Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
And the first year of quant q had 1.5% farm. Pretty much in line with proir years. Nobody could "prep" for quant Q, so why didn't we see an increase in those low income students that year?
This is just an excuse. Economic diversity was NEVER the focus. It was at Best a side show. Racial diversity was the objective and the hearings leading up to this change made that clear. that meant fewer Asians and more of everyone else.
Claiming a small percentage increase in FARM doesn’t yield much politically. However, waiving a racial diversity chart carries significant political weight.
All said, it's the type of students stepping up to put in the hardwork for four years VS. political manipulation of admissions.
Who is still winning? Political manipulation can never touch the top half of the class. at the same time political manipulation can merely present an offer, but cannot demand a student to study to the required rigor. Sure, now there is increased diversity in bottom half, but that is where all the problems have been introduced - return to base school in freshman, soliciting froshmores to backfill and coverup freshman departures, poor grades, lowest math proficiency, lowered SOL/PSAT, minimal AP enrollment, zero post-AP course enrollment, etc.
The big assumption fcps continues to operate TJ under is for as long as the top half of TJ is filled with students from Longfellow, Carson, Cooper, Rocky Run, and best of LCPS, etc.., the bottom half Cs and Ds may not damage TJ’s reputation or national standing all that much.
+1000
Never thought of it this way, but makes sense. I would add that the old process resulted in fewer mistakes in the top 50% of the class. An exceptional student might not be offered admission in the new process because there is little to go by - teacher recommendations being a very important data point that is being missed.
Froshmore admissions seems to be the pressure valve for that. A lot of the best students that didn't get in as freshmen are getting in as froshmores.
Are you an admin/teacher at TJ? How could you possibly know this?
Because I have seen the incoming friskiness from my middle school for a few years now and this is what I have seen.
You are a MS teacher/admin?
No. The fact that you are asking such s stupid pedantic question means you know this is true.
Please explain how you’ve obtained your data.
Or perhaps you’re just full of sht.
I have eyes and I can see which kids are getting in and which aren't, then I see a lot of the kids that should have gotten in getting in as froshmores. Not all but a lot.
Seems about the same as always to be honest. This is just another fiction pushed by the C4TJ cultists.
Wtf are you talking about?
The number of kids going back to their base school increased ten fold. The class of 2025 had about 40 kids return to base school after freshman year.
The number used to be 3 or 4.
This was a huge disservice to those 40 kids returning to their base schools with torpedoed GPAs
DP, before it was 3 or 4 it was a double-digit number, though 40 is still a bit higher than it was before the prior administration artificially deflated it and discouraged returning kids to base schools if TJ wasn't the right fit for them. It's a balancing act, but simply saying "it's higher now than it was a few years ago" without context as to why doesn't tell you much. I don't doubt the change to admissions process plays a role here, but it's far from the only factor at play.
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
Replying to your own message ain’t gonna make that Curie fiction story any more real.
I’m a DP. Feel free to ask Jeff.
Fact: some parents paid thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam.
That's not curie. The test prep at curie is $300
Many parent were willing to spend big bucks to give their kids a leg up in admissions:
Curie's $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Very much interested in enrolling DC in Curie, but your costs are total BS. Do you even know how to read a brochure. Curie is cheaper than Kumon.
Page 4.
The signature program is a 4 semester sequence adding up to $6985.
There are also $650 of “extra” prep classes if you want even more for your kid, so $7635.
You are funny. No one enrolls in all classes at once at any training school. We moved from Kumon to Curie for cost reasons, saving a bunch.
The cost for the full “signature program” is $6985-7635. It’s irrelevant if you personally didn’t sign up for it.
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
Replying to your own message ain’t gonna make that Curie fiction story any more real.
I’m a DP. Feel free to ask Jeff.
Fact: some parents paid thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam.
That's not curie. The test prep at curie is $300
Many parent were willing to spend big bucks to give their kids a leg up in admissions:
Curie's $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Very much interested in enrolling DC in Curie, but your costs are total BS. Do you even know how to read a brochure. Curie is cheaper than Kumon.
Page 4.
The signature program is a 4 semester sequence adding up to $6985.
There are also $650 of “extra” prep classes if you want even more for your kid, so $7635.
You are funny. No one enrolls in all classes at once at any training school. We moved from Kumon to Curie for cost reasons, saving a bunch.
The cost for the full “signature program” is $6985-7635. It’s irrelevant if you personally didn’t sign up for it.
why do you care what program people sign up for? do you work for Curie?
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
Replying to your own message ain’t gonna make that Curie fiction story any more real.
I’m a DP. Feel free to ask Jeff.
Fact: some parents paid thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam.
That's not curie. The test prep at curie is $300
Many parent were willing to spend big bucks to give their kids a leg up in admissions:
Curie's $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Very much interested in enrolling DC in Curie, but your costs are total BS. Do you even know how to read a brochure. Curie is cheaper than Kumon.
Page 4.
The signature program is a 4 semester sequence adding up to $6985.
There are also $650 of “extra” prep classes if you want even more for your kid, so $7635.
You are funny. No one enrolls in all classes at once at any training school. We moved from Kumon to Curie for cost reasons, saving a bunch.
The cost for the full “signature program” is $6985-7635. It’s irrelevant if you personally didn’t sign up for it.
why do you care what program people sign up for? do you work for Curie?
You seem to have trouble following. Go back and read the thread.
Wealthy parents have doing all sorts of things to give their kids a leg up in TJ admissions, including expensive enrichment and test prep programs.
It’s been an issue that the school board has been trying to address for decades.
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
Replying to your own message ain’t gonna make that Curie fiction story any more real.
I’m a DP. Feel free to ask Jeff.
Fact: some parents paid thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam.
That's not curie. The test prep at curie is $300
Many parent were willing to spend big bucks to give their kids a leg up in admissions:
Curie's $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Very much interested in enrolling DC in Curie, but your costs are total BS. Do you even know how to read a brochure. Curie is cheaper than Kumon.
Page 4.
The signature program is a 4 semester sequence adding up to $6985.
There are also $650 of “extra” prep classes if you want even more for your kid, so $7635.
You are funny. No one enrolls in all classes at once at any training school. We moved from Kumon to Curie for cost reasons, saving a bunch.
The cost for the full “signature program” is $6985-7635. It’s irrelevant if you personally didn’t sign up for it.
why do you care what program people sign up for? do you work for Curie?
You seem to have trouble following. Go back and read the thread.
Wealthy parents have doing all sorts of things to give their kids a leg up in TJ admissions, including expensive enrichment and test prep programs.
It’s been an issue that the school board has been trying to address for decades.
The issue is bringing up URM scores. They’ve been trying to address that for decades.
URMs couldn’t close the gap with these test prep kids even if they didnt do enrichment. The gaps are just increasing across the board for decades.
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
Replying to your own message ain’t gonna make that Curie fiction story any more real.
I’m a DP. Feel free to ask Jeff.
Fact: some parents paid thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam.
That's not curie. The test prep at curie is $300
Many parent were willing to spend big bucks to give their kids a leg up in admissions:
Curie's $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Very much interested in enrolling DC in Curie, but your costs are total BS. Do you even know how to read a brochure. Curie is cheaper than Kumon.
Page 4.
The signature program is a 4 semester sequence adding up to $6985.
There are also $650 of “extra” prep classes if you want even more for your kid, so $7635.
You are funny. No one enrolls in all classes at once at any training school. We moved from Kumon to Curie for cost reasons, saving a bunch.
The cost for the full “signature program” is $6985-7635. It’s irrelevant if you personally didn’t sign up for it.
why do you care what program people sign up for? do you work for Curie?
You seem to have trouble following. Go back and read the thread.
Wealthy parents have doing all sorts of things to give their kids a leg up in TJ admissions, including expensive enrichment and test prep programs.
It’s been an issue that the school board has been trying to address for decades.
wealthy academically, not financially. FCPS absolutely prefers these academically wealthy families so much that the entire top half of TJ is filled with them. Bottom half tells a different story, as FCPS intentionally fills it to satisfy the diversity chart. Do you want to know which academically wealthy middle schools are rewarded the most TJ spots by FCPS?
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
Replying to your own message ain’t gonna make that Curie fiction story any more real.
I’m a DP. Feel free to ask Jeff.
Fact: some parents paid thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam.
That's not curie. The test prep at curie is $300
Many parent were willing to spend big bucks to give their kids a leg up in admissions:
Curie's $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Very much interested in enrolling DC in Curie, but your costs are total BS. Do you even know how to read a brochure. Curie is cheaper than Kumon.
Page 4.
The signature program is a 4 semester sequence adding up to $6985.
There are also $650 of “extra” prep classes if you want even more for your kid, so $7635.
You are funny. No one enrolls in all classes at once at any training school. We moved from Kumon to Curie for cost reasons, saving a bunch.
The cost for the full “signature program” is $6985-7635. It’s irrelevant if you personally didn’t sign up for it.
why do you care what program people sign up for? do you work for Curie?
You seem to have trouble following. Go back and read the thread.
Wealthy parents have doing all sorts of things to give their kids a leg up in TJ admissions, including expensive enrichment and test prep programs.
It’s been an issue that the school board has been trying to address for decades.
wealthy academically, not financially. FCPS absolutely prefers these academically wealthy families so much that the entire top half of TJ is filled with them. Bottom half tells a different story, as FCPS intentionally fills it to satisfy the diversity chart. Do you want to know which academically wealthy middle schools are rewarded the most TJ spots by FCPS?
if by wealthy academically you mean being able to dump 30k into test prep then sure.
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
Replying to your own message ain’t gonna make that Curie fiction story any more real.
I’m a DP. Feel free to ask Jeff.
Fact: some parents paid thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam.
That's not curie. The test prep at curie is $300
Many parent were willing to spend big bucks to give their kids a leg up in admissions:
Curie's $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Very much interested in enrolling DC in Curie, but your costs are total BS. Do you even know how to read a brochure. Curie is cheaper than Kumon.
Page 4.
The signature program is a 4 semester sequence adding up to $6985.
There are also $650 of “extra” prep classes if you want even more for your kid, so $7635.
You are funny. No one enrolls in all classes at once at any training school. We moved from Kumon to Curie for cost reasons, saving a bunch.
The cost for the full “signature program” is $6985-7635. It’s irrelevant if you personally didn’t sign up for it.
why do you care what program people sign up for? do you work for Curie?
You seem to have trouble following. Go back and read the thread.
Wealthy parents have doing all sorts of things to give their kids a leg up in TJ admissions, including expensive enrichment and test prep programs.
It’s been an issue that the school board has been trying to address for decades.
wealthy academically, not financially. FCPS absolutely prefers these academically wealthy families so much that the entire top half of TJ is filled with them. Bottom half tells a different story, as FCPS intentionally fills it to satisfy the diversity chart. Do you want to know which academically wealthy middle schools are rewarded the most TJ spots by FCPS?
if by wealthy academically you mean being able to dump 30k into test prep then sure.
30k LoL! FCPS loves the academically wealthy, more than half of TJ seats go to them.
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
Replying to your own message ain’t gonna make that Curie fiction story any more real.
I’m a DP. Feel free to ask Jeff.
Fact: some parents paid thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam.
That's not curie. The test prep at curie is $300
Many parent were willing to spend big bucks to give their kids a leg up in admissions:
Curie's $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Very much interested in enrolling DC in Curie, but your costs are total BS. Do you even know how to read a brochure. Curie is cheaper than Kumon.
Page 4.
The signature program is a 4 semester sequence adding up to $6985.
There are also $650 of “extra” prep classes if you want even more for your kid, so $7635.
You are funny. No one enrolls in all classes at once at any training school. We moved from Kumon to Curie for cost reasons, saving a bunch.
The cost for the full “signature program” is $6985-7635. It’s irrelevant if you personally didn’t sign up for it.
why do you care what program people sign up for? do you work for Curie?
You seem to have trouble following. Go back and read the thread.
Wealthy parents have doing all sorts of things to give their kids a leg up in TJ admissions, including expensive enrichment and test prep programs.
It’s been an issue that the school board has been trying to address for decades.
The issue is bringing up URM scores. They’ve been trying to address that for decades.
URMs couldn’t close the gap with these test prep kids even if they didnt do enrichment. The gaps are just increasing across the board for decades.
Sure, but that doesn't justify a rigged process where some students families buy access.
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
And the first year of quant q had 1.5% farm. Pretty much in line with proir years. Nobody could "prep" for quant Q, so why didn't we see an increase in those low income students that year?
This is just an excuse. Economic diversity was NEVER the focus. It was at Best a side show. Racial diversity was the objective and the hearings leading up to this change made that clear. that meant fewer Asians and more of everyone else.
Claiming a small percentage increase in FARM doesn’t yield much politically. However, waiving a racial diversity chart carries significant political weight.
All said, it's the type of students stepping up to put in the hardwork for four years VS. political manipulation of admissions.
Who is still winning? Political manipulation can never touch the top half of the class. at the same time political manipulation can merely present an offer, but cannot demand a student to study to the required rigor. Sure, now there is increased diversity in bottom half, but that is where all the problems have been introduced - return to base school in freshman, soliciting froshmores to backfill and coverup freshman departures, poor grades, lowest math proficiency, lowered SOL/PSAT, minimal AP enrollment, zero post-AP course enrollment, etc.
The big assumption fcps continues to operate TJ under is for as long as the top half of TJ is filled with students from Longfellow, Carson, Cooper, Rocky Run, and best of LCPS, etc.., the bottom half Cs and Ds may not damage TJ’s reputation or national standing all that much.
+1000
Never thought of it this way, but makes sense. I would add that the old process resulted in fewer mistakes in the top 50% of the class. An exceptional student might not be offered admission in the new process because there is little to go by - teacher recommendations being a very important data point that is being missed.
Froshmore admissions seems to be the pressure valve for that. A lot of the best students that didn't get in as freshmen are getting in as froshmores.
Are you an admin/teacher at TJ? How could you possibly know this?
Because I have seen the incoming friskiness from my middle school for a few years now and this is what I have seen.
You are a MS teacher/admin?
No. The fact that you are asking such s stupid pedantic question means you know this is true.
Please explain how you’ve obtained your data.
Or perhaps you’re just full of sht.
I have eyes and I can see which kids are getting in and which aren't, then I see a lot of the kids that should have gotten in getting in as froshmores. Not all but a lot.
Seems about the same as always to be honest. This is just another fiction pushed by the C4TJ cultists.
Wtf are you talking about?
The number of kids going back to their base school increased ten fold. The class of 2025 had about 40 kids return to base school after freshman year.
The number used to be 3 or 4.
This was a huge disservice to those 40 kids returning to their base schools with torpedoed GPAs
DP, before it was 3 or 4 it was a double-digit number, though 40 is still a bit higher than it was before the prior administration artificially deflated it and discouraged returning kids to base schools if TJ wasn't the right fit for them. It's a balancing act, but simply saying "it's higher now than it was a few years ago" without context as to why doesn't tell you much. I don't doubt the change to admissions process plays a role here, but it's far from the only factor at play.
It was only double digit during a small handful of years, usually in the wake of prior misplaced attempts at achieving racial diversity. The number is usually insignificantly small.
The change in the admissions process is not "far from being the only reason" the number of kids returning to base schools sky rocketed. It is the primary reason if not the only reason for the increase.
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
Replying to your own message ain’t gonna make that Curie fiction story any more real.
I’m a DP. Feel free to ask Jeff.
Fact: some parents paid thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam.
That's not curie. The test prep at curie is $300
Many parent were willing to spend big bucks to give their kids a leg up in admissions:
Curie's $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Very much interested in enrolling DC in Curie, but your costs are total BS. Do you even know how to read a brochure. Curie is cheaper than Kumon.
Page 4.
The signature program is a 4 semester sequence adding up to $6985.
There are also $650 of “extra” prep classes if you want even more for your kid, so $7635.
You are funny. No one enrolls in all classes at once at any training school. We moved from Kumon to Curie for cost reasons, saving a bunch.
The cost for the full “signature program” is $6985-7635. It’s irrelevant if you personally didn’t sign up for it.
why do you care what program people sign up for? do you work for Curie?
You seem to have trouble following. Go back and read the thread.
Wealthy parents have doing all sorts of things to give their kids a leg up in TJ admissions, including expensive enrichment and test prep programs.
It’s been an issue that the school board has been trying to address for decades.
The issue is bringing up URM scores. They’ve been trying to address that for decades.
URMs couldn’t close the gap with these test prep kids even if they didnt do enrichment. The gaps are just increasing across the board for decades.
Sure, but that doesn't justify a rigged process where some students families buy access.
yet, the bottom half needs the top half that earns access through hard work. and that too if bottom half doesnt return to base school
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
Replying to your own message ain’t gonna make that Curie fiction story any more real.
I’m a DP. Feel free to ask Jeff.
Fact: some parents paid thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam.
That's not curie. The test prep at curie is $300
Many parent were willing to spend big bucks to give their kids a leg up in admissions:
Curie's $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Very much interested in enrolling DC in Curie, but your costs are total BS. Do you even know how to read a brochure. Curie is cheaper than Kumon.
Page 4.
The signature program is a 4 semester sequence adding up to $6985.
There are also $650 of “extra” prep classes if you want even more for your kid, so $7635.
You are funny. No one enrolls in all classes at once at any training school. We moved from Kumon to Curie for cost reasons, saving a bunch.
The cost for the full “signature program” is $6985-7635. It’s irrelevant if you personally didn’t sign up for it.
$7600?
Over 2 years? Like $300/month
That's the income barrier that was keeping TJ "almost exclusively available to the rich" Are you fugging kidding me?
My kid's hockey costs more than that and his team isn't that good. His Tae Kwon Do costs that much. Where the heck do I sign up and do they give you the answers when you pay or do they make you attend the classes to make it look good?
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
Replying to your own message ain’t gonna make that Curie fiction story any more real.
I’m a DP. Feel free to ask Jeff.
Fact: some parents paid thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam.
That's not curie. The test prep at curie is $300
Many parent were willing to spend big bucks to give their kids a leg up in admissions:
Curie's $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Very much interested in enrolling DC in Curie, but your costs are total BS. Do you even know how to read a brochure. Curie is cheaper than Kumon.
Page 4.
The signature program is a 4 semester sequence adding up to $6985.
There are also $650 of “extra” prep classes if you want even more for your kid, so $7635.
You are funny. No one enrolls in all classes at once at any training school. We moved from Kumon to Curie for cost reasons, saving a bunch.
The cost for the full “signature program” is $6985-7635. It’s irrelevant if you personally didn’t sign up for it.
why do you care what program people sign up for? do you work for Curie?
You seem to have trouble following. Go back and read the thread.
Wealthy parents have doing all sorts of things to give their kids a leg up in TJ admissions, including expensive enrichment and test prep programs.
It’s been an issue that the school board has been trying to address for decades.
But they are primarily concerned about race. Everybody knows this, even you.
Anonymous wrote:^ by environment, I primarily mean an extensive network of support for low-income families
What extensive network does NYC have?
The problem with FCPS providing support for per kids is that they are trying to achieve equal results not equal ability. And besides, they don't really care about income, just skin color.
They could have artificially achieved income diversity by explicitly preferencing income (which they did), they didn't have to get rid of the test for that. But they could not explicitly preference race and so they got rid of the test because objective testing is an obstacle to racial diversity.
They got rid of the test because wealthy people were getting an additional unfair advantage by prepping.
They had already changed the test to prevent this multiple times. But test prep companies continued to “crack” the test.
That's silly. We were there, we saw the board taking about racial diversity throughout the entire process. The backdrop of BLM let them push it through but it was all about race. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. If wealth determined how well you did on these tests why would Stuyvesant be 50% farm? How did TJ go from majority white to majority Asian?
Is this a serious question? Because the answer is wealthy Indian families concentrated in Loudoun and western Fairfax. They’re by FAR the wealthiest demographic in Northern Virginia.
GTFOH.
Of the 500 wealthiest family's in northern Virginia, they are overwhelmingly white. There may be a concentration of affluent Indian families in Loudon but they are not the wealthiest people in Fairfax. Not even close.
And even if they were, of the 500 spots at TJ under the old system, Loudon county got ~70 spots. The soft in demographics at TJ is because Asians showed up. That is what is causing the distribution that people want to counter.
There wasn't any political will to do anything when TJ was overwhelmingly white, that just seemed natural. Things didn't seem off until Asians started to crowd out white kids.
FALSE. The community has been concerned about test prep for decades…
“attended a private learning center in Burke for test practice and admissions counseling -- even advice on elementary school extracurricular activities. “
"Families go through incredible behavior just to try to get their kids into Jefferson by moving into a particular area or renting a town house near Longfellow [Middle School] or others that they think will give them an edge."
“The frenzy highlights a current districtwide controversy about the admission process. Domenech wants to increase the number of students attending Jefferson from less affluent areas of the county”
For the first time, applicants who registered to take the test this year were given a 16-page booklet with test-taking strategies and sample questions.
"We knew that kids were getting help," said admissions coordinator Christel G. Payne, "and it just wasn't fair that a great deal knew what they were facing when they went in on Saturday morning and others would go in cold with no idea what they would be looking at."
MCPS: “Eileen Steinkraus, the magnet coordinator, said applicants used to take the Preliminary SAT, but so many students studied for the test that they abolished it four years ago and had a testing service develop a test for them.”
Pfft.
I'm sure there were a lot of concerns. But, just like there were a lot of reasons for the civil war but really one reason, the primary driver of the admissions change was racial diversity. Nobody that was around 5 years ago would have said test prep was driving the change more than racial concerns
1) Let’s suppose for a moment that a primary driver of the admissions changes was racial diversity. Why does that bother you? Are you unfamiliar with the overwhelming peer-reviewed academic literature supporting the value of racial diversity in advanced academic spaces?
2) You’re trying to decouple test prep concerns and racial concerns. Why?
What do you mean decouple racial concerns and test prep concerns? I think a lot of test prep concerns arise from racism and the concerns that a lot of white people have that asians are taking spots that might otherwise go to their kids. Even the use of the term test prep to describe what happens at curie is pretty deceptive. Curie starts in early elementary, nobody is doing that to get into TJ. They have a 2 week module that costs $300 that goes over the test, everything else is educational enrichment.
Curie (and probably others) sell it as test prep. Their $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Many families do enrichment purely to increase their kids’ chances at TJ.
You are quoting PART of one sentence out of a 20 page document.
The entire sentence read:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
And it is clear from the rest of the document and their website that they are not particularly focused on the TJ exam.
Right. I included the excerpt that was relevant. Curie pushed that multi-year program as the ultimate “test prep” option. They specifically mention the TJ admissions test.
You are the only person who is (weirdly) trying to narrowly define it.
Parents sign their kids up for all kinds of activities and enrichment just to get a leg up on TJ admissions.
Should we call these things “admissions boosters”?
Really where do they push it as the ultimate "test prep" option? I mean they seem to be going out of their way to say that this will not only prepare them for entrance exams but also for high school and college.
Right when they mentioned it was TJ test prep on steroids.
“ This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ “
Once again, you are clip quoting those words out of context. How does that sentence end?
Again, here is the full quote:
"The Level 7/8 program incorporates high-level coursework in math, English, writing, science, and
critical thinking. This program will prepare students not only to pass any test for admission into
specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ, but also to succeed and even thrive in high school and
later in college.
Does this sound like they are advertising "TJ prep on steroids" or offering a program that will prepare students for academic success including passing admissions tests to places like TJ and AOS.
Yes, it sounds like TJ prep on steroids.
Parents are doing it to game admissions for TJ and potentially college.
Studying is not gamification.
And even if it were gamification, it's still better than racial discrimination.
DP. I have provided the most evidence by far of anyone on this board of the very problematic behavior of Curie and other test prep companies.
It is inappropriate to refer to what happened in this situation as "test buying", and it is equally inappropriate to refer to it as "studying".
What is appropriate is to call out the issues with making admissions decisions based on standardized tests when test-taking is a real skill, coached familiarity with the format confers massive advantages, and there is no real-world value to the skill of test-taking apart from academic admissions processes. There is no real-world problem that is solved by being a good test-taker.
There is a big difference between "studying math" and "paying thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam". The latter is the reason why TJ has been inaccessible to low-income families for its entire recent history, and moreso as the years have gone on.
There was significant, demonstrable racial discrimination under the old admissions system and it was removed by virtue of the new admissions process. The fact that the process no longer discriminates in favor of resourced students and Asian students does not constitute an introduction of racial discrimination into the process. But you were probably okay with the racial and socioeconomic discrimination that took place under the old process because you felt like it was earned via the priorities of parents and communities.
The most important thing that happened in the introduction of the new admissions process was its devaluation of the efforts of parents. Parents should not be incentivized to build a childhood around admission to a high school (or a college, for that matter). They can certainly do it if they want to - I'm not here to tell parents what they should and shouldn't do - but they shouldn't be rewarded for that behavior. And the result of a narrow path to TJ admission for so many years was a staggering monoculture within the TJ building that had devastating effects on mental health and on college admissions outcomes.
It's pretty objectively a far better place now, though there's still more work to do to reintroduce the evaluation of actual merit (meaning the intersection of achievement AND circumstances) to the process. And there are ways to do that, but it's not going to happen if FCPS insists on funding only 2.5 positions in the TJ Admissions Office.
Exactly.
Replying to your own message ain’t gonna make that Curie fiction story any more real.
I’m a DP. Feel free to ask Jeff.
Fact: some parents paid thousands of dollars for boutique test prep to be ready for the Quant-Q exam.
That's not curie. The test prep at curie is $300
Many parent were willing to spend big bucks to give their kids a leg up in admissions:
Curie's $6985+ signature program that runs over two years “pass any test for admission into specialized programs like AOS/AET and TJ” https://tinyurl.com/tjtestprepoptions
Very much interested in enrolling DC in Curie, but your costs are total BS. Do you even know how to read a brochure. Curie is cheaper than Kumon.
Page 4.
The signature program is a 4 semester sequence adding up to $6985.
There are also $650 of “extra” prep classes if you want even more for your kid, so $7635.
You are funny. No one enrolls in all classes at once at any training school. We moved from Kumon to Curie for cost reasons, saving a bunch.
The cost for the full “signature program” is $6985-7635. It’s irrelevant if you personally didn’t sign up for it.
why do you care what program people sign up for? do you work for Curie?
You seem to have trouble following. Go back and read the thread.
Wealthy parents have doing all sorts of things to give their kids a leg up in TJ admissions, including expensive enrichment and test prep programs.
It’s been an issue that the school board has been trying to address for decades.
wealthy academically, not financially. FCPS absolutely prefers these academically wealthy families so much that the entire top half of TJ is filled with them. Bottom half tells a different story, as FCPS intentionally fills it to satisfy the diversity chart. Do you want to know which academically wealthy middle schools are rewarded the most TJ spots by FCPS?
if by wealthy academically you mean being able to dump 30k into test prep then sure.
LOL, nobody believes you.
Anybody that was around in 2020 during the BLM riots knows that the FCPS board did this to get more black faces into TJ so they could pretend they were doing something good for the black kids. Ultimately after all this black admissions went from 10 to 24 Meanwhile white admissions went from 86 to 120, 35 of those extra 50 seats went to white kids.
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