpful narrative.
Even if true, the fact that they used the names of TJ students to try to create a market that suggests that your best chance of getting into TJ is to spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on this private company is incredibly problematic.
And there is absolutely zero evidence to support that claim anyway.
Curie’s existence and apparent success suggests a pay-to-play dynamic in the admissions process of a public school. That’s REALLY bad.
Unfortunately for you, almost all prep companies engage in this type of marketing behavior not just TJ related prep companies. Time to stop wasting people's time on these threads and go investigate your self if you are so obsessed. Hire a private investigator or go talk to other prep companies and find out but stop wasting other people's time.
Nah. I’ll just amplify the publicly available information - which speaks for itself and doesn’t really require further investigation - until there’s no further conversation about using testing metrics that are so easily manipulated by wealthy and motivated applicants.
Just understand that more you do what you do, more FREE advertisements you give to Curie. You are promoting the exact behavior you say you are obsessively against.
Nah. I don’t really care if Curie has success financially. I just want what they do to have significantly less impact on the TJ admissions process. And so far, I’m winning. We’ll see what comes of the lawsuit, but right now I’m happy.
Yeah. Blissfully ignorant.
Nah. They lost nearly half of their share at TJ year over year, from 28% of the Class of 2024 to about 16% of the Class of 2025. The fact that they continued to have that much of the incoming class despite coming off of their best year ever tells me that the effectiveness of the program at getting kids into TJ waned significantly.
I think you're looking at it wrong though. There will always be prep companies stepping up to extract money from unsuspecting (trusting?) individuals, that's just business. [0012] Exemplary methods, apparatus, and products for detecting coolant leaks in a server system in accordance with the present invention are described with reference to the accompanying drawings, beginning with Figure 1. Figure 1 sets forth a diagram of a controller 110 configured for detecting coolant leaks in a server system according to embodiments of the present invention. Additionally, make sure the test is not worth the whole enchilada, but an additional data point. Ideally it would serve as a very low bar filter for getting students past the first round, so choose reasonable low scores. On the other hand, having a high ceiling would also allow it to be used as another data point in the final round. Important note: In order to maintain equity, FCPS should be publishing all past tests and practice material on their website so all can access it. That is how you remove the prep company pay to play impact; not by keeping the test a secret as they so stupidly did in the past.
DP. This is impossible. You are saying that because Test A was preppable and Test B was preppable, that a school district/test company needs to make Test Z that is unpreppable. That doesn't exist. (Actually, there is a test that I know of that is considered to be very accurate with prepping, the LSAT and to some extent but less directly, the MCAT.) As well wish for a pony as for an unpreppable test. Or give students the LSAT...
DP. I don't think they need a Test Z that is unpreppable. They need one where the prep would simply be learning the math or science quite well. TJ could write what is essentially a very hard Honors Algebra I final exam to separate the kids who truly have A+ mastery of the content from those who got watered down As. They could do the same with science. Among the numerous 4.0 gpa applicants, it could help identify the kids who earned their 4.0s vs. the kids who only got them due to grade inflation.
Can't do an Alg1 final if the requirement for eligibility is to be presently enrolled in Alg1. Would have to be based on the first quarter of Alg1, like it was previously.
Okay, then. Surely, someone at TJ could write a very rigorous pre-Algebra test the would differentiate between the kids with a very solid foundation and those who got watered down As.
I honestly wouldn't have a problem with this, as long as:
a) the exam were administered during the school day, just like the AMC, so as to ensure maximum participation
b) the exam were scored on a pass-fail basis with a reasonably high but still accessible cut-off point
c) once used to determine baseline suitability, the score was thrown out and never used again to differentiate students
But the reality of the situation is that if you use a non-standardized, non-vetted math exam of any kind for a public school, you open yourself up to challenges of bias that have even greater validity than any of the current challenges.
And additionally, you'd still see massive, extensive prep designed to ensure that students who might be relatively workaday end up "passing", or if you count the score, significantly exceeding their actual capabilities.
Admitting really hard working and driven students that study into a rigorous high school that expects you to be gifted and a high achiever seems fine to me even if these kids may be exceeding their actual capabilities compared to a lazy version of a slightly brighter student. It has worked extremely well in the past (there is a reason it's the number 1 high school in the US) - you just don't like racial makeup of the student body.
It's the number 1 high school in the country because you have ranking services that use exam scores as a metric and the school's old admissions process disallowed students who weren't exceptional test takers from advancing in the process.
The TJ exam didn't do a great job of predicting future success at TJ, any more than the SAT or PSAT predicts success in college or in life. But success on the TJ exam does predict success on the SAT, so that's where the ranking comes from.
The TJ exam in and of itself may not predict success at TJ, but the holistic review of a fairly comprehensive packet certainly did. It's kind of funny that the same people who seem to think that TJ admissions officers can absolutely detect brilliance from the current generic essays seem to have no faith that the same people could detect brilliance through a more comprehensive packet with test scores, teacher recommendations, more elaborate essays, lists of achievements, and so on. Make up your minds on just how psychic or how incompetent these TJ selection panels are.
I agree with you for the most part. I have been advocating for more comprehensive materials and would like to see something more fleshed out, as long as the admissions committee is specifically looking for different types of exceptional students from different backgrounds.
It's really the exam that was the confounding factor, which is why I support the current process, however flawed, moreso than the previous one. But I am adamant in my belief that the eventual process should include more inputs.
PP. This is where we disagree. I support the previous process, however flawed, moreso than the current one. The previous process absolutely did detect and admit those 200-ish kids who are head and shoulders above the FCPS population, truly gifted, and very much in need of a school like TJ. The current process has no way to identify these kids. I'd prefer to have the kids who need TJ to be admitted, even if the bottom half of the class is filled with privileged, prep kids. You'd rather sacrifice the kids who need TJ so you can round out the bottom half of the class with demographics that you find more palatable, even if those kids would be very well served at their base school.
Ultimately, when they revamp the admissions to have a more comprehensive process, we'll end up in the same place.
Decades of experience at TJ suggests that the real number is more like 75-100 truly exceptional kids at TJ, with a look at the rest of the county suggesting that many were missed each year.
We get into trouble when we suggest that the old admissions process was particularly great at finding the exceptional kids - or at least, any moreso than the current process is.
I think we would agree that we have a long way to go to get to correct. But we no matter what process we eventually land on, we should all be able to agree - because it's not something that's really up for debate by reasonable individuals - that we have a great chance of success in unearthing those talents from ALL demographics if they feel as though they are welcome at the school. And they weren't previously, and they are now.
MCPS had even bigger changes to its magnet admissions a few years back a group that makes up about 15% of the county, percentage of seats declined from 70% to 62%R of the program so they brought a lawsuit. The result is they now have a lottery and they number of seats is more like 30%. This is where you are headed.
That the racists would rather destroy an institution when they are not allowed to practice racism is a problem with the racists, rather than those complaining about racism. The solution here is to get the racists voted out of office. But given that it's Maryland dominated by progressive politics, I'm not keeping my hopes up.
Agree, the racists want a system they can easily game with prep and hate a level playing field.
Anonymous wrote:Perhaps by now many have read the "TJ Papers" - a collection of materials obtained from FCPS during discovery in the civil litigation by the plaintiffs challenging the changes to the TJ admissions process. Many are available at https://defendinged.org/incidents/tjpapers/
Some take-aways:
1. The three main forces behind the TJ admissions change were Scott Brabrand (Superintendent), Karen Corbett Sanders (School Board member from Mount Vernon District), and Scott Surovell (member of Virginia Senate from the 36th District, which includes the Mount Vernon area).
2. Brabrand was in major "white savior" mode, as if his legacy depending on his personally pushing through radical changes in the TJ admissions process. At various times, Brabrand's interactions with staff indicated that his goal was simply to adjust the process, by whatever means necessary, to guarantee the admission of more Black and Hispanic students to TJ, regardless of whether they were otherwise the most qualified candidates.
3. Corbett-Sanders and Surovell have no guiding principles; they are just retail pork-barrel politicians who seized upon the moment to grab more TJ seats for students in their own part of the county.
4. Brabrand misled School Board members about the possibility that the VDOE might come down hard on FCPS if they didn't make major changes to TJ admissions, whereas over time it emerged that VDOE did not necessarily expect FCPS's "diversity plan" (which FCPS was required to submit by October 2020) to include changes to the TJ admissions process by 2021.
5. The process was rushed, incoherent, and marked by School Board members sniping at each other and at Brabrand. Sizemore-Heizer complained that Keys Gamarra was calling other School Board members racist. Pekarsky and Omeish referred to Frisch as a liar. Omeish referred to Brabrand as "too dumb and too white." Pekarsky and Omeish openly acknowledged that the changes under consideration were "anti-asian." McLaughlin told a constituent that Brabrand's handling of the admissions changes was the worst process she had encountered in her many years as a School Board member. Cohen and other School Board members admitted after the fact that they hadn't paid attention as to whether the middle school admissions quotas would be based on a student's "base school" or "attending school," even though this had major implications on 8th grade students attending AAP centers. And so on.
6. The two School Board members representing the districts with the most TJ students - Pekarsky and Tholen - had reservations but patted themselves on the back for effecting a "compromise" (i.e., rejecting Brabrand's initial "lottery" proposal in favor of a "holistic" approach that might lead to a higher number of Sully and Dranesville kids continuing to get into TJ), but never seriously grappled with (a) whether they should have opposed any changes as a matter of principle or (b) whether the change they ultimately supported would end up chewing up even more of FCPS's time and resources, to the detriment of FCPS's ability to address challenges at other schools. Ultimately, they were swept along with the tide for fear of being criticized by their colleagues.
7. Many of the most embarrassing exchanges between School Board members were reflected in text messages produced during discovery in the civil litigation. This suggests that (a) School Board members often text each other to avoid using their FCPS email accounts to conduct official School Board business; and/or (2) no one in FCPS's legal department ever cautioned these folks that text messages are just as discoverable in civil litigation as emails.
No one who objectively reads these materials can conclude this School Board is competent, principled, or deserving of another term in office. They embarrass not only themselves, but also everyone in the county who wants Fairfax County to stand for good governance. If they had any dignity, they would resign now, but in any event they should step aside and let others replace them in 2023.
Interesting... but as far as I can tell the changes weren't radical at all and well within best practice guidelines for GT admissions.
Superficially race-neutral changes are not okay if used with the intent and result of racist discrimination.
What if they're used with the intent and result of ending racist discrimination that previously took place through a superficially race-neutral but demonstrably discriminatory process that had the impact of shutting out Black, Hispanic, and low-income Asian students?
They weren't. The prior process was race-neutral, not "superficially race-neutral."
And if you really want to go down the path of insisting on measuring everything by its "impact," then you should be worrying about the "process" that leads to FCPS operating Langley High School as a 3% FARMS school with few Black and Hispanic students. Or the "process" that leads to the under-representation of Asian administrators at senior levels within FCPS. And so on.
Change TJ to an Academy program, or shut it down entirely if you must, but your arguments are frivolous and the "new" process a sham that has already been deemed invalid by someone with far more legal training than you apparently have.
1) False. A process that virtually eliminates Black and Hispanic students may be "race-blind", but by definition cannot be "race-neutral".
2) The process that leads to FCPS operating a neighborhood high school that has 3% FARMS students has to do with geography. We are in agreement that they could probably redraw the boundaries of that school somewhat to include more Black/Hispanic/FARMS students, but the impact would be minimal at best because there are no poor or Black/Hispanic enclaves anywhere near Langley. Those processes are not comparable. Nor are the processes for hiring people for jobs - but by all means, advocate in those areas if they're your fight. We will support you.
3) TJ is not built to be an academy. It is built to be a full-service high school that goes beyond its exceptional STEM offerings. Hilton absolutely has more legal training than I do, but I have far more educational and TJ experience than even the folks who came up with the admissions process that you so despise. It's far from ideal, but it's a significant improvement over the previous system.
The problem is #3. You had a flawed system and you replaced it with a "less" flawed system. As has been said, two wrongs dont make a right. There was no reason to rush this through during the Pandemic . There was not enough consultation. I am sure a better system would have come about if the process had been conducted with inputs from everyone and the impacted had been consulted. thatb would have taken time. But this reform was triggered by ideology and dogma - the TJ papers reveal that the Board wanted to capitalize of the George Floyd sentiment.
Student welfare is secondary to political ideology to this school board. While I don't believe CRT, et al is being taught today at FCPS, I am convinced that if left unchecked this School Board will introduce all of that. 2 years ago in would have thought all of this was right-wing noise - not any more.
I dont believe anyone on this Board - (many affiliated with the School Board and the reform) when they say they know more and they have "experience". You cannot see beyond your ideology and deserve your comeuppance at the next election(s)
What specifically would be your problem with some areas of education being informed by Critical Race Theory?
I am all for "some areas of education" being informed by CRT. I don't believe it should be taught in K-12. In fact it should be taught to everyone in college. It deals with a painful part of our history and our development as a nation (and all our flaws). There is a lot of merit there.
But CRT is too amorphous to form part of a K-12 curriculum. Radical teachers (and some not all will be radical) and impressionable students make for a toxic combination. Leave it to college where kids are mature enough to sieve content from ideology.
Would you agree with the idea of presenting a direct through line from, say, slavery to "separate but equal" to redlining to educational inequality? For say, AP US History students?
I would keep all contentious issues outside of K-12 schools. Not because they are right or wrong but because there has to be a consensus built around these issues in the public domain. Schools should not be a battleground for ideological issues. We are already too polarized.
If we allow contentious issues to get a mention then you open a Pandora's box and you may be forced to make mention of creationism for example. we can use our kids as a sandbox to battle on ideological grounds. There is much merit in CRT among believers (I am one) and much merit among the faithful in creationism (I am not one but i dont douby anybody's faith). But these issues do not belong n school. Not yet not till we establish consensus in the broader publ;ic and political domain.
How on earth do you teach US history without touching on slavery or Jim Crow or the civil rights movement? How do you teach AP US history without including the Klan or Japanese internment or Tulsa or the Chinese Exclusion Act or the stonewall riots?
CRT is not the history of civil rights. Let us not conflate the two. Absolutely slavery is something all students should know about. However unless there is braid consensus that history needs to be taught through the lens of CRT, we should stay away.
I was pretty satisfied with the way history was being taught 5 years ago. We definitely taught the wrongs of history and the social injustice over the years with respect to immigrants, minorities, Black people, and women. We just didn't add the alleged systemic part and the alleged irredeemable racism of people born with white skin.
We may still get to a place where CRT becomes the default approach to US history. But we are not there yet. Let the proponents of CRT drive broad consensus around CRT in forums outside the classroom. Once that happens introduce it to classrooms.
It is particularly insidious to inteoduce contentitious ideologies to K-12 impressionable minds.
I know it's so awful when they discuss slavery. We need to put that behind us.
Anonymous wrote:Perhaps by now many have read the "TJ Papers" - a collection of materials obtained from FCPS during discovery in the civil litigation by the plaintiffs challenging the changes to the TJ admissions process. Many are available at https://defendinged.org/incidents/tjpapers/
Some take-aways:
1. The three main forces behind the TJ admissions change were Scott Brabrand (Superintendent), Karen Corbett Sanders (School Board member from Mount Vernon District), and Scott Surovell (member of Virginia Senate from the 36th District, which includes the Mount Vernon area).
2. Brabrand was in major "white savior" mode, as if his legacy depending on his personally pushing through radical changes in the TJ admissions process. At various times, Brabrand's interactions with staff indicated that his goal was simply to adjust the process, by whatever means necessary, to guarantee the admission of more Black and Hispanic students to TJ, regardless of whether they were otherwise the most qualified candidates.
3. Corbett-Sanders and Surovell have no guiding principles; they are just retail pork-barrel politicians who seized upon the moment to grab more TJ seats for students in their own part of the county.
4. Brabrand misled School Board members about the possibility that the VDOE might come down hard on FCPS if they didn't make major changes to TJ admissions, whereas over time it emerged that VDOE did not necessarily expect FCPS's "diversity plan" (which FCPS was required to submit by October 2020) to include changes to the TJ admissions process by 2021.
5. The process was rushed, incoherent, and marked by School Board members sniping at each other and at Brabrand. Sizemore-Heizer complained that Keys Gamarra was calling other School Board members racist. Pekarsky and Omeish referred to Frisch as a liar. Omeish referred to Brabrand as "too dumb and too white." Pekarsky and Omeish openly acknowledged that the changes under consideration were "anti-asian." McLaughlin told a constituent that Brabrand's handling of the admissions changes was the worst process she had encountered in her many years as a School Board member. Cohen and other School Board members admitted after the fact that they hadn't paid attention as to whether the middle school admissions quotas would be based on a student's "base school" or "attending school," even though this had major implications on 8th grade students attending AAP centers. And so on.
6. The two School Board members representing the districts with the most TJ students - Pekarsky and Tholen - had reservations but patted themselves on the back for effecting a "compromise" (i.e., rejecting Brabrand's initial "lottery" proposal in favor of a "holistic" approach that might lead to a higher number of Sully and Dranesville kids continuing to get into TJ), but never seriously grappled with (a) whether they should have opposed any changes as a matter of principle or (b) whether the change they ultimately supported would end up chewing up even more of FCPS's time and resources, to the detriment of FCPS's ability to address challenges at other schools. Ultimately, they were swept along with the tide for fear of being criticized by their colleagues.
7. Many of the most embarrassing exchanges between School Board members were reflected in text messages produced during discovery in the civil litigation. This suggests that (a) School Board members often text each other to avoid using their FCPS email accounts to conduct official School Board business; and/or (2) no one in FCPS's legal department ever cautioned these folks that text messages are just as discoverable in civil litigation as emails.
No one who objectively reads these materials can conclude this School Board is competent, principled, or deserving of another term in office. They embarrass not only themselves, but also everyone in the county who wants Fairfax County to stand for good governance. If they had any dignity, they would resign now, but in any event they should step aside and let others replace them in 2023.
Interesting... but as far as I can tell the changes weren't radical at all and well within best practice guidelines for GT admissions.
Superficially race-neutral changes are not okay if used with the intent and result of racist discrimination.
What if they're used with the intent and result of ending racist discrimination that previously took place through a superficially race-neutral but demonstrably discriminatory process that had the impact of shutting out Black, Hispanic, and low-income Asian students?
They weren't. The prior process was race-neutral, not "superficially race-neutral."
And if you really want to go down the path of insisting on measuring everything by its "impact," then you should be worrying about the "process" that leads to FCPS operating Langley High School as a 3% FARMS school with few Black and Hispanic students. Or the "process" that leads to the under-representation of Asian administrators at senior levels within FCPS. And so on.
Change TJ to an Academy program, or shut it down entirely if you must, but your arguments are frivolous and the "new" process a sham that has already been deemed invalid by someone with far more legal training than you apparently have.
1) False. A process that virtually eliminates Black and Hispanic students may be "race-blind", but by definition cannot be "race-neutral".
2) The process that leads to FCPS operating a neighborhood high school that has 3% FARMS students has to do with geography. We are in agreement that they could probably redraw the boundaries of that school somewhat to include more Black/Hispanic/FARMS students, but the impact would be minimal at best because there are no poor or Black/Hispanic enclaves anywhere near Langley. Those processes are not comparable. Nor are the processes for hiring people for jobs - but by all means, advocate in those areas if they're your fight. We will support you.
3) TJ is not built to be an academy. It is built to be a full-service high school that goes beyond its exceptional STEM offerings. Hilton absolutely has more legal training than I do, but I have far more educational and TJ experience than even the folks who came up with the admissions process that you so despise. It's far from ideal, but it's a significant improvement over the previous system.
The problem is #3. You had a flawed system and you replaced it with a "less" flawed system. As has been said, two wrongs dont make a right. There was no reason to rush this through during the Pandemic . There was not enough consultation. I am sure a better system would have come about if the process had been conducted with inputs from everyone and the impacted had been consulted. thatb would have taken time. But this reform was triggered by ideology and dogma - the TJ papers reveal that the Board wanted to capitalize of the George Floyd sentiment.
Student welfare is secondary to political ideology to this school board. While I don't believe CRT, et al is being taught today at FCPS, I am convinced that if left unchecked this School Board will introduce all of that. 2 years ago in would have thought all of this was right-wing noise - not any more.
I dont believe anyone on this Board - (many affiliated with the School Board and the reform) when they say they know more and they have "experience". You cannot see beyond your ideology and deserve your comeuppance at the next election(s)
What specifically would be your problem with some areas of education being informed by Critical Race Theory?
I am all for "some areas of education" being informed by CRT. I don't believe it should be taught in K-12. In fact it should be taught to everyone in college. It deals with a painful part of our history and our development as a nation (and all our flaws). There is a lot of merit there.
But CRT is too amorphous to form part of a K-12 curriculum. Radical teachers (and some not all will be radical) and impressionable students make for a toxic combination. Leave it to college where kids are mature enough to sieve content from ideology.
Would you agree with the idea of presenting a direct through line from, say, slavery to "separate but equal" to redlining to educational inequality? For say, AP US History students?
I would keep all contentious issues outside of K-12 schools. Not because they are right or wrong but because there has to be a consensus built around these issues in the public domain. Schools should not be a battleground for ideological issues. We are already too polarized.
If we allow contentious issues to get a mention then you open a Pandora's box and you may be forced to make mention of creationism for example. we can use our kids as a sandbox to battle on ideological grounds. There is much merit in CRT among believers (I am one) and much merit among the faithful in creationism (I am not one but i dont douby anybody's faith). But these issues do not belong n school. Not yet not till we establish consensus in the broader publ;ic and political domain.
How on earth do you teach US history without touching on slavery or Jim Crow or the civil rights movement? How do you teach AP US history without including the Klan or Japanese internment or Tulsa or the Chinese Exclusion Act or the stonewall riots?
You can't. There should be broad national consensus around the idea that all of these (save the civil rights movement, obviously) were horrifying incidents in our nation's history that we must do everything in our power to ensure never happen again. There are two sides to each of those issues, but one is good and one is evil and believing that is a fundamental part of being American. Call it indoctrination if you want, but "Don't enslave others and don't put them in concentration camps" is something I'm fine with our kids being indoctrinated into.
OK, how about adding "Don't murder people in the womb."
Anonymous wrote:Perhaps by now many have read the "TJ Papers" - a collection of materials obtained from FCPS during discovery in the civil litigation by the plaintiffs challenging the changes to the TJ admissions process. Many are available at https://defendinged.org/incidents/tjpapers/
Some take-aways:
1. The three main forces behind the TJ admissions change were Scott Brabrand (Superintendent), Karen Corbett Sanders (School Board member from Mount Vernon District), and Scott Surovell (member of Virginia Senate from the 36th District, which includes the Mount Vernon area).
2. Brabrand was in major "white savior" mode, as if his legacy depending on his personally pushing through radical changes in the TJ admissions process. At various times, Brabrand's interactions with staff indicated that his goal was simply to adjust the process, by whatever means necessary, to guarantee the admission of more Black and Hispanic students to TJ, regardless of whether they were otherwise the most qualified candidates.
3. Corbett-Sanders and Surovell have no guiding principles; they are just retail pork-barrel politicians who seized upon the moment to grab more TJ seats for students in their own part of the county.
4. Brabrand misled School Board members about the possibility that the VDOE might come down hard on FCPS if they didn't make major changes to TJ admissions, whereas over time it emerged that VDOE did not necessarily expect FCPS's "diversity plan" (which FCPS was required to submit by October 2020) to include changes to the TJ admissions process by 2021.
5. The process was rushed, incoherent, and marked by School Board members sniping at each other and at Brabrand. Sizemore-Heizer complained that Keys Gamarra was calling other School Board members racist. Pekarsky and Omeish referred to Frisch as a liar. Omeish referred to Brabrand as "too dumb and too white." Pekarsky and Omeish openly acknowledged that the changes under consideration were "anti-asian." McLaughlin told a constituent that Brabrand's handling of the admissions changes was the worst process she had encountered in her many years as a School Board member. Cohen and other School Board members admitted after the fact that they hadn't paid attention as to whether the middle school admissions quotas would be based on a student's "base school" or "attending school," even though this had major implications on 8th grade students attending AAP centers. And so on.
6. The two School Board members representing the districts with the most TJ students - Pekarsky and Tholen - had reservations but patted themselves on the back for effecting a "compromise" (i.e., rejecting Brabrand's initial "lottery" proposal in favor of a "holistic" approach that might lead to a higher number of Sully and Dranesville kids continuing to get into TJ), but never seriously grappled with (a) whether they should have opposed any changes as a matter of principle or (b) whether the change they ultimately supported would end up chewing up even more of FCPS's time and resources, to the detriment of FCPS's ability to address challenges at other schools. Ultimately, they were swept along with the tide for fear of being criticized by their colleagues.
7. Many of the most embarrassing exchanges between School Board members were reflected in text messages produced during discovery in the civil litigation. This suggests that (a) School Board members often text each other to avoid using their FCPS email accounts to conduct official School Board business; and/or (2) no one in FCPS's legal department ever cautioned these folks that text messages are just as discoverable in civil litigation as emails.
No one who objectively reads these materials can conclude this School Board is competent, principled, or deserving of another term in office. They embarrass not only themselves, but also everyone in the county who wants Fairfax County to stand for good governance. If they had any dignity, they would resign now, but in any event they should step aside and let others replace them in 2023.
Interesting... but as far as I can tell the changes weren't radical at all and well within best practice guidelines for GT admissions.
Superficially race-neutral changes are not okay if used with the intent and result of racist discrimination.
What if they're used with the intent and result of ending racist discrimination that previously took place through a superficially race-neutral but demonstrably discriminatory process that had the impact of shutting out Black, Hispanic, and low-income Asian students?
They weren't. The prior process was race-neutral, not "superficially race-neutral."
And if you really want to go down the path of insisting on measuring everything by its "impact," then you should be worrying about the "process" that leads to FCPS operating Langley High School as a 3% FARMS school with few Black and Hispanic students. Or the "process" that leads to the under-representation of Asian administrators at senior levels within FCPS. And so on.
Change TJ to an Academy program, or shut it down entirely if you must, but your arguments are frivolous and the "new" process a sham that has already been deemed invalid by someone with far more legal training than you apparently have.
1) False. A process that virtually eliminates Black and Hispanic students may be "race-blind", but by definition cannot be "race-neutral".
2) The process that leads to FCPS operating a neighborhood high school that has 3% FARMS students has to do with geography. We are in agreement that they could probably redraw the boundaries of that school somewhat to include more Black/Hispanic/FARMS students, but the impact would be minimal at best because there are no poor or Black/Hispanic enclaves anywhere near Langley. Those processes are not comparable. Nor are the processes for hiring people for jobs - but by all means, advocate in those areas if they're your fight. We will support you.
3) TJ is not built to be an academy. It is built to be a full-service high school that goes beyond its exceptional STEM offerings. Hilton absolutely has more legal training than I do, but I have far more educational and TJ experience than even the folks who came up with the admissions process that you so despise. It's far from ideal, but it's a significant improvement over the previous system.
The problem is #3. You had a flawed system and you replaced it with a "less" flawed system. As has been said, two wrongs dont make a right. There was no reason to rush this through during the Pandemic . There was not enough consultation. I am sure a better system would have come about if the process had been conducted with inputs from everyone and the impacted had been consulted. thatb would have taken time. But this reform was triggered by ideology and dogma - the TJ papers reveal that the Board wanted to capitalize of the George Floyd sentiment.
Student welfare is secondary to political ideology to this school board. While I don't believe CRT, et al is being taught today at FCPS, I am convinced that if left unchecked this School Board will introduce all of that. 2 years ago in would have thought all of this was right-wing noise - not any more.
I dont believe anyone on this Board - (many affiliated with the School Board and the reform) when they say they know more and they have "experience". You cannot see beyond your ideology and deserve your comeuppance at the next election(s)
What specifically would be your problem with some areas of education being informed by Critical Race Theory?
I am all for "some areas of education" being informed by CRT. I don't believe it should be taught in K-12. In fact it should be taught to everyone in college. It deals with a painful part of our history and our development as a nation (and all our flaws). There is a lot of merit there.
But CRT is too amorphous to form part of a K-12 curriculum. Radical teachers (and some not all will be radical) and impressionable students make for a toxic combination. Leave it to college where kids are mature enough to sieve content from ideology.
Would you agree with the idea of presenting a direct through line from, say, slavery to "separate but equal" to redlining to educational inequality? For say, AP US History students?
I would keep all contentious issues outside of K-12 schools. Not because they are right or wrong but because there has to be a consensus built around these issues in the public domain. Schools should not be a battleground for ideological issues. We are already too polarized.
If we allow contentious issues to get a mention then you open a Pandora's box and you may be forced to make mention of creationism for example. we can use our kids as a sandbox to battle on ideological grounds. There is much merit in CRT among believers (I am one) and much merit among the faithful in creationism (I am not one but i dont douby anybody's faith). But these issues do not belong n school. Not yet not till we establish consensus in the broader publ;ic and political domain.
How on earth do you teach US history without touching on slavery or Jim Crow or the civil rights movement? How do you teach AP US history without including the Klan or Japanese internment or Tulsa or the Chinese Exclusion Act or the stonewall riots?
CRT is not the history of civil rights. Let us not conflate the two. Absolutely slavery is something all students should know about. However unless there is braid consensus that history needs to be taught through the lens of CRT, we should stay away.
I was pretty satisfied with the way history was being taught 5 years ago. We definitely taught the wrongs of history and the social injustice over the years with respect to immigrants, minorities, Black people, and women. We just didn't add the alleged systemic part and the alleged irredeemable racism of people born with white skin.
Tell me you don’t know what Critical Race Theory is without telling me you don’t know what Critical Race Theory is.
Anonymous wrote:Perhaps by now many have read the "TJ Papers" - a collection of materials obtained from FCPS during discovery in the civil litigation by the plaintiffs challenging the changes to the TJ admissions process. Many are available at https://defendinged.org/incidents/tjpapers/
Some take-aways:
1. The three main forces behind the TJ admissions change were Scott Brabrand (Superintendent), Karen Corbett Sanders (School Board member from Mount Vernon District), and Scott Surovell (member of Virginia Senate from the 36th District, which includes the Mount Vernon area).
2. Brabrand was in major "white savior" mode, as if his legacy depending on his personally pushing through radical changes in the TJ admissions process. At various times, Brabrand's interactions with staff indicated that his goal was simply to adjust the process, by whatever means necessary, to guarantee the admission of more Black and Hispanic students to TJ, regardless of whether they were otherwise the most qualified candidates.
3. Corbett-Sanders and Surovell have no guiding principles; they are just retail pork-barrel politicians who seized upon the moment to grab more TJ seats for students in their own part of the county.
4. Brabrand misled School Board members about the possibility that the VDOE might come down hard on FCPS if they didn't make major changes to TJ admissions, whereas over time it emerged that VDOE did not necessarily expect FCPS's "diversity plan" (which FCPS was required to submit by October 2020) to include changes to the TJ admissions process by 2021.
5. The process was rushed, incoherent, and marked by School Board members sniping at each other and at Brabrand. Sizemore-Heizer complained that Keys Gamarra was calling other School Board members racist. Pekarsky and Omeish referred to Frisch as a liar. Omeish referred to Brabrand as "too dumb and too white." Pekarsky and Omeish openly acknowledged that the changes under consideration were "anti-asian." McLaughlin told a constituent that Brabrand's handling of the admissions changes was the worst process she had encountered in her many years as a School Board member. Cohen and other School Board members admitted after the fact that they hadn't paid attention as to whether the middle school admissions quotas would be based on a student's "base school" or "attending school," even though this had major implications on 8th grade students attending AAP centers. And so on.
6. The two School Board members representing the districts with the most TJ students - Pekarsky and Tholen - had reservations but patted themselves on the back for effecting a "compromise" (i.e., rejecting Brabrand's initial "lottery" proposal in favor of a "holistic" approach that might lead to a higher number of Sully and Dranesville kids continuing to get into TJ), but never seriously grappled with (a) whether they should have opposed any changes as a matter of principle or (b) whether the change they ultimately supported would end up chewing up even more of FCPS's time and resources, to the detriment of FCPS's ability to address challenges at other schools. Ultimately, they were swept along with the tide for fear of being criticized by their colleagues.
7. Many of the most embarrassing exchanges between School Board members were reflected in text messages produced during discovery in the civil litigation. This suggests that (a) School Board members often text each other to avoid using their FCPS email accounts to conduct official School Board business; and/or (2) no one in FCPS's legal department ever cautioned these folks that text messages are just as discoverable in civil litigation as emails.
No one who objectively reads these materials can conclude this School Board is competent, principled, or deserving of another term in office. They embarrass not only themselves, but also everyone in the county who wants Fairfax County to stand for good governance. If they had any dignity, they would resign now, but in any event they should step aside and let others replace them in 2023.
Interesting... but as far as I can tell the changes weren't radical at all and well within best practice guidelines for GT admissions.
Superficially race-neutral changes are not okay if used with the intent and result of racist discrimination.
What if they're used with the intent and result of ending racist discrimination that previously took place through a superficially race-neutral but demonstrably discriminatory process that had the impact of shutting out Black, Hispanic, and low-income Asian students?
They weren't. The prior process was race-neutral, not "superficially race-neutral."
And if you really want to go down the path of insisting on measuring everything by its "impact," then you should be worrying about the "process" that leads to FCPS operating Langley High School as a 3% FARMS school with few Black and Hispanic students. Or the "process" that leads to the under-representation of Asian administrators at senior levels within FCPS. And so on.
Change TJ to an Academy program, or shut it down entirely if you must, but your arguments are frivolous and the "new" process a sham that has already been deemed invalid by someone with far more legal training than you apparently have.
1) False. A process that virtually eliminates Black and Hispanic students may be "race-blind", but by definition cannot be "race-neutral".
2) The process that leads to FCPS operating a neighborhood high school that has 3% FARMS students has to do with geography. We are in agreement that they could probably redraw the boundaries of that school somewhat to include more Black/Hispanic/FARMS students, but the impact would be minimal at best because there are no poor or Black/Hispanic enclaves anywhere near Langley. Those processes are not comparable. Nor are the processes for hiring people for jobs - but by all means, advocate in those areas if they're your fight. We will support you.
3) TJ is not built to be an academy. It is built to be a full-service high school that goes beyond its exceptional STEM offerings. Hilton absolutely has more legal training than I do, but I have far more educational and TJ experience than even the folks who came up with the admissions process that you so despise. It's far from ideal, but it's a significant improvement over the previous system.
The problem is #3. You had a flawed system and you replaced it with a "less" flawed system. As has been said, two wrongs dont make a right. There was no reason to rush this through during the Pandemic . There was not enough consultation. I am sure a better system would have come about if the process had been conducted with inputs from everyone and the impacted had been consulted. thatb would have taken time. But this reform was triggered by ideology and dogma - the TJ papers reveal that the Board wanted to capitalize of the George Floyd sentiment.
Student welfare is secondary to political ideology to this school board. While I don't believe CRT, et al is being taught today at FCPS, I am convinced that if left unchecked this School Board will introduce all of that. 2 years ago in would have thought all of this was right-wing noise - not any more.
I dont believe anyone on this Board - (many affiliated with the School Board and the reform) when they say they know more and they have "experience". You cannot see beyond your ideology and deserve your comeuppance at the next election(s)
What specifically would be your problem with some areas of education being informed by Critical Race Theory?
I am all for "some areas of education" being informed by CRT. I don't believe it should be taught in K-12. In fact it should be taught to everyone in college. It deals with a painful part of our history and our development as a nation (and all our flaws). There is a lot of merit there.
But CRT is too amorphous to form part of a K-12 curriculum. Radical teachers (and some not all will be radical) and impressionable students make for a toxic combination. Leave it to college where kids are mature enough to sieve content from ideology.
Would you agree with the idea of presenting a direct through line from, say, slavery to "separate but equal" to redlining to educational inequality? For say, AP US History students?
I would keep all contentious issues outside of K-12 schools. Not because they are right or wrong but because there has to be a consensus built around these issues in the public domain. Schools should not be a battleground for ideological issues. We are already too polarized.
If we allow contentious issues to get a mention then you open a Pandora's box and you may be forced to make mention of creationism for example. we can use our kids as a sandbox to battle on ideological grounds. There is much merit in CRT among believers (I am one) and much merit among the faithful in creationism (I am not one but i dont douby anybody's faith). But these issues do not belong n school. Not yet not till we establish consensus in the broader publ;ic and political domain.
How on earth do you teach US history without touching on slavery or Jim Crow or the civil rights movement? How do you teach AP US history without including the Klan or Japanese internment or Tulsa or the Chinese Exclusion Act or the stonewall riots?
CRT is not the history of civil rights. Let us not conflate the two. Absolutely slavery is something all students should know about. However unless there is braid consensus that history needs to be taught through the lens of CRT, we should stay away.
I was pretty satisfied with the way history was being taught 5 years ago. We definitely taught the wrongs of history and the social injustice over the years with respect to immigrants, minorities, Black people, and women. We just didn't add the alleged systemic part and the alleged irredeemable racism of people born with white skin.
Tell me you don’t know what Critical Race Theory is without telling me you don’t know what Critical Race Theory is.
I know exactly what it is. It's the belief that all of our institutions are systemically racist to keep white people in power. The premise is that white people took land from indigenous populations and used slave labor to advance white wealth and then continuously worked to prevent these people and their descendants from advancing in society by using race as the immutable property to identify members of these groups and keep them marginalized by discriminatory treatment across all aspects of our government and social institutions. So, again, I do not think this is true and certainly do not think it adds anything truthful or constructive to the way history was taught 5 years ago.
Anonymous wrote:Perhaps by now many have read the "TJ Papers" - a collection of materials obtained from FCPS during discovery in the civil litigation by the plaintiffs challenging the changes to the TJ admissions process. Many are available at https://defendinged.org/incidents/tjpapers/
Some take-aways:
1. The three main forces behind the TJ admissions change were Scott Brabrand (Superintendent), Karen Corbett Sanders (School Board member from Mount Vernon District), and Scott Surovell (member of Virginia Senate from the 36th District, which includes the Mount Vernon area).
2. Brabrand was in major "white savior" mode, as if his legacy depending on his personally pushing through radical changes in the TJ admissions process. At various times, Brabrand's interactions with staff indicated that his goal was simply to adjust the process, by whatever means necessary, to guarantee the admission of more Black and Hispanic students to TJ, regardless of whether they were otherwise the most qualified candidates.
3. Corbett-Sanders and Surovell have no guiding principles; they are just retail pork-barrel politicians who seized upon the moment to grab more TJ seats for students in their own part of the county.
4. Brabrand misled School Board members about the possibility that the VDOE might come down hard on FCPS if they didn't make major changes to TJ admissions, whereas over time it emerged that VDOE did not necessarily expect FCPS's "diversity plan" (which FCPS was required to submit by October 2020) to include changes to the TJ admissions process by 2021.
5. The process was rushed, incoherent, and marked by School Board members sniping at each other and at Brabrand. Sizemore-Heizer complained that Keys Gamarra was calling other School Board members racist. Pekarsky and Omeish referred to Frisch as a liar. Omeish referred to Brabrand as "too dumb and too white." Pekarsky and Omeish openly acknowledged that the changes under consideration were "anti-asian." McLaughlin told a constituent that Brabrand's handling of the admissions changes was the worst process she had encountered in her many years as a School Board member. Cohen and other School Board members admitted after the fact that they hadn't paid attention as to whether the middle school admissions quotas would be based on a student's "base school" or "attending school," even though this had major implications on 8th grade students attending AAP centers. And so on.
6. The two School Board members representing the districts with the most TJ students - Pekarsky and Tholen - had reservations but patted themselves on the back for effecting a "compromise" (i.e., rejecting Brabrand's initial "lottery" proposal in favor of a "holistic" approach that might lead to a higher number of Sully and Dranesville kids continuing to get into TJ), but never seriously grappled with (a) whether they should have opposed any changes as a matter of principle or (b) whether the change they ultimately supported would end up chewing up even more of FCPS's time and resources, to the detriment of FCPS's ability to address challenges at other schools. Ultimately, they were swept along with the tide for fear of being criticized by their colleagues.
7. Many of the most embarrassing exchanges between School Board members were reflected in text messages produced during discovery in the civil litigation. This suggests that (a) School Board members often text each other to avoid using their FCPS email accounts to conduct official School Board business; and/or (2) no one in FCPS's legal department ever cautioned these folks that text messages are just as discoverable in civil litigation as emails.
No one who objectively reads these materials can conclude this School Board is competent, principled, or deserving of another term in office. They embarrass not only themselves, but also everyone in the county who wants Fairfax County to stand for good governance. If they had any dignity, they would resign now, but in any event they should step aside and let others replace them in 2023.
Interesting... but as far as I can tell the changes weren't radical at all and well within best practice guidelines for GT admissions.
Superficially race-neutral changes are not okay if used with the intent and result of racist discrimination.
What if they're used with the intent and result of ending racist discrimination that previously took place through a superficially race-neutral but demonstrably discriminatory process that had the impact of shutting out Black, Hispanic, and low-income Asian students?
They weren't. The prior process was race-neutral, not "superficially race-neutral."
And if you really want to go down the path of insisting on measuring everything by its "impact," then you should be worrying about the "process" that leads to FCPS operating Langley High School as a 3% FARMS school with few Black and Hispanic students. Or the "process" that leads to the under-representation of Asian administrators at senior levels within FCPS. And so on.
Change TJ to an Academy program, or shut it down entirely if you must, but your arguments are frivolous and the "new" process a sham that has already been deemed invalid by someone with far more legal training than you apparently have.
1) False. A process that virtually eliminates Black and Hispanic students may be "race-blind", but by definition cannot be "race-neutral".
2) The process that leads to FCPS operating a neighborhood high school that has 3% FARMS students has to do with geography. We are in agreement that they could probably redraw the boundaries of that school somewhat to include more Black/Hispanic/FARMS students, but the impact would be minimal at best because there are no poor or Black/Hispanic enclaves anywhere near Langley. Those processes are not comparable. Nor are the processes for hiring people for jobs - but by all means, advocate in those areas if they're your fight. We will support you.
3) TJ is not built to be an academy. It is built to be a full-service high school that goes beyond its exceptional STEM offerings. Hilton absolutely has more legal training than I do, but I have far more educational and TJ experience than even the folks who came up with the admissions process that you so despise. It's far from ideal, but it's a significant improvement over the previous system.
The problem is #3. You had a flawed system and you replaced it with a "less" flawed system. As has been said, two wrongs dont make a right. There was no reason to rush this through during the Pandemic . There was not enough consultation. I am sure a better system would have come about if the process had been conducted with inputs from everyone and the impacted had been consulted. thatb would have taken time. But this reform was triggered by ideology and dogma - the TJ papers reveal that the Board wanted to capitalize of the George Floyd sentiment.
Student welfare is secondary to political ideology to this school board. While I don't believe CRT, et al is being taught today at FCPS, I am convinced that if left unchecked this School Board will introduce all of that. 2 years ago in would have thought all of this was right-wing noise - not any more.
I dont believe anyone on this Board - (many affiliated with the School Board and the reform) when they say they know more and they have "experience". You cannot see beyond your ideology and deserve your comeuppance at the next election(s)
What specifically would be your problem with some areas of education being informed by Critical Race Theory?
I am all for "some areas of education" being informed by CRT. I don't believe it should be taught in K-12. In fact it should be taught to everyone in college. It deals with a painful part of our history and our development as a nation (and all our flaws). There is a lot of merit there.
But CRT is too amorphous to form part of a K-12 curriculum. Radical teachers (and some not all will be radical) and impressionable students make for a toxic combination. Leave it to college where kids are mature enough to sieve content from ideology.
Would you agree with the idea of presenting a direct through line from, say, slavery to "separate but equal" to redlining to educational inequality? For say, AP US History students?
I would keep all contentious issues outside of K-12 schools. Not because they are right or wrong but because there has to be a consensus built around these issues in the public domain. Schools should not be a battleground for ideological issues. We are already too polarized.
If we allow contentious issues to get a mention then you open a Pandora's box and you may be forced to make mention of creationism for example. we can use our kids as a sandbox to battle on ideological grounds. There is much merit in CRT among believers (I am one) and much merit among the faithful in creationism (I am not one but i dont douby anybody's faith). But these issues do not belong n school. Not yet not till we establish consensus in the broader publ;ic and political domain.
How on earth do you teach US history without touching on slavery or Jim Crow or the civil rights movement? How do you teach AP US history without including the Klan or Japanese internment or Tulsa or the Chinese Exclusion Act or the stonewall riots?
CRT is not the history of civil rights. Let us not conflate the two. Absolutely slavery is something all students should know about. However unless there is braid consensus that history needs to be taught through the lens of CRT, we should stay away.
I was pretty satisfied with the way history was being taught 5 years ago. We definitely taught the wrongs of history and the social injustice over the years with respect to immigrants, minorities, Black people, and women. We just didn't add the alleged systemic part and the alleged irredeemable racism of people born with white skin.
We may still get to a place where CRT becomes the default approach to US history. But we are not there yet. Let the proponents of CRT drive broad consensus around CRT in forums outside the classroom. Once that happens introduce it to classrooms.
It is particularly insidious to inteoduce contentitious ideologies to K-12 impressionable minds.
I know it's so awful when they discuss slavery. We need to put that behind us.
Actually, many arguments are conclusively settled on the playground. Let us add CRT to it. Why bother adults when kids can deal with it.
Anonymous wrote:Perhaps by now many have read the "TJ Papers" - a collection of materials obtained from FCPS during discovery in the civil litigation by the plaintiffs challenging the changes to the TJ admissions process. Many are available at https://defendinged.org/incidents/tjpapers/
Some take-aways:
1. The three main forces behind the TJ admissions change were Scott Brabrand (Superintendent), Karen Corbett Sanders (School Board member from Mount Vernon District), and Scott Surovell (member of Virginia Senate from the 36th District, which includes the Mount Vernon area).
2. Brabrand was in major "white savior" mode, as if his legacy depending on his personally pushing through radical changes in the TJ admissions process. At various times, Brabrand's interactions with staff indicated that his goal was simply to adjust the process, by whatever means necessary, to guarantee the admission of more Black and Hispanic students to TJ, regardless of whether they were otherwise the most qualified candidates.
3. Corbett-Sanders and Surovell have no guiding principles; they are just retail pork-barrel politicians who seized upon the moment to grab more TJ seats for students in their own part of the county.
4. Brabrand misled School Board members about the possibility that the VDOE might come down hard on FCPS if they didn't make major changes to TJ admissions, whereas over time it emerged that VDOE did not necessarily expect FCPS's "diversity plan" (which FCPS was required to submit by October 2020) to include changes to the TJ admissions process by 2021.
5. The process was rushed, incoherent, and marked by School Board members sniping at each other and at Brabrand. Sizemore-Heizer complained that Keys Gamarra was calling other School Board members racist. Pekarsky and Omeish referred to Frisch as a liar. Omeish referred to Brabrand as "too dumb and too white." Pekarsky and Omeish openly acknowledged that the changes under consideration were "anti-asian." McLaughlin told a constituent that Brabrand's handling of the admissions changes was the worst process she had encountered in her many years as a School Board member. Cohen and other School Board members admitted after the fact that they hadn't paid attention as to whether the middle school admissions quotas would be based on a student's "base school" or "attending school," even though this had major implications on 8th grade students attending AAP centers. And so on.
6. The two School Board members representing the districts with the most TJ students - Pekarsky and Tholen - had reservations but patted themselves on the back for effecting a "compromise" (i.e., rejecting Brabrand's initial "lottery" proposal in favor of a "holistic" approach that might lead to a higher number of Sully and Dranesville kids continuing to get into TJ), but never seriously grappled with (a) whether they should have opposed any changes as a matter of principle or (b) whether the change they ultimately supported would end up chewing up even more of FCPS's time and resources, to the detriment of FCPS's ability to address challenges at other schools. Ultimately, they were swept along with the tide for fear of being criticized by their colleagues.
7. Many of the most embarrassing exchanges between School Board members were reflected in text messages produced during discovery in the civil litigation. This suggests that (a) School Board members often text each other to avoid using their FCPS email accounts to conduct official School Board business; and/or (2) no one in FCPS's legal department ever cautioned these folks that text messages are just as discoverable in civil litigation as emails.
No one who objectively reads these materials can conclude this School Board is competent, principled, or deserving of another term in office. They embarrass not only themselves, but also everyone in the county who wants Fairfax County to stand for good governance. If they had any dignity, they would resign now, but in any event they should step aside and let others replace them in 2023.
Interesting... but as far as I can tell the changes weren't radical at all and well within best practice guidelines for GT admissions.
Superficially race-neutral changes are not okay if used with the intent and result of racist discrimination.
What if they're used with the intent and result of ending racist discrimination that previously took place through a superficially race-neutral but demonstrably discriminatory process that had the impact of shutting out Black, Hispanic, and low-income Asian students?
They weren't. The prior process was race-neutral, not "superficially race-neutral."
And if you really want to go down the path of insisting on measuring everything by its "impact," then you should be worrying about the "process" that leads to FCPS operating Langley High School as a 3% FARMS school with few Black and Hispanic students. Or the "process" that leads to the under-representation of Asian administrators at senior levels within FCPS. And so on.
Change TJ to an Academy program, or shut it down entirely if you must, but your arguments are frivolous and the "new" process a sham that has already been deemed invalid by someone with far more legal training than you apparently have.
1) False. A process that virtually eliminates Black and Hispanic students may be "race-blind", but by definition cannot be "race-neutral".
2) The process that leads to FCPS operating a neighborhood high school that has 3% FARMS students has to do with geography. We are in agreement that they could probably redraw the boundaries of that school somewhat to include more Black/Hispanic/FARMS students, but the impact would be minimal at best because there are no poor or Black/Hispanic enclaves anywhere near Langley. Those processes are not comparable. Nor are the processes for hiring people for jobs - but by all means, advocate in those areas if they're your fight. We will support you.
3) TJ is not built to be an academy. It is built to be a full-service high school that goes beyond its exceptional STEM offerings. Hilton absolutely has more legal training than I do, but I have far more educational and TJ experience than even the folks who came up with the admissions process that you so despise. It's far from ideal, but it's a significant improvement over the previous system.
The problem is #3. You had a flawed system and you replaced it with a "less" flawed system. As has been said, two wrongs dont make a right. There was no reason to rush this through during the Pandemic . There was not enough consultation. I am sure a better system would have come about if the process had been conducted with inputs from everyone and the impacted had been consulted. thatb would have taken time. But this reform was triggered by ideology and dogma - the TJ papers reveal that the Board wanted to capitalize of the George Floyd sentiment.
Student welfare is secondary to political ideology to this school board. While I don't believe CRT, et al is being taught today at FCPS, I am convinced that if left unchecked this School Board will introduce all of that. 2 years ago in would have thought all of this was right-wing noise - not any more.
I dont believe anyone on this Board - (many affiliated with the School Board and the reform) when they say they know more and they have "experience". You cannot see beyond your ideology and deserve your comeuppance at the next election(s)
What specifically would be your problem with some areas of education being informed by Critical Race Theory?
I am all for "some areas of education" being informed by CRT. I don't believe it should be taught in K-12. In fact it should be taught to everyone in college. It deals with a painful part of our history and our development as a nation (and all our flaws). There is a lot of merit there.
But CRT is too amorphous to form part of a K-12 curriculum. Radical teachers (and some not all will be radical) and impressionable students make for a toxic combination. Leave it to college where kids are mature enough to sieve content from ideology.
Would you agree with the idea of presenting a direct through line from, say, slavery to "separate but equal" to redlining to educational inequality? For say, AP US History students?
I would keep all contentious issues outside of K-12 schools. Not because they are right or wrong but because there has to be a consensus built around these issues in the public domain. Schools should not be a battleground for ideological issues. We are already too polarized.
If we allow contentious issues to get a mention then you open a Pandora's box and you may be forced to make mention of creationism for example. we can use our kids as a sandbox to battle on ideological grounds. There is much merit in CRT among believers (I am one) and much merit among the faithful in creationism (I am not one but i dont douby anybody's faith). But these issues do not belong n school. Not yet not till we establish consensus in the broader publ;ic and political domain.
How on earth do you teach US history without touching on slavery or Jim Crow or the civil rights movement? How do you teach AP US history without including the Klan or Japanese internment or Tulsa or the Chinese Exclusion Act or the stonewall riots?
CRT is not the history of civil rights. Let us not conflate the two. Absolutely slavery is something all students should know about. However unless there is braid consensus that history needs to be taught through the lens of CRT, we should stay away.
I was pretty satisfied with the way history was being taught 5 years ago. We definitely taught the wrongs of history and the social injustice over the years with respect to immigrants, minorities, Black people, and women. We just didn't add the alleged systemic part and the alleged irredeemable racism of people born with white skin.
Tell me you don’t know what Critical Race Theory is without telling me you don’t know what Critical Race Theory is.
I know exactly what it is. It's the belief that all of our institutions are systemically racist to keep white people in power. The premise is that white people took land from indigenous populations and used slave labor to advance white wealth and then continuously worked to prevent these people and their descendants from advancing in society by using race as the immutable property to identify members of these groups and keep them marginalized by discriminatory treatment across all aspects of our government and social institutions. So, again, I do not think this is true and certainly do not think it adds anything truthful or constructive to the way history was taught 5 years ago.
You left out the fact that it's a legal theory so it's incomplete without also focusing on the remedy, which is to systematically reallocate private property and opportunities from white oppressors and white-adjacent groups to "marginalized" groups, especially ADOS, to address past wrongs.
Good times ahead if this isn't stopped in the tracks.
Anonymous wrote:
Then why are we having this argument about removing a test that focused on advanced math techniques and discussing the number of students who need “remedial” math? It is totally fine to let in students who demonstrate STEM ability but not acceleration in math. Even desirable. Of course students who are math geniuses should also be admitted. But I am not sure math acceleration is the way to identify that talent.
The problem now is that the math geniuses are not being identified and admitted. The current admissions process is so sparse that all above average kids look more or less the same. Removing the Quant test is just another way that the math geniuses were not identified. The number of students who need "remedial" math would be fine if those kids demonstrated high level STEM ability in other areas. They did not do so. There was nothing in the application to allow them to do so.
Again, no one has suggested looking at math acceleration as the only factor in identifying extreme math talent. Math acceleration + grades in these higher level math classes + teacher recommendations + math awards/achievements in math extracurriculars is what you'd use to identify extreme math talent. I'd be very suspicious of a kid who was highly accelerated and got As, but had no notable math achievements and a meh teacher recommendation.
Previous poster doesn’t understand the point of the Quant-Q or why the prep programs basically made it a pointless exam.
My DC is in the class of 2022. DC didn’t do one second of preparation and I certainly did not pay for a prep class. Plus sometime I feel that the prep class angle is over played. Those showing a desire to put in extra work in whatever it is (sports trainers, tutors, outside classes/camps in a particular subject, street play, etc) should count for something. When it comes to education we should be intervening in the early years not creating policy to adjust for our inability to create a more diverse student body from early on.
It's a red herring. Sure some kids "prepped". But the vast majority of students under previous admission system were simply just smart kids. TJ produces hundreds of national merit semi-finalists. They represents top students in STEM nationally. They went on to perform well in colleges and grad schools. You can't "prep" that. If the "prep" was so easy to do, the rich white parents wouldn't have paid hundreds of thousands to cheat on SATs as varsity blues showed.
The bolded is correct - but there were also hundreds of other kids who were every bit as smart - or smarter - who got leapfrogged because they were competing with kids who walked into an exam designed to test your native problem-solving ability with techniques that were handed to them at a cost of $5K or more to their family. And it was a timed exam where being able to figure out the problems quickly was of tremendous advantage.
FCPS is 100% to blame for that. They knew that was exactly going to happen, but they didn't care to provide that prep to those kids who didn't have the money, awareness, or even access to information. Where were the after school prep programs to help teach them problem solving skills? Were any practice materials even handed out at school? If they wanted to actually help, they would have put $$ instead of empty words. Let's face it, FCPS doesn't give a hoot about minority students applying to TJ.
The admissions process provided links to free prep for the two ACT exams, but the makers of the Quant-Q force anyone who sees it to sign an NDA. So no, FCPS could not provide any sort of free practice materials or prep to the end of improving performance on the Quant-Q. And besides, the purpose of that exam is to test how well and quickly student can identify a complex problem that they haven't seen before and develop a solution for it. When the prep programs got hold of the questions from their previous students, they then charged huge amounts of money to parents so that they could teach students how to solve those problems - making the Quant-Q a pointless exam.
If you go into the Quant-Q already knowing how to solve the types of problems that are on the Quant-Q, it ceases to have any value. It's designed for students to have to struggle with it.
Whre is the proof?
The proof is in the form of students who posted on a forum called TJ Vents on Facebook back in August of 2020. They are members of the Class of 2023 and 2024 whose names appeared on Curie's lists of successful TJ applicants who confirmed in the comment thread of a related post that they were surprised to see questions on the Quant-Q when they took it that they had seen before in their classes at Curie.
The original post was the first public expression of Curie's impact on the TJ admissions process, which was a well-known secret among TJ's South Asian community until a student posted the original anonymous vent.
Dat ain't no proof. GTFO.
I mean, the students at TJ accept it as proof. They believe their colleagues and actually congratulated them on their bravery.
This is fake news. If there was any truth this it would have come up in the lawsuit. FCPS never raised this as a reason the admissions process was changed. Nowhere in the record, the briefs, the TJ papers, etc. does anybody every state they believe Curie had acquired the Quant-Q questions or questions that showed up on the actual TJ test.
Denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt.
I will never understand why FCPS did not pursue the Curie cheating scandal. They had first and last names. They had kids stating that they saw the test ahead of time.
I wonder if there was some kind of pay-to-play going on internally within FCPS and they did not want to embarrass/expose their own staff? Or possibly the company that they fired threatened to sue if they embarrassed them?
Whatever the reasons, the FCPS lawyers clearly gave terrible advice during the admissions “reform” process.
The reality is that there wasn’t anything to prosecute. Curie exploited an apparent gap in the process to tremendous profit. And it worked.
In the process, they made it obvious that change was necessary. If you think FCPS and TJ Admissions didn’t know about their 133 kids in 2024, you’re naïve.
Many prep companies pay some admittees to top universities as well as TJ in this case to say they got in because of ABC prep Co. This is a well know fact. Almost always inflated, exaggerated and not very reliable since we will never know. It is called marketing folks. Nothing burger and happens all the time.
Probably, Curie paid some if not most of the TJ students listed on FB to say they got in because of Curie. Move on and stop wasting time on this issue.
More non-falsifiable speculation that conveniently serves a helpful narrative.
Even if true, the fact that they used the names of TJ students to try to create a market that suggests that your best chance of getting into TJ is to spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on this private company is incredibly problematic.
And there is absolutely zero evidence to support that claim anyway.
Curie’s existence and apparent success suggests a pay-to-play dynamic in the admissions process of a public school. That’s REALLY bad.
Unfortunately for you, almost all prep companies engage in this type of marketing behavior not just TJ related prep companies. Time to stop wasting people's time on these threads and go investigate your self if you are so obsessed. Hire a private investigator or go talk to other prep companies and find out but stop wasting other people's time.
Nah. I’ll just amplify the publicly available information - which speaks for itself and doesn’t really require further investigation - until there’s no further conversation about using testing metrics that are so easily manipulated by wealthy and motivated applicants.
Just understand that more you do what you do, more FREE advertisements you give to Curie. You are promoting the exact behavior you say you are obsessively against.
Nah. I don’t really care if Curie has success financially. I just want what they do to have significantly less impact on the TJ admissions process. And so far, I’m winning. We’ll see what comes of the lawsuit, but right now I’m happy.
Yeah. Blissfully ignorant.
Nah. They lost nearly half of their share at TJ year over year, from 28% of the Class of 2024 to about 16% of the Class of 2025. The fact that they continued to have that much of the incoming class despite coming off of their best year ever tells me that the effectiveness of the program at getting kids into TJ waned significantly.
I think you're looking at it wrong though. There will always be prep companies stepping up to extract money from unsuspecting (trusting?) individuals, that's just business. [0012] Exemplary methods, apparatus, and products for detecting coolant leaks in a server system in accordance with the present invention are described with reference to the accompanying drawings, beginning with Figure 1. Figure 1 sets forth a diagram of a controller 110 configured for detecting coolant leaks in a server system according to embodiments of the present invention. Additionally, make sure the test is not worth the whole enchilada, but an additional data point. Ideally it would serve as a very low bar filter for getting students past the first round, so choose reasonable low scores. On the other hand, having a high ceiling would also allow it to be used as another data point in the final round. Important note: In order to maintain equity, FCPS should be publishing all past tests and practice material on their website so all can access it. That is how you remove the prep company pay to play impact; not by keeping the test a secret as they so stupidly did in the past.
DP. This is impossible. You are saying that because Test A was preppable and Test B was preppable, that a school district/test company needs to make Test Z that is unpreppable. That doesn't exist. (Actually, there is a test that I know of that is considered to be very accurate with prepping, the LSAT and to some extent but less directly, the MCAT.) As well wish for a pony as for an unpreppable test. Or give students the LSAT...
DP. I don't think they need a Test Z that is unpreppable. They need one where the prep would simply be learning the math or science quite well. TJ could write what is essentially a very hard Honors Algebra I final exam to separate the kids who truly have A+ mastery of the content from those who got watered down As. They could do the same with science. Among the numerous 4.0 gpa applicants, it could help identify the kids who earned their 4.0s vs. the kids who only got them due to grade inflation.
Can't do an Alg1 final if the requirement for eligibility is to be presently enrolled in Alg1. Would have to be based on the first quarter of Alg1, like it was previously.
Okay, then. Surely, someone at TJ could write a very rigorous pre-Algebra test the would differentiate between the kids with a very solid foundation and those who got watered down As.
I honestly wouldn't have a problem with this, as long as:
a) the exam were administered during the school day, just like the AMC, so as to ensure maximum participation
b) the exam were scored on a pass-fail basis with a reasonably high but still accessible cut-off point
c) once used to determine baseline suitability, the score was thrown out and never used again to differentiate students
But the reality of the situation is that if you use a non-standardized, non-vetted math exam of any kind for a public school, you open yourself up to challenges of bias that have even greater validity than any of the current challenges.
And additionally, you'd still see massive, extensive prep designed to ensure that students who might be relatively workaday end up "passing", or if you count the score, significantly exceeding their actual capabilities.
Admitting really hard working and driven students that study into a rigorous high school that expects you to be gifted and a high achiever seems fine to me even if these kids may be exceeding their actual capabilities compared to a lazy version of a slightly brighter student. It has worked extremely well in the past (there is a reason it's the number 1 high school in the US) - you just don't like racial makeup of the student body.
It's the number 1 high school in the country because you have ranking services that use exam scores as a metric and the school's old admissions process disallowed students who weren't exceptional test takers from advancing in the process.
The TJ exam didn't do a great job of predicting future success at TJ, any more than the SAT or PSAT predicts success in college or in life. But success on the TJ exam does predict success on the SAT, so that's where the ranking comes from.
The TJ exam in and of itself may not predict success at TJ, but the holistic review of a fairly comprehensive packet certainly did. It's kind of funny that the same people who seem to think that TJ admissions officers can absolutely detect brilliance from the current generic essays seem to have no faith that the same people could detect brilliance through a more comprehensive packet with test scores, teacher recommendations, more elaborate essays, lists of achievements, and so on. Make up your minds on just how psychic or how incompetent these TJ selection panels are.
I agree with you for the most part. I have been advocating for more comprehensive materials and would like to see something more fleshed out, as long as the admissions committee is specifically looking for different types of exceptional students from different backgrounds.
It's really the exam that was the confounding factor, which is why I support the current process, however flawed, moreso than the previous one. But I am adamant in my belief that the eventual process should include more inputs.
PP. This is where we disagree. I support the previous process, however flawed, moreso than the current one. The previous process absolutely did detect and admit those 200-ish kids who are head and shoulders above the FCPS population, truly gifted, and very much in need of a school like TJ. The current process has no way to identify these kids. I'd prefer to have the kids who need TJ to be admitted, even if the bottom half of the class is filled with privileged, prep kids. You'd rather sacrifice the kids who need TJ so you can round out the bottom half of the class with demographics that you find more palatable, even if those kids would be very well served at their base school.
Ultimately, when they revamp the admissions to have a more comprehensive process, we'll end up in the same place.
Decades of experience at TJ suggests that the real number is more like 75-100 truly exceptional kids at TJ, with a look at the rest of the county suggesting that many were missed each year.
We get into trouble when we suggest that the old admissions process was particularly great at finding the exceptional kids - or at least, any moreso than the current process is.
I think we would agree that we have a long way to go to get to correct. But we no matter what process we eventually land on, we should all be able to agree - because it's not something that's really up for debate by reasonable individuals - that we have a great chance of success in unearthing those talents from ALL demographics if they feel as though they are welcome at the school. And they weren't previously, and they are now.
MCPS had even bigger changes to its magnet admissions a few years back a group that makes up about 15% of the county, percentage of seats declined from 70% to 62%R of the program so they brought a lawsuit. The result is they now have a lottery and they number of seats is more like 30%. This is where you are headed.
That the racists would rather destroy an institution when they are not allowed to practice racism is a problem with the racists, rather than those complaining about racism. The solution here is to get the racists voted out of office. But given that it's Maryland dominated by progressive politics, I'm not keeping my hopes up.
Agree, the racists want a system they can easily game with prep and hate a level playing field.
Level playing field is an excuse, if that is the case still the same winners will win
The majority of kids accepted under the old system did not test prep. It is pretty disgusting to read the documents and see how FCPS tweaked the process to give game changing bonus points so they could get the racial balancing outcome they wanted
Anonymous wrote:The majority of kids accepted under the old system did not test prep. It is pretty disgusting to read the documents and see how FCPS tweaked the process to give game changing bonus points so they could get the racial balancing outcome they wanted
Just brutally false. One prep company claimed nearly 30% of the class of 2024 on their own, and 100% of those belonged to ONE racial demographic.
Are you suggesting that only Indians do test prep? Seems awfully racist to me.
Anonymous wrote:The majority of kids accepted under the old system did not test prep. It is pretty disgusting to read the documents and see how FCPS tweaked the process to give game changing bonus points so they could get the racial balancing outcome they wanted
Just brutally false. One prep company claimed nearly 30% of the class of 2024 on their own, and 100% of those belonged to ONE racial demographic.
Are you suggesting that only Indians do test prep? Seems awfully racist to me.
I'm sure you'll just ignore this, like you have the other 100 times it has been brought up. Most of the kids from that prep company are LCPS students occupying the LCPS designated TJ seats. It's obvious that such is the case, because over half of those kids also were accepted to AET or AOS. They also didn't indicate whether all of the kids were admitted first round, or whether many were admitted into LCPS seats after the originally accepted kids chose to attend AET or AOS instead.
Grossly changing FCPS admissions process in response to South Asians in LCPS all trying to leapfrog each other for the LCPS seats makes no sense, especially since even in the new system, the LCPS seats are almost entirely filled with wealthy South Asians.
Anonymous wrote:The majority of kids accepted under the old system did not test prep. It is pretty disgusting to read the documents and see how FCPS tweaked the process to give game changing bonus points so they could get the racial balancing outcome they wanted
Just brutally false. One prep company claimed nearly 30% of the class of 2024 on their own, and 100% of those belonged to ONE racial demographic.
Are you suggesting that only Indians do test prep? Seems awfully racist to me.
I'm sure you'll just ignore this, like you have the other 100 times it has been brought up. Most of the kids from that prep company are LCPS students occupying the LCPS designated TJ seats. It's obvious that such is the case, because over half of those kids also were accepted to AET or AOS. They also didn't indicate whether all of the kids were admitted first round, or whether many were admitted into LCPS seats after the originally accepted kids chose to attend AET or AOS instead.
Grossly changing FCPS admissions process in response to South Asians in LCPS all trying to leapfrog each other for the LCPS seats makes no sense, especially since even in the new system, the LCPS seats are almost entirely filled with wealthy South Asians.
Then please tell us a better way to both overcome the Curie problem and overcome the "During the summer of 2020, statistics revealed that the number of Black students admitted to TJ’s incoming class was too small to be reported." problem for the entire region.
Anonymous wrote:The majority of kids accepted under the old system did not test prep. It is pretty disgusting to read the documents and see how FCPS tweaked the process to give game changing bonus points so they could get the racial balancing outcome they wanted
Just brutally false. One prep company claimed nearly 30% of the class of 2024 on their own, and 100% of those belonged to ONE racial demographic.
Are you suggesting that only Indians do test prep? Seems awfully racist to me.
I'm sure you'll just ignore this, like you have the other 100 times it has been brought up. Most of the kids from that prep company are LCPS students occupying the LCPS designated TJ seats. It's obvious that such is the case, because over half of those kids also were accepted to AET or AOS. They also didn't indicate whether all of the kids were admitted first round, or whether many were admitted into LCPS seats after the originally accepted kids chose to attend AET or AOS instead.
Grossly changing FCPS admissions process in response to South Asians in LCPS all trying to leapfrog each other for the LCPS seats makes no sense, especially since even in the new system, the LCPS seats are almost entirely filled with wealthy South Asians.
Then please tell us a better way to both overcome the Curie problem and overcome the "During the summer of 2020, statistics revealed that the number of Black students admitted to TJ’s incoming class was too small to be reported." problem for the entire region.
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