TJ admissions decision - repercussions for Class of 2026

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Who would have though that trying to break the cycle of low income Black and Hispanic underachievement would be derided as racist.

That attempts to reduce opportunity hoarding by rich people would be called unjust.

It’s truly absurd.

And looking at the numbers - there are MORE Asian students at TJ today than there were just a few years ago. And yet, that’s not enough.

With your logic, we need 20% of the fairfax school board members to be Asian; 20% of the fcps top administrators must be Asian; 20% of county judges must be Asian etc. It is a travesty that we have 0 when the county demographics show we need to have 20%.

That’s false. We are generally okay with the fact that TJ is trending toward a universe where it is approximately half-Asian.

We aren’t in any way seeking some perfect mirroring of society where each race is perfectly represented.

I know - only when the (politically lacking) Asians are overrepresented which is ONLY in the educational area are you outraged that there is this over-representation. You have to be consistent now.

[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:This is what our school board has been reduced to, trying to intimidate a 5ft women with security.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OH-2M-oPkU

I am an Indian mother who disagrees with the changes to the admissions process. This insane woman does not speak for me and my family and my culture. She is a cancer on education in Northern Virginia.

Please I beg of you, do not allow this monster to destroy your perception of us. We must fight this process and this school board but this woman is burning down the house for attention.

Asra's been on the right side of this issue from day one fighting. This video shows just how deplorable our school board is willing to act.

The video doesn’t show the School Board doing anything. It shows that she overstays her time - the video cuts off, conveniently, when this happens - and her shouting at security people who get nowhere near her.

Jeez. That woman would do anything tweets.

I find her courageous. She also deserves a victory lap.

All the rants against this Asian woman on here fighting discrimination (which has been proven in a court of law) is a proof that Asians will be stepped on but they are too afraid to do the same to the AA.

I am an Asian American woman who posted previously that I strongly disagree with her tactics and believe she is hurting the cause of fair admissions. I did not rant; I simply expressed my disagreement with her tactics.

To be fair, these are the types of tactics that get noticed. The struggles of civil rights and fights against racism have been successful because some have refused to remain polite - because being polite often gets you ignored by the racists.

They want Asians to be subservient and when they are, well you are too boring and when they are not, you are crazy insane lunatic.

No... she's behaving similarly to the anti-CRT ranters and those (mostly) white ladies are batshit as well. It's about the ugly behavior, not the race, but she knows like you do that the subservient Asian racist trope is an easy card to play to deflect any potential criticism of her outlandish arguments and inappropriate behavior. "Anything goes, and if you disagree you're an anti-Asian racist."

That’s because she’s working with RWNJs who work for Cato Institute, etc. Legit Koch-bro affiliates.

She’s got the RWNJ hysteria down pat.

Maybe she learned from the LWNJs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what our school board has been reduced to, trying to intimidate a 5ft women with security.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OH-2M-oPkU

I am an Indian mother who disagrees with the changes to the admissions process. This insane woman does not speak for me and my family and my culture. She is a cancer on education in Northern Virginia.

Please I beg of you, do not allow this monster to destroy your perception of us. We must fight this process and this school board but this woman is burning down the house for attention.

Asra's been on the right side of this issue from day one fighting. This video shows just how deplorable our school board is willing to act.

The video doesn’t show the School Board doing anything. It shows that she overstays her time - the video cuts off, conveniently, when this happens - and her shouting at security people who get nowhere near her.

Jeez. That woman would do anything tweets.

I find her courageous. She also deserves a victory lap.

All the rants against this Asian woman on here fighting discrimination (which has been proven in a court of law) is a proof that Asians will be stepped on but they are too afraid to do the same to the AA.

I am an Asian American woman who posted previously that I strongly disagree with her tactics and believe she is hurting the cause of fair admissions. I did not rant; I simply expressed my disagreement with her tactics.

To be fair, these are the types of tactics that get noticed. The struggles of civil rights and fights against racism have been successful because some have refused to remain polite - because being polite often gets you ignored by the racists.

They want Asians to be subservient and when they are, well you are too boring and when they are not, you are crazy insane lunatic.

No... she's behaving similarly to the anti-CRT ranters and those (mostly) white ladies are batshit as well. It's about the ugly behavior, not the race, but she knows like you do that the subservient Asian racist trope is an easy card to play to deflect any potential criticism of her outlandish arguments and inappropriate behavior. "Anything goes, and if you disagree you're an anti-Asian racist."

That’s because she’s working with RWNJs who work for Cato Institute, etc. Legit Koch-bro affiliates.

She’s got the RWNJ hysteria down pat.

Maybe she learned from the LWNJs.

Nope. The RWNJ hysteria is unique. Emails! Caravans! Bathrooms! CRT! Vaccines! Masks! Advanced math! Locker rooms!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Who would have though that trying to break the cycle of low income Black and Hispanic underachievement would be derided as racist.

That attempts to reduce opportunity hoarding by rich people would be called unjust.

It’s truly absurd.

And looking at the numbers - there are MORE Asian students at TJ today than there were just a few years ago. And yet, that’s not enough.

With your logic, we need 20% of the fairfax school board members to be Asian; 20% of the fcps top administrators must be Asian; 20% of county judges must be Asian etc. It is a travesty that we have 0 when the county demographics show we need to have 20%.

That’s false. We are generally okay with the fact that TJ is trending toward a universe where it is approximately half-Asian.

We aren’t in any way seeking some perfect mirroring of society where each race is perfectly represented.

I know - only when the (politically lacking) Asians are overrepresented which is ONLY in the educational area are you outraged that there is this over-representation. You have to be consistent now.

It was a big issue when white men were overrepresented.

Maybe you’ve heard of the whole civil rights era?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Who would have though that trying to break the cycle of low income Black and Hispanic underachievement would be derided as racist.

That attempts to reduce opportunity hoarding by rich people would be called unjust.

It’s truly absurd.

And looking at the numbers - there are MORE Asian students at TJ today than there were just a few years ago. And yet, that’s not enough.

With your logic, we need 20% of the fairfax school board members to be Asian; 20% of the fcps top administrators must be Asian; 20% of county judges must be Asian etc. It is a travesty that we have 0 when the county demographics show we need to have 20%.

That’s false. We are generally okay with the fact that TJ is trending toward a universe where it is approximately half-Asian.

We aren’t in any way seeking some perfect mirroring of society where each race is perfectly represented.

The distinction between 50 and 70 percent is arbitrary. This showcases why it's a bad idea to leave racist ideas in place. Today you think 50 percent of Asians is okay, but tomorrow you may not. And the racist justifications you used to decrease Asians from 70 to 50 percent can be used for further reductions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what our school board has been reduced to, trying to intimidate a 5ft women with security.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OH-2M-oPkU

I am an Indian mother who disagrees with the changes to the admissions process. This insane woman does not speak for me and my family and my culture. She is a cancer on education in Northern Virginia.

Please I beg of you, do not allow this monster to destroy your perception of us. We must fight this process and this school board but this woman is burning down the house for attention.

Asra's been on the right side of this issue from day one fighting. This video shows just how deplorable our school board is willing to act.

The video doesn’t show the School Board doing anything. It shows that she overstays her time - the video cuts off, conveniently, when this happens - and her shouting at security people who get nowhere near her.

Jeez. That woman would do anything tweets.

I find her courageous. She also deserves a victory lap.

All the rants against this Asian woman on here fighting discrimination (which has been proven in a court of law) is a proof that Asians will be stepped on but they are too afraid to do the same to the AA.

I am an Asian American woman who posted previously that I strongly disagree with her tactics and believe she is hurting the cause of fair admissions. I did not rant; I simply expressed my disagreement with her tactics.

To be fair, these are the types of tactics that get noticed. The struggles of civil rights and fights against racism have been successful because some have refused to remain polite - because being polite often gets you ignored by the racists.

They want Asians to be subservient and when they are, well you are too boring and when they are not, you are crazy insane lunatic.

No... she's behaving similarly to the anti-CRT ranters and those (mostly) white ladies are batshit as well. It's about the ugly behavior, not the race, but she knows like you do that the subservient Asian racist trope is an easy card to play to deflect any potential criticism of her outlandish arguments and inappropriate behavior. "Anything goes, and if you disagree you're an anti-Asian racist."

That’s because she’s working with RWNJs who work for Cato Institute, etc. Legit Koch-bro affiliates.

She’s got the RWNJ hysteria down pat.

Maybe she learned from the LWNJs.

Nope. The RWNJ hysteria is unique. Emails! Caravans! Bathrooms! CRT! Vaccines! Masks! Advanced math! Locker rooms!

You sound just like her in the video.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t understand why is this so hard to implement some process that is not subject to discrimination. The new changes are cleverly crafted so on paper, it may sound fine, but clearly intended to punish kids from academic focused families.

I don’t mind no testing, but why can’t we simply use grades from regular school years and may be teacher recommendations to allocate some min seats to each school pyramid or base school (so aap centers are not at disadvantage) and fill remaining from an open pool? There won’t be any bias here, but of course board clearly wanted to punish certain groups.

How is this different from the current process?
They implemented the minimum seats to reduce the Asian numbers. Use geography as a proxy for race.
I'm not familiar with details of each school to know how good this is a proxy for race, though I know you can look at apartment prices in Herndon and identify the school ratings from that.

It uses the Base school, not the attending school. Very very different from the new process and will not penalize kids that went to the AAP center.

I do like the PP ‘s idea to not seat the class of 2026 until next year and just expand the numbers that they admit for the sophomore and Junior rounds. There are so many kid that could benefit from the offerings at TJ and almost no freshmen take the TJ-only classes.

Right. pp here. The use of attending school instead of base school along with ‘other’ experience factors and reduced to weight for gpa is ‘cleverly’ designed to suppress certain demographic groups. From what read, 300 points for entire middle school gpa, 300 points for one freaking essay (grading is very subjective), 300 points for portrait sheet (and subjective and does it actually test STEM or wrong skills?) and 300 points for other experience factors. Kids from academic focused families essentially zero in other factors as per the design, get penalized for being in AAP and even their hard work in school is dumbed down due to gpa weight. It can be twisted in way you want, but this is the truth and only ‘affected’ will see the intent and others think it is still ok as someone else is benefiting etc.

This is the reason, purely focusing on gpa and teacher recommendations is significantly better and fair to everyone even with geographical allocations (as long as aap isn’t penalized). Simply put,

“allocate half based on base school or school pyramid and other half from an open pool based on gpa and teacher recommendations”

It’s quite simple and fair to everyone and hardly anyone would complain with above, but of course school board isn’t looking for fairness as it was never the intent to begin with. Wish more people realize this.

Note: personally, I would prefer a test as it removes all the bias and even with the test we can still allocate half to base schools or school pyramids and half in open pool. But, since the test can be heavily prepped, I can live with the above alternative as it’s still reasonably fair to me.

[Anonymous]

Kids in General Ed should an advantage in the admission system compared to those in AAP. AAP have much smaller class sizes, less disruptive and low abiility students, more challenging classes.The standard of education is much higher in AAP. Kids who succeed in General ed despite the disadvantages should get a bump in comparison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I like the of converting TJ to 10th-12th and being able to serve 33% more students through the program on the face of it, but do wonder if there are strong arguments against this that aren’t on my radar. I’d consider any argument about needing to form community or the minor disruption of a student spending 1 year at base HS to be weak arguments, but there may be stronger ones I’m overlooking. Anyone have we’ll-reasoned arguments against this type of change?

1) You’d pretty much destroy every non-STEM extracurricular at the school - which are a significant part of the school’s culture

2) You’d eliminate a crucial adjustment year for kids to figure out how to navigate the rigor of TJ.

3) No more IBET, which, in addition to the design and tech class that introduces many students (however easily) to principles of engineering also gives them a core group of students to build networks around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Kids in General Ed should an advantage in the admission system compared to those in AAP. AAP have much smaller class sizes, less disruptive and low abiility students, more challenging classes.The standard of education is much higher in AAP. Kids who succeed in General ed despite the disadvantages should get a bump in comparison.

You do realize that most of the higher performing kids from general Ed eventually end up in AAP through teacher recommendations or principal placements. Don’t you? At least in our elementary school, ever year some new kids get added to Level 4 and by 6th grade there will be a whole new class to accommodate additional students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Who would have though that trying to break the cycle of low income Black and Hispanic underachievement would be derided as racist.

That attempts to reduce opportunity hoarding by rich people would be called unjust.

It’s truly absurd.

And looking at the numbers - there are MORE Asian students at TJ today than there were just a few years ago. And yet, that’s not enough.

With your logic, we need 20% of the fairfax school board members to be Asian; 20% of the fcps top administrators must be Asian; 20% of county judges must be Asian etc. It is a travesty that we have 0 when the county demographics show we need to have 20%.

That’s false. We are generally okay with the fact that TJ is trending toward a universe where it is approximately half-Asian.

We aren’t in any way seeking some perfect mirroring of society where each race is perfectly represented.

The distinction between 50 and 70 percent is arbitrary. This showcases why it's a bad idea to leave racist ideas in place. Today you think 50 percent of Asians is okay, but tomorrow you may not. And the racist justifications you used to decrease Asians from 70 to 50 percent can be used for further reductions.

No, it isn’t arbitrary. 50 percent leaves room for other cohorts. 70 percent does not.

The evidence is in what literally just happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what our school board has been reduced to, trying to intimidate a 5ft women with security.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OH-2M-oPkU

I am an Indian mother who disagrees with the changes to the admissions process. This insane woman does not speak for me and my family and my culture. She is a cancer on education in Northern Virginia.

Please I beg of you, do not allow this monster to destroy your perception of us. We must fight this process and this school board but this woman is burning down the house for attention.

Asra's been on the right side of this issue from day one fighting. This video shows just how deplorable our school board is willing to act.

The video doesn’t show the School Board doing anything. It shows that she overstays her time - the video cuts off, conveniently, when this happens - and her shouting at security people who get nowhere near her.

Jeez. That woman would do anything tweets.

I find her courageous. She also deserves a victory lap.

All the rants against this Asian woman on here fighting discrimination (which has been proven in a court of law) is a proof that Asians will be stepped on but they are too afraid to do the same to the AA.

I am an Asian American woman who posted previously that I strongly disagree with her tactics and believe she is hurting the cause of fair admissions. I did not rant; I simply expressed my disagreement with her tactics.

To be fair, these are the types of tactics that get noticed. The struggles of civil rights and fights against racism have been successful because some have refused to remain polite - because being polite often gets you ignored by the racists.

They want Asians to be subservient and when they are, well you are too boring and when they are not, you are crazy insane lunatic.

No... she's behaving similarly to the anti-CRT ranters and those (mostly) white ladies are batshit as well. It's about the ugly behavior, not the race, but she knows like you do that the subservient Asian racist trope is an easy card to play to deflect any potential criticism of her outlandish arguments and inappropriate behavior. "Anything goes, and if you disagree you're an anti-Asian racist."

That’s because she’s working with RWNJs who work for Cato Institute, etc. Legit Koch-bro affiliates.

She’s got the RWNJ hysteria down pat.

Maybe she learned from the LWNJs.

Nope. The RWNJ hysteria is unique. Emails! Caravans! Bathrooms! CRT! Vaccines! Masks! Advanced math! Locker rooms!

You sound just like her in the video.

She has quite a way of shrieking RWNJ talking points.

[Anonymous]

Seriously ? Have you read all the complaints on this board from parents who's qualified kids didnt get admitted to AAP? Demand far outstrips supply. And guess which groups are least likely to get teacher recomendations dispite having the ability? Low income kids, especially black and hispanic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Seriously ? Have you read all the complaints on this board from parents who's qualified kids didnt get admitted to AAP? Demand far outstrips supply. And guess which groups are least likely to get teacher recomendations dispite having the ability? Low income kids, especially black and hispanic.

Well, I do realize that you have a point here. So, I guess, the only way around to remove all the grading bias is standardized testing, but that can be prepped too. So it’s catch-22 then. It’s impossible to design a perfect system and all that is needed is a reasonably fair system where talent and hard work is still recognized while discounting the benefits only economically advantaged kids have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Seriously ? Have you read all the complaints on this board from parents who's qualified kids didnt get admitted to AAP? Demand far outstrips supply. And guess which groups are least likely to get teacher recomendations dispite having the ability? Low income kids, especially black and hispanic.

Well, I do realize that you have a point here. So, I guess, the only way around to remove all the grading bias is standardized testing, but that can be prepped too. So it’s catch-22 then. It’s impossible to design a perfect system and all that is needed is a reasonably fair system where talent and hard work is still recognized while discounting the benefits only economically advantaged kids have.

Colleges do this really well. But it requires an opaque process.

If you have a clear rubric with an objective process where families know exactly how to get from A to B, the ones that care the most will obsessively mold their child to fit that standard even if it’s not in the best interests of the child.