Thomas Jefferson High School drops to 5th in latest US News ranking

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is US News encouraged or even allowed to publish rankings when ranking inherently implies disparities among schools? This categorization places one school at the pinnacle, followed by most in the middle, and inevitably labels a subset of schools as the bottom. The concept of equity in education begins first with uniform treatment for all schools, ensuring sufficient options to enable equal access. Ranking uplifts one or a few schools above numerous district schools, suggesting that others are comparatively less exceptional.

Ha ha. It’s the underground market: a demand for information about quality and academic achievement even if our overlords tells us that only “equity” matters.

However, don’t ignore the possibility that at some point the VDOE and FCPS will shut down the pipeline of data that’s used to create the rankings.

[Anonymous]

Oh no!!!!!
Not the fifth best high school in the entire country!!!!
WHATEVER SHALL WE DO??!!!!?????

You people are crazy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh no!!!!!
Not the fifth best high school in the entire country!!!!
WHATEVER SHALL WE DO??!!!!?????

You people are crazy.

Welcome joining

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's weird no one has linked the ranking metrics that probably led to the slide:

College Readiness Index Rank - #1 (tie) #1
College Curriculum Breadth Index Rank - #9 #1
State Assessment Proficiency Rank - #15 (tie) #1
State Assessment Performance Rank - #44 #1
Graduation Rate Rank - #1 (tie) #1 (tie)

The outlier here is the "State Assessment Performance Rank," at 44th, which is defined by US News as the following:
"How aggregated scores on state assessments compare with U.S. News' expectations given the proportions of students who are Black, Hispanic and from low-income households."

As noted the data used was prior to the admissions changes, so Im not sure whether the admissions changes will help or hurt, but I suspect having larger numbers of high performing URMs will increase their ranking here and will return them to #1.

It is interesting that you assume the URMs got in TJ are high performers.
I guess you think lottery winners are highly motivated, ambitious, hard working citizens.

Until I see scores that indicate otherwise, everyone who gets into TJ pre/post admissions changes are high performers. The question, IMO, was always related to the zero-sum nature of the admissions, as to whether the most deserving/best candidates were being admitted and what that criteria is.

[Anonymous]

Omg!! FIVE SPOTS?!?

-innumerate people

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's weird no one has linked the ranking metrics that probably led to the slide:

College Readiness Index Rank - #1 (tie) #1
College Curriculum Breadth Index Rank - #9 #1
State Assessment Proficiency Rank - #15 (tie) #1
State Assessment Performance Rank - #44 #1
Graduation Rate Rank - #1 (tie) #1 (tie)

The outlier here is the "State Assessment Performance Rank," at 44th, which is defined by US News as the following:
"How aggregated scores on state assessments compare with U.S. News' expectations given the proportions of students who are Black, Hispanic and from low-income households."

As noted the data used was prior to the admissions changes, so Im not sure whether the admissions changes will help or hurt, but I suspect having larger numbers of high performing URMs will increase their ranking here and will return them to #1.

It is interesting that you assume the URMs got in TJ are high performers.
I guess you think lottery winners are highly motivated, ambitious, hard working citizens.

I mean, they're all taking sufficiently advanced classes in middle school to cover the state assessments and then some, or else they wouldn't be eligible to apply to TJ.

And the mean GPA of admitted students went up when the admissions changes went through, so for the most part you're getting students who were MS 4.0s in these sufficiently advanced classes.

They're plenty high-performing by definition - they just don't necessarily have the resources to be as artificially advanced as previous cohorts.

The amount of sour grapes that you see in these fora is really embarrassing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:TJ High School for Science and Technology goes up in the STEM rankings.

RWNJs: "FCPS is so bad that they sent shockwaves backwards in time to make the school worse in the past".

Must be those Jewish apace lasers again.

Wait! What?!

😂😂

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is US News encouraged or even allowed to publish rankings when ranking inherently implies disparities among schools? This categorization places one school at the pinnacle, followed by most in the middle, and inevitably labels a subset of schools as the bottom. The concept of equity in education begins first with uniform treatment for all schools, ensuring sufficient options to enable equal access. Ranking uplifts one or a few schools above numerous district schools, suggesting that others are comparatively less exceptional.

Are you trying to censure the news?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is US News encouraged or even allowed to publish rankings when ranking inherently implies disparities among schools? This categorization places one school at the pinnacle, followed by most in the middle, and inevitably labels a subset of schools as the bottom. The concept of equity in education begins first with uniform treatment for all schools, ensuring sufficient options to enable equal access. Ranking uplifts one or a few schools above numerous district schools, suggesting that others are comparatively less exceptional.

Are you trying to censure the news?

DP. I think some people are just yearning for the days when it seemed like the priority of news outlets was to educate the public on matters of importance, rather than grasping for whatever slice of the attention pie they could get. Sadly, the American public just wants to eat dessert when they consume media - even news media - and has no patience for anything with real nutritional value.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is US News encouraged or even allowed to publish rankings when ranking inherently implies disparities among schools? This categorization places one school at the pinnacle, followed by most in the middle, and inevitably labels a subset of schools as the bottom. The concept of equity in education begins first with uniform treatment for all schools, ensuring sufficient options to enable equal access. Ranking uplifts one or a few schools above numerous district schools, suggesting that others are comparatively less exceptional.

Are you trying to censure the news?

DP. I think some people are just yearning for the days when it seemed like the priority of news outlets was to educate the public on matters of importance, rather than grasping for whatever slice of the attention pie they could get. Sadly, the American public just wants to eat dessert when they consume media - even news media - and has no patience for anything with real nutritional value.

US News is not a news outlet. They produce rankings to create page views and that's about it.

[Anonymous]

Quick everyone - move to Indiana, Nevada etc etc etc.
Such a stupid thing to worry about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is US News encouraged or even allowed to publish rankings when ranking inherently implies disparities among schools? This categorization places one school at the pinnacle, followed by most in the middle, and inevitably labels a subset of schools as the bottom. The concept of equity in education begins first with uniform treatment for all schools, ensuring sufficient options to enable equal access. Ranking uplifts one or a few schools above numerous district schools, suggesting that others are comparatively less exceptional.

Are you trying to censure the news?

DP. I think some people are just yearning for the days when it seemed like the priority of news outlets was to educate the public on matters of importance, rather than grasping for whatever slice of the attention pie they could get. Sadly, the American public just wants to eat dessert when they consume media - even news media - and has no patience for anything with real nutritional value.

US News is not a news outlet. They produce rankings to create page views and that's about it.

PP. You're not wrong about that. And honestly, if they get a ton of traffic from people clutching their pearls about TJ dropping four spots, that will incentivize them to adjust their algorithm to drop TJ even further in ensuing years.

It's all about the ad money.

[Anonymous]

This is the school profile for the #1 school. It looks like a fine school (but tiny), but I'm still trying to figure out how it's better than TJ. Just demonstrates how silly this whole "ranking" thing is, whether for high schools or colleges.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R7dsz9xRU_K_p0ZAROCdoD_a4nebMFQo/view

[Anonymous]

No surprise!

[Anonymous]

The minority group, which significantly contributed to the school's excellence for decades, saw its number strength unjustly diminished by a lottery-based admission process devoid of merit. Is it any surprise that this school's trajectory appears to be following a path of de-excellence?