Court: TJ's New Admission Policy Does Not Discriminate

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:It was sheer idiocy to encourage high achieving kids to attend AAP centers and then have the same 1.5% quota for Carson and a bottom-feeder like Poe or Whitman. Even if it wasn’t illegal it was sure as hell stupid.

Why? The kids at Carson, Rocky Run, and Longfellow had plenty of other spaces to compete for after the quotas were filled and ended up doing very well. They're still getting 30-50 kids into TJ every year while the Whitmans of the world are getting 5. Is that really so awful in exchange for every student in the catchment area feeling like they have a shot at TJ?

If your answer is yes, you're engaging in a behavior called "resource hoarding".

If you’re concerned about resource hoarding, you should be more concerned about TJ not serving its community. Kids handed an increasingly arbitrary golden ticket attend a state of the art school while kids living within walking distance to TJ attend run down Annandale or have to cross 395 and 495 to get to Edison. You have no problem with resource hoarding or elitism as long as the seats are doled out under the spoils system you prefer.

Terrible point you tried to make there. First of all, TJ wouldn't be an elite, state of the art school if it were NOT supported by Governor's School funds and private capital to do exactly what it is doing...

and second, the new system has greatly INCREASED the number of students from the area surrounding TJ who actually get to attend it instead of going to Annandale or Edison.

It's also the opposite of resource hoarding when the students benefiting from a system that you refer to as "increasingly arbitrary" don't have resources to begin with.

Just failed embarrassingly on all fronts here.

I don’t see any thoughtful response there. You are iso enamored of the geographical tokenism promoted under the new policy that you’re blind to the ongoing second-class experience afforded the vast majority of kids who live in the areas closest to TJ.

1) Edison and Annandale both got renovated maybe 8-12 years ago. Their physical plant is no more "second-class" than TJ's is, and calling their experience "second-class" is a needless insult to two hard-working administrations and staffs.

2) What makes the TJ experience different is the priorities of the students who attend and the unique facilities afforded by TJ's status as a Governor's School and the private investment that's been inspired by its existence in this form. That goes away if TJ becomes a neighborhood school - something its physical plant is unprepared to handle.

Annandale’s last renovation was cheap and more than a dozen years ago and the students in parts of North Springfield required to cross both 395 and 495 to get to Edison. The Edison renovation was more recent but nothing like TJ’s.

TJ absolutely could become a community school again. You just don’t want that to ever happen because you enjoy privileges for a small number of kids at the expense of others, so long as it’s on your terms. You certainly have no basis to imply others are “privilege hoarders.”

TJ’s building could not host a community school without extensive renovations and retrofitting. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand the differences between TJ and a community school.

I understand your desire to claim TJ would be wasted on the unwashed masses. It’s just not persuasive. There are also ongoing costs associated with not using it to benefit those living closest to the school.

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m telling you that the building is inadequate to host a community school. The cafeteria would have to be massively expanded, the research wing and science labs would have to be demolished and retrofitted to improve capacity or else exist as wasted space, and that’s just the beginning of it.

They retrofitted an office building in Baileys Crossroads to make it an ES so I’m sure they could make whatever adjustments were needed to a magnet HS to make it suitable for a neighborhood HS. It would also be fine for Jefferson to continue to have nice labs. You sound like you’d want them to torch the place if it weren’t being used exactly the way you want.

TJ has become an unnecessary distraction from FCPS meeting its key mission. It chews up far, far too much of the system’s existing bandwidth, and it’s not even educating the region’s most talented kids any longer. Meanwhile the kids living closest to the school get screwed. Giant fail.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was sheer idiocy to encourage high achieving kids to attend AAP centers and then have the same 1.5% quota for Carson and a bottom-feeder like Poe or Whitman. Even if it wasn’t illegal it was sure as hell stupid.

Why? The kids at Carson, Rocky Run, and Longfellow had plenty of other spaces to compete for after the quotas were filled and ended up doing very well. They're still getting 30-50 kids into TJ every year while the Whitmans of the world are getting 5. Is that really so awful in exchange for every student in the catchment area feeling like they have a shot at TJ?

If your answer is yes, you're engaging in a behavior called "resource hoarding".

I think the issue is that the quotas don't consider that kids zoned for Whitmans and Stones are in centers at other schools. Its an oddly obvious error on the part of the new admission standard.

It's not an error at all. The point is that students who, for whatever reason, are not at the AAP centers should still have a chance to go to TJ.

Parents assume that any kid who is bright at all is automatically center-bound, and that's simply not the case.

Right and the number of kids that go to the centers should be deducted in the quota calculation for the non-center MS. AAP kids deserve the same chance that non-AAP kids have.

... that doesn't make any sense. Why would you do that if the point is to ensure that the kids at each school have a chance to go to TJ?

And AAP kids absolutely do have the same chance that non-AAP kids have. Indeed, probably a greater one because they receive the vast majority of the spots that are unallocated. I'd argue that the kids who get the worst of it are probably the non-AAP kids who go to the center schools. Not everyone at Carson or Longfellow are center kids, but they have to compete with the center kids for the allocated spaces at those schools. Where is your concern for those kids?

If a kid is zoned for Whitman but goes to Sandburg, his/her acceptance, assuming its quota based selection and not at-large, should be counted against the 1.5% quota of Whitman.

Sandberg is sent 12 kids last year, Whitman too few to be noted https://www.fcps.edu/news/thomas-jefferson-high-school-continues-increase-access-all

Neither group is costing your Precious their spot at TJ

The point is that someone from Whitman's zone attending Sandberg for AAP would have missed out on a spot because they had to compete against other AAP kids at Sandberg, instead of for Whitman's quota. Students at Whitman who weren't able to get in to AAP got spots instead of these kids.

The faulty assumption that you are making when you repeat this point - and expect everyone to agree with you - is that every kid in AAP is more qualified to go to TJ than EVERY kid from the non-center schools. And that’s just not the case.

They're also assuming that there is enough interest at Whitman and Sandberg to even hit the allocation. From those numbers, it looks like Whitman didn't and Sandberg missed by at least one kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was sheer idiocy to encourage high achieving kids to attend AAP centers and then have the same 1.5% quota for Carson and a bottom-feeder like Poe or Whitman. Even if it wasn’t illegal it was sure as hell stupid.

Why? The kids at Carson, Rocky Run, and Longfellow had plenty of other spaces to compete for after the quotas were filled and ended up doing very well. They're still getting 30-50 kids into TJ every year while the Whitmans of the world are getting 5. Is that really so awful in exchange for every student in the catchment area feeling like they have a shot at TJ?

If your answer is yes, you're engaging in a behavior called "resource hoarding".

I think the issue is that the quotas don't consider that kids zoned for Whitmans and Stones are in centers at other schools. Its an oddly obvious error on the part of the new admission standard.

It's not an error at all. The point is that students who, for whatever reason, are not at the AAP centers should still have a chance to go to TJ.

Parents assume that any kid who is bright at all is automatically center-bound, and that's simply not the case.

Right and the number of kids that go to the centers should be deducted in the quota calculation for the non-center MS. AAP kids deserve the same chance that non-AAP kids have.

... that doesn't make any sense. Why would you do that if the point is to ensure that the kids at each school have a chance to go to TJ?

And AAP kids absolutely do have the same chance that non-AAP kids have. Indeed, probably a greater one because they receive the vast majority of the spots that are unallocated. I'd argue that the kids who get the worst of it are probably the non-AAP kids who go to the center schools. Not everyone at Carson or Longfellow are center kids, but they have to compete with the center kids for the allocated spaces at those schools. Where is your concern for those kids?

If a kid is zoned for Whitman but goes to Sandburg, his/her acceptance, assuming its quota based selection and not at-large, should be counted against the 1.5% quota of Whitman.

Sandberg is sent 12 kids last year, Whitman too few to be noted https://www.fcps.edu/news/thomas-jefferson-high-school-continues-increase-access-all

Neither group is costing your Precious their spot at TJ

The point is that someone from Whitman's zone attending Sandberg for AAP would have missed out on a spot because they had to compete against other AAP kids at Sandberg, instead of for Whitman's quota. Students at Whitman who weren't able to get in to AAP got spots instead of these kids.

The faulty assumption that you are making when you repeat this point - and expect everyone to agree with you - is that every kid in AAP is more qualified to go to TJ than EVERY kid from the non-center schools. And that’s just not the case.

They're also assuming that there is enough interest at Whitman and Sandberg to even hit the allocation. From those numbers, it looks like Whitman didn't and Sandberg missed by at least one kid.

That's fine. Mostly I'm glad that more residents are benefiting from these programs not just those in wealthy areas who invest heavily in prep classes to skew admissions in their favor.

[Anonymous]

We didnt need a court ruling to tell/confirm that the updated TJ admission policy is not discriminatory nor is it a “lottery”

But Youngkin and his thugs will have a go at it again.. probably right before the next election cycle.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Oh boy, this is really going to piss off all the Annandale Asians.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/05/23/thomas-jefferson-admissions-policy-upheld/

You don’t know much about Asian Americans in the DMV. The Asians living in Annandale are lower SES/economically diverse and lower SES Asians do much better under the new policy than they did. If it upsets anyone, it might be some Langley/McLean and Centreville Asians.

Do they do better in Annandale, or are they now giving out spots to lower income Asians at Centerville/Langley/McLean?

I don't know, but it's a race-blind process that somehow always picks more Asians than anyone else, so not sure on which planet that is discrimination.

Whether it’s truly a race-blind process is something with which the courts may continue to grapple. If a process is facially race-blind, but was adopted to make it comparatively more difficult for one racial group to gain admission, the Supreme Court may yet end up determining that it violates the Constitution. It’s not simply a question of whether Asian students are “over-represented” relative to their overall percentage of the student population.

The faulty assumption made with THIS line of thinking is that the OLD admissions process was without bias. It was not. The inherent bias within it was the reason why the racial imbalance was what it was, why females were deeply underrepresented, and why less than 2% of each incoming class since forever has been economically disadvantaged.

You seem to be operating on the faulty premise that two wrongs make a right. That’s not how courts typically consider Constitutional challenges to actions by government actors.

Under the new admissions process, it remains easier for Asian students to gain admission to the school than students from any other demographic. Asian students have a higher admission rate per 100 students applying than any other demographic.

The new process DOES discriminate somewhat against one group - students who are not under-resourced. It does NOT discriminate against Asian students. To argue otherwise is either to ignore basic statistical analysis or to engage in Asian supremacy. Period.

Asian supremacy......

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was sheer idiocy to encourage high achieving kids to attend AAP centers and then have the same 1.5% quota for Carson and a bottom-feeder like Poe or Whitman. Even if it wasn’t illegal it was sure as hell stupid.

Why? The kids at Carson, Rocky Run, and Longfellow had plenty of other spaces to compete for after the quotas were filled and ended up doing very well. They're still getting 30-50 kids into TJ every year while the Whitmans of the world are getting 5. Is that really so awful in exchange for every student in the catchment area feeling like they have a shot at TJ?

If your answer is yes, you're engaging in a behavior called "resource hoarding".

I think the issue is that the quotas don't consider that kids zoned for Whitmans and Stones are in centers at other schools. Its an oddly obvious error on the part of the new admission standard.

It's not an error at all. The point is that students who, for whatever reason, are not at the AAP centers should still have a chance to go to TJ.

Parents assume that any kid who is bright at all is automatically center-bound, and that's simply not the case.

Right and the number of kids that go to the centers should be deducted in the quota calculation for the non-center MS. AAP kids deserve the same chance that non-AAP kids have.

... that doesn't make any sense. Why would you do that if the point is to ensure that the kids at each school have a chance to go to TJ?

And AAP kids absolutely do have the same chance that non-AAP kids have. Indeed, probably a greater one because they receive the vast majority of the spots that are unallocated. I'd argue that the kids who get the worst of it are probably the non-AAP kids who go to the center schools. Not everyone at Carson or Longfellow are center kids, but they have to compete with the center kids for the allocated spaces at those schools. Where is your concern for those kids?

If a kid is zoned for Whitman but goes to Sandburg, his/her acceptance, assuming its quota based selection and not at-large, should be counted against the 1.5% quota of Whitman.

Sandberg is sent 12 kids last year, Whitman too few to be noted https://www.fcps.edu/news/thomas-jefferson-high-school-continues-increase-access-all

Neither group is costing your Precious their spot at TJ

The point is that someone from Whitman's zone attending Sandberg for AAP would have missed out on a spot because they had to compete against other AAP kids at Sandberg, instead of for Whitman's quota. Students at Whitman who weren't able to get in to AAP got spots instead of these kids.

The faulty assumption that you are making when you repeat this point - and expect everyone to agree with you - is that every kid in AAP is more qualified to go to TJ than EVERY kid from the non-center schools. And that’s just not the case.

They're also assuming that there is enough interest at Whitman and Sandberg to even hit the allocation. From those numbers, it looks like Whitman didn't and Sandberg missed by at least one kid.

The spots are there if kids want to use them. If they don't then kids from other schools can pick up those spots. It is not like the spots go unfilled. I like that the County is doing something to make sure that all kids across the county have the chance to attend an amazing school if they meet specific requirements. I am fine with tweaking the requirements some, say all honors classes were possible and kids finish Geometry by the end of 8th grade, but I like the geographic distribution for a portion of the seats.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was sheer idiocy to encourage high achieving kids to attend AAP centers and then have the same 1.5% quota for Carson and a bottom-feeder like Poe or Whitman. Even if it wasn’t illegal it was sure as hell stupid.

Why? The kids at Carson, Rocky Run, and Longfellow had plenty of other spaces to compete for after the quotas were filled and ended up doing very well. They're still getting 30-50 kids into TJ every year while the Whitmans of the world are getting 5. Is that really so awful in exchange for every student in the catchment area feeling like they have a shot at TJ?

If your answer is yes, you're engaging in a behavior called "resource hoarding".

If you’re concerned about resource hoarding, you should be more concerned about TJ not serving its community. Kids handed an increasingly arbitrary golden ticket attend a state of the art school while kids living within walking distance to TJ attend run down Annandale or have to cross 395 and 495 to get to Edison. You have no problem with resource hoarding or elitism as long as the seats are doled out under the spoils system you prefer.

Terrible point you tried to make there. First of all, TJ wouldn't be an elite, state of the art school if it were NOT supported by Governor's School funds and private capital to do exactly what it is doing...

and second, the new system has greatly INCREASED the number of students from the area surrounding TJ who actually get to attend it instead of going to Annandale or Edison.

It's also the opposite of resource hoarding when the students benefiting from a system that you refer to as "increasingly arbitrary" don't have resources to begin with.

Just failed embarrassingly on all fronts here.

I don’t see any thoughtful response there. You are iso enamored of the geographical tokenism promoted under the new policy that you’re blind to the ongoing second-class experience afforded the vast majority of kids who live in the areas closest to TJ.

1) Edison and Annandale both got renovated maybe 8-12 years ago. Their physical plant is no more "second-class" than TJ's is, and calling their experience "second-class" is a needless insult to two hard-working administrations and staffs.

2) What makes the TJ experience different is the priorities of the students who attend and the unique facilities afforded by TJ's status as a Governor's School and the private investment that's been inspired by its existence in this form. That goes away if TJ becomes a neighborhood school - something its physical plant is unprepared to handle.

Annandale’s last renovation was cheap and more than a dozen years ago and the students in parts of North Springfield required to cross both 395 and 495 to get to Edison. The Edison renovation was more recent but nothing like TJ’s.

TJ absolutely could become a community school again. You just don’t want that to ever happen because you enjoy privileges for a small number of kids at the expense of others, so long as it’s on your terms. You certainly have no basis to imply others are “privilege hoarders.”

TJ’s building could not host a community school without extensive renovations and retrofitting. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand the differences between TJ and a community school.

I understand your desire to claim TJ would be wasted on the unwashed masses. It’s just not persuasive. There are also ongoing costs associated with not using it to benefit those living closest to the school.

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m telling you that the building is inadequate to host a community school. The cafeteria would have to be massively expanded, the research wing and science labs would have to be demolished and retrofitted to improve capacity or else exist as wasted space, and that’s just the beginning of it.

They retrofitted an office building in Baileys Crossroads to make it an ES so I’m sure they could make whatever adjustments were needed to a magnet HS to make it suitable for a neighborhood HS. It would also be fine for Jefferson to continue to have nice labs. You sound like you’d want them to torch the place if it weren’t being used exactly the way you want.

TJ has become an unnecessary distraction from FCPS meeting its key mission. It chews up far, far too much of the system’s existing bandwidth, and it’s not even educating the region’s most talented kids any longer. Meanwhile the kids living closest to the school get screwed. Giant fail.

Yeah, they retrofitted that building to great expense because they had major overcrowding problems. That is simply not the case here. Turning Jefferson into a neighborhood school, in addition to the expense of changing the building’s physical plant, would require a redrawing of boundaries all over Fairfax County and would throw entire pyramids into turmoil.

The huge amounts of private investment in the school would dry up immediately if TJ were returned to the neighborhoods - so you’d have large, expansive research labs with nothing in them. And what of the Design and Tech classrooms? TJ has the second smallest footprint in FCPS after Justice, so it’s not like there’s a ton of room to make changes.

Finally, it has been a VERY long time, if at all, since FCPS was selecting the most talented students for TJ year over year. What they have done is selected the most advanced, and in many cases the children of the most motivated, well-connected, and well-resourced parents in the area. And many of those students are still getting into the school, for better or for worse. They are now selecting a different crop of talented students, a significant minority of whom are less advanced in math than TJ kids have been historically. It doesn’t mean those other kids are necessarily more talented.

You accuse me of wanting to torch the place if it’s not filled the way I want…. but that’s exactly what you’re advocating for, whether you realize it or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was sheer idiocy to encourage high achieving kids to attend AAP centers and then have the same 1.5% quota for Carson and a bottom-feeder like Poe or Whitman. Even if it wasn’t illegal it was sure as hell stupid.

Why? The kids at Carson, Rocky Run, and Longfellow had plenty of other spaces to compete for after the quotas were filled and ended up doing very well. They're still getting 30-50 kids into TJ every year while the Whitmans of the world are getting 5. Is that really so awful in exchange for every student in the catchment area feeling like they have a shot at TJ?

If your answer is yes, you're engaging in a behavior called "resource hoarding".

If you’re concerned about resource hoarding, you should be more concerned about TJ not serving its community. Kids handed an increasingly arbitrary golden ticket attend a state of the art school while kids living within walking distance to TJ attend run down Annandale or have to cross 395 and 495 to get to Edison. You have no problem with resource hoarding or elitism as long as the seats are doled out under the spoils system you prefer.

Terrible point you tried to make there. First of all, TJ wouldn't be an elite, state of the art school if it were NOT supported by Governor's School funds and private capital to do exactly what it is doing...

and second, the new system has greatly INCREASED the number of students from the area surrounding TJ who actually get to attend it instead of going to Annandale or Edison.

It's also the opposite of resource hoarding when the students benefiting from a system that you refer to as "increasingly arbitrary" don't have resources to begin with.

Just failed embarrassingly on all fronts here.

I don’t see any thoughtful response there. You are iso enamored of the geographical tokenism promoted under the new policy that you’re blind to the ongoing second-class experience afforded the vast majority of kids who live in the areas closest to TJ.

1) Edison and Annandale both got renovated maybe 8-12 years ago. Their physical plant is no more "second-class" than TJ's is, and calling their experience "second-class" is a needless insult to two hard-working administrations and staffs.

2) What makes the TJ experience different is the priorities of the students who attend and the unique facilities afforded by TJ's status as a Governor's School and the private investment that's been inspired by its existence in this form. That goes away if TJ becomes a neighborhood school - something its physical plant is unprepared to handle.

Annandale’s last renovation was cheap and more than a dozen years ago and the students in parts of North Springfield required to cross both 395 and 495 to get to Edison. The Edison renovation was more recent but nothing like TJ’s.

TJ absolutely could become a community school again. You just don’t want that to ever happen because you enjoy privileges for a small number of kids at the expense of others, so long as it’s on your terms. You certainly have no basis to imply others are “privilege hoarders.”

TJ’s building could not host a community school without extensive renovations and retrofitting. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand the differences between TJ and a community school.

I understand your desire to claim TJ would be wasted on the unwashed masses. It’s just not persuasive. There are also ongoing costs associated with not using it to benefit those living closest to the school.

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m telling you that the building is inadequate to host a community school. The cafeteria would have to be massively expanded, the research wing and science labs would have to be demolished and retrofitted to improve capacity or else exist as wasted space, and that’s just the beginning of it.

They retrofitted an office building in Baileys Crossroads to make it an ES so I’m sure they could make whatever adjustments were needed to a magnet HS to make it suitable for a neighborhood HS. It would also be fine for Jefferson to continue to have nice labs. You sound like you’d want them to torch the place if it weren’t being used exactly the way you want.

TJ has become an unnecessary distraction from FCPS meeting its key mission. It chews up far, far too much of the system’s existing bandwidth, and it’s not even educating the region’s most talented kids any longer. Meanwhile the kids living closest to the school get screwed. Giant fail.

Let's pretend for a moment that FCPS turned TJ into a community school for next year, with a capacity of ~2000 kids. And remember that at present, only about 65% of TJ students are from Fairfax County.

How are you going to fill that school? You have to develop boundaries for where the new TJ is going to draw from, and based on geography, it's a fair guess that about 1200 of those kids are probably going to come from Annandale, let's say 600 from Justice, and 200 from Edison.

Now Annandale is left with a shell of its former population, so they're going to have to draw from somewhere. The obvious solution is to redraw the boundaries such that they grab a good chunk of those back from Woodson, and probably a chunk from Falls Church as well. But wait - Justice has to close the gap too! So they're probably going to need some kids from Falls Church as well in order to fill their building.

Falls Church is currently under renovation to expand their capacity. But how will they fill it? Probably by snagging some kids from Marshall, is my best guess. Now Marshall will have to reach into Madison (even more than it already does) and McLean, and maybe even Oakton.

Can you even imagine what would happen to the folks in, say, eastern Mantua if they all of a sudden woke up one day and they were zoned to Annandale instead of Woodson? Their property values would plummet and you'd start to see folks moving all over the place. You're talking about people losing $50-100K of equity in their house overnight.

If there's no TJ for their kids to angle towards, the property values in the Carson area would plummet as well. Not as much value in sending them to Nysmith either.

You'd probably have a stemming of the tide in terms of immigrant families moving to this area in search of tech jobs, which would have an impact on that sector as well.

You're just not thinking this through when you talk about returning TJ to the community. TJ in its current form is entirely too important to the fabric of Northern Virginia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It was sheer idiocy to encourage high achieving kids to attend AAP centers and then have the same 1.5% quota for Carson and a bottom-feeder like Poe or Whitman. Even if it wasn’t illegal it was sure as hell stupid.

Why? The kids at Carson, Rocky Run, and Longfellow had plenty of other spaces to compete for after the quotas were filled and ended up doing very well. They're still getting 30-50 kids into TJ every year while the Whitmans of the world are getting 5. Is that really so awful in exchange for every student in the catchment area feeling like they have a shot at TJ?

If your answer is yes, you're engaging in a behavior called "resource hoarding".

If you’re concerned about resource hoarding, you should be more concerned about TJ not serving its community. Kids handed an increasingly arbitrary golden ticket attend a state of the art school while kids living within walking distance to TJ attend run down Annandale or have to cross 395 and 495 to get to Edison. You have no problem with resource hoarding or elitism as long as the seats are doled out under the spoils system you prefer.

Terrible point you tried to make there. First of all, TJ wouldn't be an elite, state of the art school if it were NOT supported by Governor's School funds and private capital to do exactly what it is doing...

and second, the new system has greatly INCREASED the number of students from the area surrounding TJ who actually get to attend it instead of going to Annandale or Edison.

It's also the opposite of resource hoarding when the students benefiting from a system that you refer to as "increasingly arbitrary" don't have resources to begin with.

Just failed embarrassingly on all fronts here.

I don’t see any thoughtful response there. You are iso enamored of the geographical tokenism promoted under the new policy that you’re blind to the ongoing second-class experience afforded the vast majority of kids who live in the areas closest to TJ.

1) Edison and Annandale both got renovated maybe 8-12 years ago. Their physical plant is no more "second-class" than TJ's is, and calling their experience "second-class" is a needless insult to two hard-working administrations and staffs.

2) What makes the TJ experience different is the priorities of the students who attend and the unique facilities afforded by TJ's status as a Governor's School and the private investment that's been inspired by its existence in this form. That goes away if TJ becomes a neighborhood school - something its physical plant is unprepared to handle.

Annandale’s last renovation was cheap and more than a dozen years ago and the students in parts of North Springfield required to cross both 395 and 495 to get to Edison. The Edison renovation was more recent but nothing like TJ’s.

TJ absolutely could become a community school again. You just don’t want that to ever happen because you enjoy privileges for a small number of kids at the expense of others, so long as it’s on your terms. You certainly have no basis to imply others are “privilege hoarders.”

TJ’s building could not host a community school without extensive renovations and retrofitting. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand the differences between TJ and a community school.

I understand your desire to claim TJ would be wasted on the unwashed masses. It’s just not persuasive. There are also ongoing costs associated with not using it to benefit those living closest to the school.

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m telling you that the building is inadequate to host a community school. The cafeteria would have to be massively expanded, the research wing and science labs would have to be demolished and retrofitted to improve capacity or else exist as wasted space, and that’s just the beginning of it.

They retrofitted an office building in Baileys Crossroads to make it an ES so I’m sure they could make whatever adjustments were needed to a magnet HS to make it suitable for a neighborhood HS. It would also be fine for Jefferson to continue to have nice labs. You sound like you’d want them to torch the place if it weren’t being used exactly the way you want.

TJ has become an unnecessary distraction from FCPS meeting its key mission. It chews up far, far too much of the system’s existing bandwidth, and it’s not even educating the region’s most talented kids any longer. Meanwhile the kids living closest to the school get screwed. Giant fail.

Let's pretend for a moment that FCPS turned TJ into a community school for next year, with a capacity of ~2000 kids. And remember that at present, only about 65% of TJ students are from Fairfax County.

How are you going to fill that school? You have to develop boundaries for where the new TJ is going to draw from, and based on geography, it's a fair guess that about 1200 of those kids are probably going to come from Annandale, let's say 600 from Justice, and 200 from Edison.

Now Annandale is left with a shell of its former population, so they're going to have to draw from somewhere. The obvious solution is to redraw the boundaries such that they grab a good chunk of those back from Woodson, and probably a chunk from Falls Church as well. But wait - Justice has to close the gap too! So they're probably going to need some kids from Falls Church as well in order to fill their building.

Falls Church is currently under renovation to expand their capacity. But how will they fill it? Probably by snagging some kids from Marshall, is my best guess. Now Marshall will have to reach into Madison (even more than it already does) and McLean, and maybe even Oakton.

Can you even imagine what would happen to the folks in, say, eastern Mantua if they all of a sudden woke up one day and they were zoned to Annandale instead of Woodson? Their property values would plummet and you'd start to see folks moving all over the place. You're talking about people losing $50-100K of equity in their house overnight.

If there's no TJ for their kids to angle towards, the property values in the Carson area would plummet as well. Not as much value in sending them to Nysmith either.

You'd probably have a stemming of the tide in terms of immigrant families moving to this area in search of tech jobs, which would have an impact on that sector as well.

You're just not thinking this through when you talk about returning TJ to the community. TJ in its current form is entirely too important to the fabric of Northern Virginia.

Honestly, the more I think through this, the more it would almost just make sense to close either Falls Church or Annandale as a high school altogether if you did this. You could make the same argument for TJ, I guess, but the building is nicer so it'd make more sense for the community to just close Annandale given the amount of work they've already put into Falls Church.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It was sheer idiocy to encourage high achieving kids to attend AAP centers and then have the same 1.5% quota for Carson and a bottom-feeder like Poe or Whitman. Even if it wasn’t illegal it was sure as hell stupid.

Why? The kids at Carson, Rocky Run, and Longfellow had plenty of other spaces to compete for after the quotas were filled and ended up doing very well. They're still getting 30-50 kids into TJ every year while the Whitmans of the world are getting 5. Is that really so awful in exchange for every student in the catchment area feeling like they have a shot at TJ?

If your answer is yes, you're engaging in a behavior called "resource hoarding".

I think the issue is that the quotas don't consider that kids zoned for Whitmans and Stones are in centers at other schools. Its an oddly obvious error on the part of the new admission standard.

It's not an error at all. The point is that students who, for whatever reason, are not at the AAP centers should still have a chance to go to TJ.

Parents assume that any kid who is bright at all is automatically center-bound, and that's simply not the case.

Right and the number of kids that go to the centers should be deducted in the quota calculation for the non-center MS. AAP kids deserve the same chance that non-AAP kids have.

... that doesn't make any sense. Why would you do that if the point is to ensure that the kids at each school have a chance to go to TJ?

And AAP kids absolutely do have the same chance that non-AAP kids have. Indeed, probably a greater one because they receive the vast majority of the spots that are unallocated. I'd argue that the kids who get the worst of it are probably the non-AAP kids who go to the center schools. Not everyone at Carson or Longfellow are center kids, but they have to compete with the center kids for the allocated spaces at those schools. Where is your concern for those kids?

If a kid is zoned for Whitman but goes to Sandburg, his/her acceptance, assuming its quota based selection and not at-large, should be counted against the 1.5% quota of Whitman.

Sandberg is sent 12 kids last year, Whitman too few to be noted https://www.fcps.edu/news/thomas-jefferson-high-school-continues-increase-access-all

Neither group is costing your Precious their spot at TJ

The point is that someone from Whitman's zone attending Sandberg for AAP would have missed out on a spot because they had to compete against other AAP kids at Sandberg, instead of for Whitman's quota. Students at Whitman who weren't able to get in to AAP got spots instead of these kids.

The faulty assumption that you are making when you repeat this point - and expect everyone to agree with you - is that every kid in AAP is more qualified to go to TJ than EVERY kid from the non-center schools. And that’s just not the case.

They're also assuming that there is enough interest at Whitman and Sandberg to even hit the allocation. From those numbers, it looks like Whitman didn't and Sandberg missed by at least one kid.

The spots are there if kids want to use them. If they don't then kids from other schools can pick up those spots. It is not like the spots go unfilled. I like that the County is doing something to make sure that all kids across the county have the chance to attend an amazing school if they meet specific requirements. I am fine with tweaking the requirements some, say all honors classes were possible and kids finish Geometry by the end of 8th grade, but I like the geographic distribution for a portion of the seats.

I agree. I'm just pointing out that it doesn't matter which school you count a kid inbounds at whitman attending the center at sanberg as attending because neither school actually uses their full allocation. For all the teeth gnashing, TJ is still overwhelming populated by kids from the same schools that it has always been

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It was sheer idiocy to encourage high achieving kids to attend AAP centers and then have the same 1.5% quota for Carson and a bottom-feeder like Poe or Whitman. Even if it wasn’t illegal it was sure as hell stupid.

Wow, "bottom-feeder?" So schools with lower SES students/families don't have smart or capable kids? That's adorable.

[Anonymous]

Honestly, the more I think through this, the more it would almost just make sense to close either Falls Church or Annandale as a high school altogether if you did this. You could make the same argument for TJ, I guess, but the building is nicer so it'd make more sense for the community to just close Annandale given the amount of work they've already put into Falls Church.

Um, y'all know that Annandale is an IB school, right? A nice building is great but any kid who is motivated will also have great (and different) opportunities at Annandale (or other schools). I'm sure most of the people on this board did not go to TJ and yet, here we all are, invested in our kids' educations. The shaming of "poor schools" is so, so ugly.

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Honestly, the more I think through this, the more it would almost just make sense to close either Falls Church or Annandale as a high school altogether if you did this. You could make the same argument for TJ, I guess, but the building is nicer so it'd make more sense for the community to just close Annandale given the amount of work they've already put into Falls Church.

Um, y'all know that Annandale is an IB school, right? A nice building is great but any kid who is motivated will also have great (and different) opportunities at Annandale (or other schools). I'm sure most of the people on this board did not go to TJ and yet, here we all are, invested in our kids' educations. The shaming of "poor schools" is so, so ugly.

I get what you're saying here, but it's the perception of Annandale that is the problem here, not its reality. If you took a huge number of Annandale kids and zoned them to TJ, and then zoned a whole mess of Woodson kids to Annandale, you'd have a lot of people upset and yes, property values would decrease overnight.

The broader point is that it creates far more problems than it solves to simply return the TJ building (or whatever would be left of it) to the community. It would be a wildly unpopular move across Northern Virginia and would send shockwaves through the area.

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Anonymous wrote:It was sheer idiocy to encourage high achieving kids to attend AAP centers and then have the same 1.5% quota for Carson and a bottom-feeder like Poe or Whitman. Even if it wasn’t illegal it was sure as hell stupid.

Why? The kids at Carson, Rocky Run, and Longfellow had plenty of other spaces to compete for after the quotas were filled and ended up doing very well. They're still getting 30-50 kids into TJ every year while the Whitmans of the world are getting 5. Is that really so awful in exchange for every student in the catchment area feeling like they have a shot at TJ?

If your answer is yes, you're engaging in a behavior called "resource hoarding".

If you’re concerned about resource hoarding, you should be more concerned about TJ not serving its community. Kids handed an increasingly arbitrary golden ticket attend a state of the art school while kids living within walking distance to TJ attend run down Annandale or have to cross 395 and 495 to get to Edison. You have no problem with resource hoarding or elitism as long as the seats are doled out under the spoils system you prefer.

Terrible point you tried to make there. First of all, TJ wouldn't be an elite, state of the art school if it were NOT supported by Governor's School funds and private capital to do exactly what it is doing...

and second, the new system has greatly INCREASED the number of students from the area surrounding TJ who actually get to attend it instead of going to Annandale or Edison.

It's also the opposite of resource hoarding when the students benefiting from a system that you refer to as "increasingly arbitrary" don't have resources to begin with.

Just failed embarrassingly on all fronts here.

I don’t see any thoughtful response there. You are iso enamored of the geographical tokenism promoted under the new policy that you’re blind to the ongoing second-class experience afforded the vast majority of kids who live in the areas closest to TJ.

1) Edison and Annandale both got renovated maybe 8-12 years ago. Their physical plant is no more "second-class" than TJ's is, and calling their experience "second-class" is a needless insult to two hard-working administrations and staffs.

2) What makes the TJ experience different is the priorities of the students who attend and the unique facilities afforded by TJ's status as a Governor's School and the private investment that's been inspired by its existence in this form. That goes away if TJ becomes a neighborhood school - something its physical plant is unprepared to handle.

Annandale’s last renovation was cheap and more than a dozen years ago and the students in parts of North Springfield required to cross both 395 and 495 to get to Edison. The Edison renovation was more recent but nothing like TJ’s.

TJ absolutely could become a community school again. You just don’t want that to ever happen because you enjoy privileges for a small number of kids at the expense of others, so long as it’s on your terms. You certainly have no basis to imply others are “privilege hoarders.”

TJ’s building could not host a community school without extensive renovations and retrofitting. If you don’t understand that, you don’t understand the differences between TJ and a community school.

I understand your desire to claim TJ would be wasted on the unwashed masses. It’s just not persuasive. There are also ongoing costs associated with not using it to benefit those living closest to the school.

That’s not what I’m saying. I’m telling you that the building is inadequate to host a community school. The cafeteria would have to be massively expanded, the research wing and science labs would have to be demolished and retrofitted to improve capacity or else exist as wasted space, and that’s just the beginning of it.

They retrofitted an office building in Baileys Crossroads to make it an ES so I’m sure they could make whatever adjustments were needed to a magnet HS to make it suitable for a neighborhood HS. It would also be fine for Jefferson to continue to have nice labs. You sound like you’d want them to torch the place if it weren’t being used exactly the way you want.

TJ has become an unnecessary distraction from FCPS meeting its key mission. It chews up far, far too much of the system’s existing bandwidth, and it’s not even educating the region’s most talented kids any longer. Meanwhile the kids living closest to the school get screwed. Giant fail.

Yeah, they retrofitted that building to great expense because they had major overcrowding problems. That is simply not the case here. Turning Jefferson into a neighborhood school, in addition to the expense of changing the building’s physical plant, would require a redrawing of boundaries all over Fairfax County and would throw entire pyramids into turmoil.

The huge amounts of private investment in the school would dry up immediately if TJ were returned to the neighborhoods - so you’d have large, expansive research labs with nothing in them. And what of the Design and Tech classrooms? TJ has the second smallest footprint in FCPS after Justice, so it’s not like there’s a ton of room to make changes.

Finally, it has been a VERY long time, if at all, since FCPS was selecting the most talented students for TJ year over year. What they have done is selected the most advanced, and in many cases the children of the most motivated, well-connected, and well-resourced parents in the area. And many of those students are still getting into the school, for better or for worse. They are now selecting a different crop of talented students, a significant minority of whom are less advanced in math than TJ kids have been historically. It doesn’t mean those other kids are necessarily more talented.

You accuse me of wanting to torch the place if it’s not filled the way I want…. but that’s exactly what you’re advocating for, whether you realize it or not.

You’re nuts. Super-sized and/or overcrowded high schools are common within FCPS. Just because TJ has a capped enrollment doesn’t mean the restoration of a neighborhood school that could quickly serve more county students than a regional school that’s admitting kids from other jurisdictions wouldn’t be a great opportunity to address some of these longstanding problems. And precisely because boundaries would have to change there would be an opportunity to redress some of the biggest snafus of past decades, such as the gradual, careless concentration of poverty at Annandale.

Moreover, if you really want to argue that FCPS has long failed at admitting the most talented students to TJ (and they certainly aren’t doing it now), that only underscores that the county’s ambitions have outstripped its competence. What we now unfortunately have is a politically driven spoils system, intended to buy off some School Board members who otherwise would be taking a harder look at TJ’s continued utility by doling out a limited number seats on an almost random basis to kids in their districts who in many cases had demonstrated no particular aptitude for a specialized curriculum.

Of course, we pay a heavy price for this between the direct costs spent over the years on fending off investigations and litigation and the indirect costs that result from the disproportionate amount of attention that one school receives relative to others in a system with roughly 200 schools.

We would be well served at this point to wind down the magnet program.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It was sheer idiocy to encourage high achieving kids to attend AAP centers and then have the same 1.5% quota for Carson and a bottom-feeder like Poe or Whitman. Even if it wasn’t illegal it was sure as hell stupid.

Wow, "bottom-feeder?" So schools with lower SES students/families don't have smart or capable kids? That's adorable.

It blows my mind that some people embrace these prejudices. Just because some kids have not had the same opportunity as others doesn't make them less capable or deserving. Many of these kids are motivated and genuinely gifted. Finding ways to shut them out by creating barriers favoring affluent areas seems wrong.