TJ Admissions Roundup

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

Are you sure about that? I thought the change was to address the rampant test buying and allow those who can't afford that a level playing field.

That was never stated by any school board official that I’m aware of.

It was in the 4th circuit opinion to the c4tj lawsuit.

No it wasn’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

Are you sure about that? I thought the change was to address the rampant test buying and allow those who can't afford that a level playing field.

That makes more sense. The largest beneficiaries of the change in admissions were low-income Asian families.

People with means had gamed the system, so they had to make a change, but I was happy to hear that some who might otherwise not have this opportunity now do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

Are you sure about that? I thought the change was to address the rampant test buying and allow those who can't afford that a level playing field.

That makes more sense. The largest beneficiaries of the change in admissions were low-income Asian families.

People with means had gamed the system, so they had to make a change, but I was happy to hear that some who might otherwise not have this opportunity now do.

A bunch of racists don't like it that asians outperform their kids by studying and sacrificing so they call it cheating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

Are you sure about that? I thought the change was to address the rampant test buying and allow those who can't afford that a level playing field.

That was never stated by any school board official that I’m aware of.

It was in the 4th circuit opinion to the c4tj lawsuit.

No it wasn’t.

I'm on your side but the appellate opinion states:
"Nevertheless, in the 2021
application cycle, Asian American students attending middle schools historically
underrepresented at TJ saw a sixfold increase in offers, and the number of low-income
Asian American admittees to TJ increased to 51 — from a mere one in 2020."

I think this is probably the result of the fact that if you have a quota for every school, a very large percentage of those from poor schools are going to be asian.

Honestly, I think a place like TJ should only care about academic ability and not about how hard it was for individual students to achieve that academic ability because being poor or or being hispanic isn't going to make the curriculum easier for you and unless they also change academic standards for you within TJ based on your income or skin color, the differences in academic ability are going to start to be apparent.

We have seen SOLs drop significantly.
We have seen PSATs drop by over 100 points.
We have seen grades drop precipitously with the math department sending out an email saying that this was the worst performance they have ever seen.
This year we will see SAT scores and then college admissions and it will become apparent that we have replaced a hierarchy of merit with a hierarchy of perceived oppression.

We are replacing the hierarchy of merit with the hierarchy of perceived oppression.
This is bad for society and civilization.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

The above post is very focused on financial poverty, which is one type of disadvantage. In the context being discussed here, less advantaged refers to being financially disadvantaged, yes, but also the disadvantage of having parents with less education or less interest in education.

Babies don’t choose their parents. It is not a level playing field when there are children with parents who pay for test prep and other children with parents who don’t have the same level of education or ability to support their kids educationally.

Babies don't choose their innate intellect or internal motivation either and we don't level the playing field for those things.

At some point it really doesn't matter why one kid is smarter than the other, the curriculum designed for the smartest kids should be available to the smartest kids and not to some other kids that we think would have been the smartest kids if only they had wealthier parents, or more educated parents or more involved parents.

The poor kids at stuy sat the same test as the children of doctors and lawyers.
The poor kids aren't getting a preference at stuy.
This isn't a social experiment; this is education, and going to TJ isn't some prize, it is an opportunity.
An opportunity that you don't really benefit from if you aren't smart enough.
The poor kids at stuy may have had to overcome more to reach the same level of achievement as the middle class kids but they did it despite their poverty. In fact 40% of the kids at stuy are eligible for free and reduced lunch.

We can try to improve the world, but we can't pretend we live in an alternate world and say that the kid who studied hard and made sacrifices to achieve academic success is no better than a much less accomplished kid because that second kid's parents didn't care as much about his education.

Studying hard and “making sacrifices” doesn’t make a kid smarter. They might have learned more information, but they don’t become more intelligent.

If a kid can’t figure out new problems unless they’ve already studied them, they won’t be the people who innovate and change the world in the future. We need to make sure we get those kids who are original thinkers who grasp new ideas and figure out how to solve novel problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

Are you sure about that? I thought the change was to address the rampant test buying and allow those who can't afford that a level playing field.

That was never stated by any school board official that I’m aware of.

It was in the 4th circuit opinion to the c4tj lawsuit.

No it wasn’t.

I'm on your side but the appellate opinion states:
"Nevertheless, in the 2021
application cycle, Asian American students attending middle schools historically
underrepresented at TJ saw a sixfold increase in offers, and the number of low-income
Asian American admittees to TJ increased to 51 — from a mere one in 2020."

I think this is probably the result of the fact that if you have a quota for every school, a very large percentage of those from poor schools are going to be asian.

Honestly, I think a place like TJ should only care about academic ability and not about how hard it was for individual students to achieve that academic ability because being poor or or being hispanic isn't going to make the curriculum easier for you and unless they also change academic standards for you within TJ based on your income or skin color, the differences in academic ability are going to start to be apparent.

We have seen SOLs drop significantly.
We have seen PSATs drop by over 100 points.
We have seen grades drop precipitously with the math department sending out an email saying that this was the worst performance they have ever seen.
This year we will see SAT scores and then college admissions and it will become apparent that we have replaced a hierarchy of merit with a hierarchy of perceived oppression.

We are replacing the hierarchy of merit with the hierarchy of perceived oppression.
This is bad for society and civilization.

The claim was the admissions were changed because of test buying. That’s just not true. Not even a little bit was mentioned by the SB.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

The above post is very focused on financial poverty, which is one type of disadvantage. In the context being discussed here, less advantaged refers to being financially disadvantaged, yes, but also the disadvantage of having parents with less education or less interest in education.

Babies don’t choose their parents. It is not a level playing field when there are children with parents who pay for test prep and other children with parents who don’t have the same level of education or ability to support their kids educationally.

Babies don't choose their innate intellect or internal motivation either and we don't level the playing field for those things.

At some point it really doesn't matter why one kid is smarter than the other, the curriculum designed for the smartest kids should be available to the smartest kids and not to some other kids that we think would have been the smartest kids if only they had wealthier parents, or more educated parents or more involved parents.

The poor kids at stuy sat the same test as the children of doctors and lawyers.
The poor kids aren't getting a preference at stuy.
This isn't a social experiment; this is education, and going to TJ isn't some prize, it is an opportunity.
An opportunity that you don't really benefit from if you aren't smart enough.
The poor kids at stuy may have had to overcome more to reach the same level of achievement as the middle class kids but they did it despite their poverty. In fact 40% of the kids at stuy are eligible for free and reduced lunch.

We can try to improve the world, but we can't pretend we live in an alternate world and say that the kid who studied hard and made sacrifices to achieve academic success is no better than a much less accomplished kid because that second kid's parents didn't care as much about his education.

Studying hard and “making sacrifices” doesn’t make a kid smarter. They might have learned more information, but they don’t become more intelligent.

If a kid can’t figure out new problems unless they’ve already studied them, they won’t be the people who innovate and change the world in the future. We need to make sure we get those kids who are original thinkers who grasp new ideas and figure out how to solve novel problems.

And this is what white people get wrong about intelligence.
It's not entirely genetically determined.
It's not just nature, it is also nurture.
You can get smarter by studying, you can waste potential by not studying.

Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech in NYC use the SHSAT and ONLY the SHSAT to select students.
They have over 15 nobel prize winners and a bunch of math awards like the wolf prize, the fields medal, the abel award.
That is more than fairfax has ever produced.
The SHSAT was the exam that TJ used before they started experimenting with quant Q in 2017.

We know how to measure IQ, We solved that riddle a century ago.
We know how to select for IQ. You don't pick random kids and hope they are the smart ones. You can actually test them to see who is smarter than the others.
We just don't do it anymore because we don't like the distribution of skin color of the people who get the high IQ scores.

Change the world?
There is literally a black student at woodson that developed a treatment for skin cancer that didn't get into TJ because of the random nature of the admissions process.
If you actually cared about finding the best students, you would stop putting race ahead of merit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

Are you sure about that? I thought the change was to address the rampant test buying and allow those who can't afford that a level playing field.

That was never stated by any school board official that I’m aware of.

It was in the 4th circuit opinion to the c4tj lawsuit.

No it wasn’t.

I'm on your side but the appellate opinion states:
"Nevertheless, in the 2021
application cycle, Asian American students attending middle schools historically
underrepresented at TJ saw a sixfold increase in offers, and the number of low-income
Asian American admittees to TJ increased to 51 — from a mere one in 2020."

I think this is probably the result of the fact that if you have a quota for every school, a very large percentage of those from poor schools are going to be asian.

Honestly, I think a place like TJ should only care about academic ability and not about how hard it was for individual students to achieve that academic ability because being poor or or being hispanic isn't going to make the curriculum easier for you and unless they also change academic standards for you within TJ based on your income or skin color, the differences in academic ability are going to start to be apparent.

We have seen SOLs drop significantly.
We have seen PSATs drop by over 100 points.
We have seen grades drop precipitously with the math department sending out an email saying that this was the worst performance they have ever seen.
This year we will see SAT scores and then college admissions and it will become apparent that we have replaced a hierarchy of merit with a hierarchy of perceived oppression.

We are replacing the hierarchy of merit with the hierarchy of perceived oppression.
This is bad for society and civilization.

The claim was the admissions were changed because of test buying. That’s just not true. Not even a little bit was mentioned by the SB.

I totally agree with that.
I thought I was responding to a claim that there was an increase in poor asian kids.

Yeah, noone honestly thinks that this change was because they thought that the tests were compromised.
That's just something racists say because they want to call asians cheaters.
It used to be the white supremacists saying this about jews.
Then it was salty racists saying this about east asians.
And now it's progressives saying this about indians.
It's all coming from the same ugly impulse in human nature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

The above post is very focused on financial poverty, which is one type of disadvantage. In the context being discussed here, less advantaged refers to being financially disadvantaged, yes, but also the disadvantage of having parents with less education or less interest in education.

Babies don’t choose their parents. It is not a level playing field when there are children with parents who pay for test prep and other children with parents who don’t have the same level of education or ability to support their kids educationally.

Babies don't choose their innate intellect or internal motivation either and we don't level the playing field for those things.

At some point it really doesn't matter why one kid is smarter than the other, the curriculum designed for the smartest kids should be available to the smartest kids and not to some other kids that we think would have been the smartest kids if only they had wealthier parents, or more educated parents or more involved parents.

The poor kids at stuy sat the same test as the children of doctors and lawyers.
The poor kids aren't getting a preference at stuy.
This isn't a social experiment; this is education, and going to TJ isn't some prize, it is an opportunity.
An opportunity that you don't really benefit from if you aren't smart enough.
The poor kids at stuy may have had to overcome more to reach the same level of achievement as the middle class kids but they did it despite their poverty. In fact 40% of the kids at stuy are eligible for free and reduced lunch.

We can try to improve the world, but we can't pretend we live in an alternate world and say that the kid who studied hard and made sacrifices to achieve academic success is no better than a much less accomplished kid because that second kid's parents didn't care as much about his education.

Studying hard and “making sacrifices” doesn’t make a kid smarter. They might have learned more information, but they don’t become more intelligent.

If a kid can’t figure out new problems unless they’ve already studied them, they won’t be the people who innovate and change the world in the future. We need to make sure we get those kids who are original thinkers who grasp new ideas and figure out how to solve novel problems.

And this is what white people get wrong about intelligence.
It's not entirely genetically determined.
It's not just nature, it is also nurture.
You can get smarter by studying, you can waste potential by not studying.

Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech in NYC use the SHSAT and ONLY the SHSAT to select students.
They have over 15 nobel prize winners and a bunch of math awards like the wolf prize, the fields medal, the abel award.
That is more than fairfax has ever produced.
The SHSAT was the exam that TJ used before they started experimenting with quant Q in 2017.

We know how to measure IQ, We solved that riddle a century ago.
We know how to select for IQ. You don't pick random kids and hope they are the smart ones. You can actually test them to see who is smarter than the others.
We just don't do it anymore because we don't like the distribution of skin color of the people who get the high IQ scores.

Change the world?
There is literally a black student at woodson that developed a treatment for skin cancer that didn't get into TJ because of the random nature of the admissions process.
If you actually cared about finding the best students, you would stop putting race ahead of merit.

Sure, you can waste potential by not studying, but you can’t make yourself actually smarter by studying.

Not sure what your comment about white people says about you. Not a race thing to know that intelligence is genetics, just science.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

The above post is very focused on financial poverty, which is one type of disadvantage. In the context being discussed here, less advantaged refers to being financially disadvantaged, yes, but also the disadvantage of having parents with less education or less interest in education.

Babies don’t choose their parents. It is not a level playing field when there are children with parents who pay for test prep and other children with parents who don’t have the same level of education or ability to support their kids educationally.

Babies don't choose their innate intellect or internal motivation either and we don't level the playing field for those things.

At some point it really doesn't matter why one kid is smarter than the other, the curriculum designed for the smartest kids should be available to the smartest kids and not to some other kids that we think would have been the smartest kids if only they had wealthier parents, or more educated parents or more involved parents.

The poor kids at stuy sat the same test as the children of doctors and lawyers.
The poor kids aren't getting a preference at stuy.
This isn't a social experiment; this is education, and going to TJ isn't some prize, it is an opportunity.
An opportunity that you don't really benefit from if you aren't smart enough.
The poor kids at stuy may have had to overcome more to reach the same level of achievement as the middle class kids but they did it despite their poverty. In fact 40% of the kids at stuy are eligible for free and reduced lunch.

We can try to improve the world, but we can't pretend we live in an alternate world and say that the kid who studied hard and made sacrifices to achieve academic success is no better than a much less accomplished kid because that second kid's parents didn't care as much about his education.

Studying hard and “making sacrifices” doesn’t make a kid smarter. They might have learned more information, but they don’t become more intelligent.

If a kid can’t figure out new problems unless they’ve already studied them, they won’t be the people who innovate and change the world in the future. We need to make sure we get those kids who are original thinkers who grasp new ideas and figure out how to solve novel problems.

And this is what white people get wrong about intelligence.
It's not entirely genetically determined.
It's not just nature, it is also nurture.
You can get smarter by studying, you can waste potential by not studying.

Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech in NYC use the SHSAT and ONLY the SHSAT to select students.
They have over 15 nobel prize winners and a bunch of math awards like the wolf prize, the fields medal, the abel award.
That is more than fairfax has ever produced.
The SHSAT was the exam that TJ used before they started experimenting with quant Q in 2017.

We know how to measure IQ, We solved that riddle a century ago.
We know how to select for IQ. You don't pick random kids and hope they are the smart ones. You can actually test them to see who is smarter than the others.
We just don't do it anymore because we don't like the distribution of skin color of the people who get the high IQ scores.

Change the world?
There is literally a black student at woodson that developed a treatment for skin cancer that didn't get into TJ because of the random nature of the admissions process.
If you actually cared about finding the best students, you would stop putting race ahead of merit.

Sure, you can waste potential by not studying, but you can’t make yourself actually smarter by studying.

Not sure what your comment about white people says about you. Not a race thing to know that intelligence is genetics, just science.

That's like saying you can make yourself weaker by not exercising but you can't make yourself stronger by exercising.

Intelligence is not just genetic.
It is both nature and nurture.
There's a bunch of data from the Minnesota twins studies; a study of illegitimate children of different races in Post WWII germany; and a lot of good data from comparisons of the zainichi koreans versus koreans in korea. We know that IQ differences between groups can often be explained by differences in environment.

I shouldn't have said white people, I meant white saviors. Too many white saviors think IQ is genetic so they see IQ test scores as a measure of genetic differences rather than something that can frequently be explained by environment.
This is why so many white saviors focus on moving the goalposts rather than improving the environment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

Are you sure about that? I thought the change was to address the rampant test buying and allow those who can't afford that a level playing field.

That was never stated by any school board official that I’m aware of.

It was in the 4th circuit opinion to the c4tj lawsuit.

No it wasn’t.

I'm on your side but the appellate opinion states:
"Nevertheless, in the 2021
application cycle, Asian American students attending middle schools historically
underrepresented at TJ saw a sixfold increase in offers, and the number of low-income
Asian American admittees to TJ increased to 51 — from a mere one in 2020."

I think this is probably the result of the fact that if you have a quota for every school, a very large percentage of those from poor schools are going to be asian.

Honestly, I think a place like TJ should only care about academic ability and not about how hard it was for individual students to achieve that academic ability because being poor or or being hispanic isn't going to make the curriculum easier for you and unless they also change academic standards for you within TJ based on your income or skin color, the differences in academic ability are going to start to be apparent.

We have seen SOLs drop significantly.
We have seen PSATs drop by over 100 points.
We have seen grades drop precipitously with the math department sending out an email saying that this was the worst performance they have ever seen.
This year we will see SAT scores and then college admissions and it will become apparent that we have replaced a hierarchy of merit with a hierarchy of perceived oppression.

We are replacing the hierarchy of merit with the hierarchy of perceived oppression.
This is bad for society and civilization.

The claim was the admissions were changed because of test buying. That’s just not true. Not even a little bit was mentioned by the SB.

The problem was that people gamed admissions so that only students from the most affluent schools had a fair shot. There are some posters try to cover this inconvenient fact up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

Are you sure about that? I thought the change was to address the rampant test buying and allow those who can't afford that a level playing field.

That was never stated by any school board official that I’m aware of.

It was in the 4th circuit opinion to the c4tj lawsuit.

No it wasn’t.

I'm on your side but the appellate opinion states:
"Nevertheless, in the 2021
application cycle, Asian American students attending middle schools historically
underrepresented at TJ saw a sixfold increase in offers, and the number of low-income
Asian American admittees to TJ increased to 51 — from a mere one in 2020."

I think this is probably the result of the fact that if you have a quota for every school, a very large percentage of those from poor schools are going to be asian.

Honestly, I think a place like TJ should only care about academic ability and not about how hard it was for individual students to achieve that academic ability because being poor or or being hispanic isn't going to make the curriculum easier for you and unless they also change academic standards for you within TJ based on your income or skin color, the differences in academic ability are going to start to be apparent.

We have seen SOLs drop significantly.
We have seen PSATs drop by over 100 points.
We have seen grades drop precipitously with the math department sending out an email saying that this was the worst performance they have ever seen.
This year we will see SAT scores and then college admissions and it will become apparent that we have replaced a hierarchy of merit with a hierarchy of perceived oppression.

We are replacing the hierarchy of merit with the hierarchy of perceived oppression.
This is bad for society and civilization.

The claim was the admissions were changed because of test buying. That’s just not true. Not even a little bit was mentioned by the SB.

The problem was that people gamed admissions so that only students from the most affluent schools had a fair shot. There are some posters try to cover this inconvenient fact up.

Mostly because you're lying to cover up the fact that this change was driven by racism against asians.
Your comments about indians are pretty gross and racist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

Are you sure about that? I thought the change was to address the rampant test buying and allow those who can't afford that a level playing field.

That was never stated by any school board official that I’m aware of.

It was in the 4th circuit opinion to the c4tj lawsuit.

No it wasn’t.

I'm on your side but the appellate opinion states:
"Nevertheless, in the 2021
application cycle, Asian American students attending middle schools historically
underrepresented at TJ saw a sixfold increase in offers, and the number of low-income
Asian American admittees to TJ increased to 51 — from a mere one in 2020."

I think this is probably the result of the fact that if you have a quota for every school, a very large percentage of those from poor schools are going to be asian.

Honestly, I think a place like TJ should only care about academic ability and not about how hard it was for individual students to achieve that academic ability because being poor or or being hispanic isn't going to make the curriculum easier for you and unless they also change academic standards for you within TJ based on your income or skin color, the differences in academic ability are going to start to be apparent.

We have seen SOLs drop significantly.
We have seen PSATs drop by over 100 points.
We have seen grades drop precipitously with the math department sending out an email saying that this was the worst performance they have ever seen.
This year we will see SAT scores and then college admissions and it will become apparent that we have replaced a hierarchy of merit with a hierarchy of perceived oppression.

We are replacing the hierarchy of merit with the hierarchy of perceived oppression.
This is bad for society and civilization.

The claim was the admissions were changed because of test buying. That’s just not true. Not even a little bit was mentioned by the SB.

The problem was that people gamed admissions so that only students from the most affluent schools had a fair shot. There are some posters try to cover this inconvenient fact up.

The C4TJ set will denies this vehemently, but all you need to do is look back a few years and you can see that 99% of the kids came from 3-4 wealthy schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

Are you sure about that? I thought the change was to address the rampant test buying and allow those who can't afford that a level playing field.

That was never stated by any school board official that I’m aware of.

It was in the 4th circuit opinion to the c4tj lawsuit.

No it wasn’t.

I'm on your side but the appellate opinion states:
"Nevertheless, in the 2021
application cycle, Asian American students attending middle schools historically
underrepresented at TJ saw a sixfold increase in offers, and the number of low-income
Asian American admittees to TJ increased to 51 — from a mere one in 2020."

I think this is probably the result of the fact that if you have a quota for every school, a very large percentage of those from poor schools are going to be asian.

Honestly, I think a place like TJ should only care about academic ability and not about how hard it was for individual students to achieve that academic ability because being poor or or being hispanic isn't going to make the curriculum easier for you and unless they also change academic standards for you within TJ based on your income or skin color, the differences in academic ability are going to start to be apparent.

We have seen SOLs drop significantly.
We have seen PSATs drop by over 100 points.
We have seen grades drop precipitously with the math department sending out an email saying that this was the worst performance they have ever seen.
This year we will see SAT scores and then college admissions and it will become apparent that we have replaced a hierarchy of merit with a hierarchy of perceived oppression.

We are replacing the hierarchy of merit with the hierarchy of perceived oppression.
This is bad for society and civilization.

The claim was the admissions were changed because of test buying. That’s just not true. Not even a little bit was mentioned by the SB.

The problem was that people gamed admissions so that only students from the most affluent schools had a fair shot. There are some posters try to cover this inconvenient fact up.

Mostly because you're lying to cover up the fact that this change was driven by racism against asians.
Your comments about indians are pretty gross and racist.

Your claim doesn't add up when you consider the facts.

1) The largest demographic cohort at TJ is still Asian by a considerable margin.
2) The selection process is still race-blind, and it's a matter of law.
3) The data shows the most significant beneficiaries of the admission change was low-income Asian families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:On the other hand, there might be lots of less advantaged kids who are more likely to find solutions to future problems because they are better at original thinking because they haven’t had everything handed to them by parents who are financially well off and/or focused on education.

I was the kid who was a NMF from a less advantaged family, so I know that kids like that need more support from the schools than kids who get plenty of support at home. As a society, it would be too bad to lose out on all that those kids can do in the future.

I don't doubt that less advantaged kids can achieve a lot.
I was not wealthy growing up, if you want to argue about who grew up poorer, we can have that debate but I think I met the threshold for growing up poor.
My family was on government assistance from time to time.
I know what government cheese, government peanut butter and government canned meat taste like.
I can tell you the denomination of a food stamp by its color.
But I also think that poor kids can meet objective measures of academic merit as well as anyone else.

There are three selective high schools in NYC whose alumni have won a ton of math and science prizes including 15 nobel prizes, a handful of wolf, field, abel, prizes in math, and a bunch of others.
These schools range from 40% to 60% free/reduced lunch.
Admissions to these schools is based on a single test.
The SHSAT is more or less the same test that TJHSST used until recently.
In this day and age of test prep, the population at these schools are significantly poorer than TJ and even more asian.

We know how to give preferences for poverty while preserving merit but we didn't do that at TJ because that was not the purpose of the change.
The purpose of the change was to reduce the asian population and increase the population of kids of other skin colors.
If we tried to preserve preferences for poverty while preserving merit, we would have seen an even larger concentration of asians as poor asians take a disproportionate number of spots meant for poor kids.

Are you sure about that? I thought the change was to address the rampant test buying and allow those who can't afford that a level playing field.

That was never stated by any school board official that I’m aware of.

It was in the 4th circuit opinion to the c4tj lawsuit.

No it wasn’t.

I'm on your side but the appellate opinion states:
"Nevertheless, in the 2021
application cycle, Asian American students attending middle schools historically
underrepresented at TJ saw a sixfold increase in offers, and the number of low-income
Asian American admittees to TJ increased to 51 — from a mere one in 2020."

I think this is probably the result of the fact that if you have a quota for every school, a very large percentage of those from poor schools are going to be asian.

Honestly, I think a place like TJ should only care about academic ability and not about how hard it was for individual students to achieve that academic ability because being poor or or being hispanic isn't going to make the curriculum easier for you and unless they also change academic standards for you within TJ based on your income or skin color, the differences in academic ability are going to start to be apparent.

We have seen SOLs drop significantly.
We have seen PSATs drop by over 100 points.
We have seen grades drop precipitously with the math department sending out an email saying that this was the worst performance they have ever seen.
This year we will see SAT scores and then college admissions and it will become apparent that we have replaced a hierarchy of merit with a hierarchy of perceived oppression.

We are replacing the hierarchy of merit with the hierarchy of perceived oppression.
This is bad for society and civilization.

The claim was the admissions were changed because of test buying. That’s just not true. Not even a little bit was mentioned by the SB.

The problem was that people gamed admissions so that only students from the most affluent schools had a fair shot. There are some posters try to cover this inconvenient fact up.

The C4TJ set will denies this vehemently, but all you need to do is look back a few years and you can see that 99% of the kids came from 3-4 wealthy schools.

Glasgow (among the highest (if not the highest) free/reduced lunch middle school in FCPS) alone accounts for more than 1% of the entering class.
Unless you are defining wealthy as everyone that isn't going to Poe, you're wrong.
But your problem isn't the lack of kids from glasgow, your problem is the skin color of the kids that get in from glasgow.
This is why they didn't merely select for poverty.
The disparity in academic achievement caused by cultural differences is even more pronounced at the lower end of the economic spectrum.