TJ entrance test answers were never for sale

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course they weren't for sale but if you repeat the lie often enough, some portion of the population that are looking for a reason to believe the low will believe that lie. It's how MAGA and Trump operate and the anti merit racists are really no different.

The two sides are not equally bad but they both use the same tactics and are equally dishonest. The consequences are different.

The left wants to ignore the parts of the constitution that prevents them from enforcing equal results and the right wants to ignore all the other parts.

“Equal results”. GMAFB.

The community thought that having TJ only be accessible to wealthy kids from handful of feeders was unacceptable.

Less than 1% of the class of 2024 came from economically disadvantaged families. In a community with 1/3rd ED families.

The process had to change.

You can have explicit preferences for poverty, you cannot have explicit preferences for race. That is why they got rid of the merit filter, to achieve racial diversity not to achieve economic diversity.

The school board thought that there was a problem because TJ didn't racially reflect the community, not because it didn't economically reflect the community. They could have selected students based on income, but they couldn't select students based on race so they tried to change it to a lottery but that was illegal so they went with eliminating objective measures of merit. During the hearings, the board members focused almost exclusively on race and diversity. The testimony was focused almost exclusively on race and diversity.

Liberals used to strive for equality of opportunity with the notion that this would lead to equality of results. But, when the increasing equality of opportunity didn't lead to a corresponding equality of results for some groups, they kept blaming racism anyway and concluded that any disparity in results was proof of racism. The goal shifted from equality of opportunity to equality of results. I'm not saying we have achieved equality of opportunity but when you see immigrants (mostly but not only asians) from a bunch of different countries can now outperform whites as a group, then the argument that white supremacy is an impenetrable barrier to success by any non-white racial group looks pretty stupid.

You mean, wealthy Asian immigrants. The former TJ admissions process almost exclusively shut out Asian students from low-income families.

The community was concerned about far more than racial disparity. The lack of URMs has always been a concern, but it wasn't the only concern.

2017:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“ “Is it gonna once again advantage those kids whose parents can pay to sign them up for special prep camps to now be prepping for science testing as well?” Megan McLaughlin asked when presented with the new plan.

Admissions director Jeremy Shughart doesn’t think so. The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

2018:
https://www.tjtoday.org/23143/showcase/the-children-left-behind/
“ Families with more money can afford to give children that extra edge by signing them up for whatever prep classes they can find. They can pay money to tutoring organizations to teach their children test-taking skills, “skills learned outside of school,” and to access a cache of previous and example prompts, as I witnessed when I took TJ prep; even if prompts become outdated by test changes, even access to old prompts enables private tutoring pupils to gain an upper edge over others: pupils become accustomed to the format of the writing sections and gain an approximate idea of what to expect.”

2020:
https://www.tjtoday.org/29411/features/students-divided-on-proposed-changes-to-admissions-process/
“ “Personally, TJ admissions was not a challenge to navigate. I had a sibling who attended before me. However, a lot of resources needed to navigate admissions cost money. That is an unfair advantage given to more economically advantaged students,” junior Vivi Rao said. ”


Equity isn't solely focused on race. Just like diversity/DEI isn't just about race.

Equity is focuses on equality of results and assumes equality of merit.

The admissions changes focused on race.

DEI in theory can be a lot of things. I'm practice, it's about race.

[Anonymous]

I think it more favors the middle class. TJ can't light a candle to top private schools when you look holistically - even wealthy Asian parents know this and the rule is still true - if you can afford it, go private. If you can't do the best public you can.

This means across all demographics- wealthy kids go to private; MC kids go to public - and if you can't afford the house you fight for the top application schools like TJ - which are still pretty crap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it more favors the middle class. TJ can't light a candle to top private schools when you look holistically - even wealthy Asian parents know this and the rule is still true - if you can afford it, go private. If you can't do the best public you can.

This means across all demographics- wealthy kids go to private; MC kids go to public - and if you can't afford the house you fight for the top application schools like TJ - which are still pretty crap.

There is some truth to this I think.
When I try to reconcile the income disparity between stuyvesant and TJ it seems to me that there are several sources of this disparity.
One is the significantly higher FARM population in NYC.
Another is the near absence of a "middle class" in NYC because everyone moves to the suburbs unless they can easily afford college tuition levels of private school tuition, and the ones that can easily afford it will go to the selective private schools, frankly they are much easier to get into.
The last is the holistic element of the TJ application. Money may improve test scores to a point but it most certainly improves extracurriculars, which almost by definition is costly.

But I don't think schools like TJ and Stuyvesant are crap.
The peer group is more consistently competitive. Private schools have legacy admissions and other admissions criteria that significantly dilutes the population.
They routinely score higher on standardized tests.
They routinely achieve more national awards and win more academic competitions.

But if you have the money to send your kid to trinity instead of stuyvesant, you should send your kid to trinity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are free to believe there wasn't a test bank that was used at some prep programs, but there was. Students in the program admitted it. Students admitted to providing the questions for the test bank.

Did anyone buy the test? No.

Did people pay for access to past test questions? Yes.

Was it criminal activity? No

Was it an advantage to the kids who paid to take those classes? Yes.

Is it part of the reason the Quant test was removed? Yes.

This. And some TJ students who benefited were the ones who publicized this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You are free to believe there wasn't a test bank that was used at some prep programs, but there was. Students in the program admitted it. Students admitted to providing the questions for the test bank.

Did anyone buy the test? No.

Did people pay for access to past test questions? Yes.

Was it criminal activity? No

Was it an advantage to the kids who paid to take those classes? Yes.

Is it part of the reason the Quant test was removed? Yes.

This. And some TJ students who benefited were the ones who publicized this.

The whole concept behind quant Q was fakken stupid and makes me question the intelligence of the entire school board.
The answer to money and prepping isn't to create even more barrier to prepping, the answer is transparency so that prepping is basically free to everyone. Khan academy has free prep on the PSATs that is pretty good, use the PSATs for admissions. Khan academy also has a lot of stuff on the SHSAT (used by stuyvesant), so we could use something like that.
The problem is that we used to use a modified version of the SHSAT before Quant Q and people did not like the racial make=up of who was getting in and who wasn't

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Of course they weren't for sale but if you repeat the lie often enough, some portion of the population that are looking for a reason to believe the low will believe that lie. It's how MAGA and Trump operate and the anti merit racists are really no different.

The two sides are not equally bad but they both use the same tactics and are equally dishonest. The consequences are different.

The left wants to ignore the parts of the constitution that prevents them from enforcing equal results and the right wants to ignore all the other parts.

“Equal results”. GMAFB.

The community thought that having TJ only be accessible to wealthy kids from handful of feeders was unacceptable.

Less than 1% of the class of 2024 came from economically disadvantaged families. In a community with 1/3rd ED families.

The process had to change.

You can have explicit preferences for poverty, you cannot have explicit preferences for race. That is why they got rid of the merit filter, to achieve racial diversity not to achieve economic diversity.

The school board thought that there was a problem because TJ didn't racially reflect the community, not because it didn't economically reflect the community. They could have selected students based on income, but they couldn't select students based on race so they tried to change it to a lottery but that was illegal so they went with eliminating objective measures of merit. During the hearings, the board members focused almost exclusively on race and diversity. The testimony was focused almost exclusively on race and diversity.

Liberals used to strive for equality of opportunity with the notion that this would lead to equality of results. But, when the increasing equality of opportunity didn't lead to a corresponding equality of results for some groups, they kept blaming racism anyway and concluded that any disparity in results was proof of racism. The goal shifted from equality of opportunity to equality of results. I'm not saying we have achieved equality of opportunity but when you see immigrants (mostly but not only asians) from a bunch of different countries can now outperform whites as a group, then the argument that white supremacy is an impenetrable barrier to success by any non-white racial group looks pretty stupid.

You mean, wealthy Asian immigrants. The former TJ admissions process almost exclusively shut out Asian students from low-income families.

The community was concerned about far more than racial disparity. The lack of URMs has always been a concern, but it wasn't the only concern.

2017:
https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/04/26/is-the-no-1-high-school-in-america-thomas-jefferson-fairfax-discrimination/
“ “Is it gonna once again advantage those kids whose parents can pay to sign them up for special prep camps to now be prepping for science testing as well?” Megan McLaughlin asked when presented with the new plan.

Admissions director Jeremy Shughart doesn’t think so. The firm that markets the math portion of the test, Quant-Q, doesn’t release materials to the public, a practice that should make them harder for test-prep schools to crack.”

2018:
https://www.tjtoday.org/23143/showcase/the-children-left-behind/
“ Families with more money can afford to give children that extra edge by signing them up for whatever prep classes they can find. They can pay money to tutoring organizations to teach their children test-taking skills, “skills learned outside of school,” and to access a cache of previous and example prompts, as I witnessed when I took TJ prep; even if prompts become outdated by test changes, even access to old prompts enables private tutoring pupils to gain an upper edge over others: pupils become accustomed to the format of the writing sections and gain an approximate idea of what to expect.”

2020:
https://www.tjtoday.org/29411/features/students-divided-on-proposed-changes-to-admissions-process/
“ “Personally, TJ admissions was not a challenge to navigate. I had a sibling who attended before me. However, a lot of resources needed to navigate admissions cost money. That is an unfair advantage given to more economically advantaged students,” junior Vivi Rao said. ”


Equity isn't solely focused on race. Just like diversity/DEI isn't just about race.

Equity is focuses on equality of results and assumes equality of merit.

The admissions changes focused on race.

DEI in theory can be a lot of things. I'm practice, it's about race.

But again TJ admissions were race blind and Asian enrollment is at a historic high. DEI had nothing to do with TJ admission reform. It was all about wealthy feeders opportunity hoarding by gaming admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it more favors the middle class. TJ can't light a candle to top private schools when you look holistically - even wealthy Asian parents know this and the rule is still true - if you can afford it, go private. If you can't do the best public you can.

This means across all demographics- wealthy kids go to private; MC kids go to public - and if you can't afford the house you fight for the top application schools like TJ - which are still pretty crap.

I would argue that wealthy privates don't hold a candle to TJ. Just look at SAT averages, Regeneron Awards, Math Olympiad team members. It's not even close.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it more favors the middle class. TJ can't light a candle to top private schools when you look holistically - even wealthy Asian parents know this and the rule is still true - if you can afford it, go private. If you can't do the best public you can.

This means across all demographics- wealthy kids go to private; MC kids go to public - and if you can't afford the house you fight for the top application schools like TJ - which are still pretty crap.

I would argue that wealthy privates don't hold a candle to TJ. Just look at SAT averages, Regeneron Awards, Math Olympiad team members. It's not even close.

If the goal is ivy+ TJ does not send as large a portion of is graduates to ivy+ as the to private. A lot of this is because of legacy and wealth related preferences.

[Anonymous]

OP wants to buy, but no one will sell.

[Anonymous]

These accusations of cheating is just copium for people who can't admit that Asians (and to a lesser extent ask immigrants) are outperforming pretty much everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These accusations of cheating is just copium for people who can't admit that Asians (and to a lesser extent ask immigrants) are outperforming pretty much everyone else.

Or, more accurately, they're just calling it like it is. Some of the behaviors of certain prep companies were unethical (in particular asking students to memorize and report back Quant Q questions for their in-house test bank), a statement which is true regardless of the predominant race of the students who take/took those same companies courses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:These accusations of cheating is just copium for people who can't admit that Asians (and to a lesser extent ask immigrants) are outperforming pretty much everyone else.

That's pure crap. And we're (E) Asian ethnicity (and are proud to be US citizens).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These accusations of cheating is just copium for people who can't admit that Asians (and to a lesser extent ask immigrants) are outperforming pretty much everyone else.

Or, more accurately, they're just calling it like it is. Some of the behaviors of certain prep companies were unethical (in particular asking students to memorize and report back Quant Q questions for their in-house test bank), a statement which is true regardless of the predominant race of the students who take/took those same companies courses.

Multiple test prep companies asked for kids to report back questions. It was a widespread problem for many years.

The school board talked about how to avoid the test prep companies “cracking the test”.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These accusations of cheating is just copium for people who can't admit that Asians (and to a lesser extent ask immigrants) are outperforming pretty much everyone else.

Or, more accurately, they're just calling it like it is. Some of the behaviors of certain prep companies were unethical (in particular asking students to memorize and report back Quant Q questions for their in-house test bank), a statement which is true regardless of the predominant race of the students who take/took those same companies courses.

Report back? Why would a test prep student ever report back after taking the test? Are they being paid to report back? Or did they come back after the test to continue academic enrichment regardless of whether they got in or not?

You're making a pretty extraordinary claim with very thin evidence. I know that there is an claim by a teenager on social media that curie asked them what was on the test. That is what all of this is relying on social media hearsay.

And frankly secret tests are stupid. The answer to people "cracking" the test is MORE transparency not less. Then there is nothing to crack, it will be widely available public information.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These accusations of cheating is just copium for people who can't admit that Asians (and to a lesser extent ask immigrants) are outperforming pretty much everyone else.

Or, more accurately, they're just calling it like it is. Some of the behaviors of certain prep companies were unethical (in particular asking students to memorize and report back Quant Q questions for their in-house test bank), a statement which is true regardless of the predominant race of the students who take/took those same companies courses.

I know its well established this went on but its not about race but about excluding those who could not afford to compete with a rigged process. The change made these programs accessible to far more county residents than was previously true and that better serves all of us.