Thomas Jefferson HS National Merit Semifinalist decrease

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://defendinged.org/incidents/thomas-jefferson-high-schools-number-of-students-named-national-merit-semifinalists-decreases-by-over-half-year-to-year/

There were 165 semifinalists in 2024. That number decreased to 81 for 2025 merit semifinalists. While increasing enrollment from 450 to 550.

Result from going merit based admissions to equity based in 2021.

We already know the pandemic had an impact on students that resulted in learning loss. Please stop pushing your racist agenda by twisting the facts.

It's percentile based dipsh*t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s such a dramatic drop. And the numbers at other FCPS schools didn’t increase enough to cover the decline. It suggests that TJ’s education and experience was contributing to the success. It’s not a case of just moving these students to another school. It’s a real shame. Tj was an amazing experience for my kids (who didn’t prep to get in), with high rigor and a peer group who also loved to be challenged and learn. The admissions changes were done so haphazardly during COVID. FCPS doesn’t seem inclined to study the changes and see if it anything should be done to tweak it. And they ignore the indicators, such as this one, that the quality of the school has declined.

Yes, such a shame that Virginia’s raw scores have gone up, resulting in a higher cut score and a smaller number of NMSFs!

That's weird since it's much easier to get NMSF in places like VA than MD.

Same percentile and this year, the same score

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The PSAT changed fall off 2023 to a digital and adaptive test. It was NOT the same pencil and paper version. Before there was a non calculator section. Now you can use calculators on the entire test AND there is a built in graphing calculator. It is shorter and has more time per question.

These changes are probably not good for many TJ students who didn’t need extra time or an embedded graph calculator. But this allowed other students to do as well as some TJ students.

So you cannot directly compare digital and paper and pencil PSAT results to comment on cohorts.

if that were true then you would expect to see similar drop off at schools like stuyvesant. But we didn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The caliber composition of TJ class has shifted in the last four years. While there is representation from lower-performing schools, there isn't enough support for students who start with deficient math and English skills. The principal of TJ has mentioned that ALEKS is being offered upfront for freshmen to address the gaps in middle school math, but more remedial resources are necessary. If TJ aims to provide effective and timely remedial assistance, a comprehensive support system with full-time dedicated staff is required. It’s counterproductive to let students struggle with poor grades and then downplay the significance of Cs and Ds, suggesting that GPA isn’t all that important.

Why can't they provide this to all the students back in 7th and 8th grade instead of just providing it for the lucky few that make the TJ lottery?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s such a dramatic drop. And the numbers at other FCPS schools didn’t increase enough to cover the decline. It suggests that TJ’s education and experience was contributing to the success. It’s not a case of just moving these students to another school. It’s a real shame. Tj was an amazing experience for my kids (who didn’t prep to get in), with high rigor and a peer group who also loved to be challenged and learn. The admissions changes were done so haphazardly during COVID. FCPS doesn’t seem inclined to study the changes and see if it anything should be done to tweak it. And they ignore the indicators, such as this one, that the quality of the school has declined.

FCPS never admits it’s made mistakes and those mistakes just keep piling up. The huge decline in the number of NMSF at TJ speaks for itself, but people call attention to it because FCPS itself will never acknowledge it’s symptomatic of the rot within the system.

It’s what happens when a school system is no longer run by people with a commitment to academic excellence, but instead only to virtue signaling designed to appease political hacks.

“Academic excellence” is not determined by standardized test scores.

It is certainly one very good indicator.

Eh, it can be one of a number of indicators, but by itself it is not necessarily a “very good” indicator of academic excellence.

It can, though, be a “very good” indicator of amount of test prep a student has engaged in. Maybe there’s less test prep going on among TJ students nowadays? That would be a great move forward for the school community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn’t we already discuss this? The number of NMSFs in FCPS and Virginia declined as well. That accounts for part of the decline at TJ.

Also, the decline in Virginia was actually an improvement in absolute scores, resulting in an increase in the NMSF cut score from 219 to 222, resulting in a lower number of NMSFs in Virginia. If TJ students are disproportionately clustered in the 219-221 range, which is plausible because TJ emphasizes math while the NMSF formula emphasizes verbal, the number of students at TJ with an NMSF selection index score of 219+ might actually have gone up.

TLDR, yoy NMSF count is not a very reliable metric of quality, especially if what you care about is math.

Do you even know how NMSFs cutoff scores are established?

DP. I don't know. Can you tell me?

Since you know how internet works, learning how google works shouldn't be a huge step.

So you don't know.

DP here. It's a percentile. The top X% get NMSF.

https://www.collegevine.com/faq/53783/understanding-national-merit-finalist-cutoffs

Okay - is it exact though or does the number vary a bit year to year? Is there a list of total NMSF for Virginia (and Maryland and DC) each year? I know there are lists of cutoffs per state per year, including estimated cutoffs for next year. I'm not sure if the total number for the state is fixed or not (with a percentile, the number could vary). The cutoff was 3 points higher this year than last year, fwiw. So while fewer at TJ this year, they scored higher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://defendinged.org/incidents/thomas-jefferson-high-schools-number-of-students-named-national-merit-semifinalists-decreases-by-over-half-year-to-year/

There were 165 semifinalists in 2024. That number decreased to 81 for 2025 merit semifinalists. While increasing enrollment from 450 to 550.

Result from going merit based admissions to equity based in 2021.

We already know the pandemic had an impact on students that resulted in learning loss. Please stop pushing your racist agenda by twisting the facts.

There were nearly twice as many last year. Why no pandemic effect then?

[Anonymous]

Yes, they publish the numbers of NMSF and commended for each state each year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://defendinged.org/incidents/thomas-jefferson-high-schools-number-of-students-named-national-merit-semifinalists-decreases-by-over-half-year-to-year/

There were 165 semifinalists in 2024. That number decreased to 81 for 2025 merit semifinalists. While increasing enrollment from 450 to 550.

Result from going merit based admissions to equity based in 2021.

We already know the pandemic had an impact on students that resulted in learning loss. Please stop pushing your racist agenda by twisting the facts.

There were nearly twice as many last year. Why no pandemic effect then?

The cutoff was 3 points lower last year.

[Anonymous]

Already all discussed here:
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1223230.page

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, they publish the numbers of NMSF and commended for each state each year.

It does look like last year was a bumper crop, with 467 NMSFs. In previous years, there have been closer to 400, and in this year, there were 394 NMSFs. This is Virginia data, I didn't look at other states.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn’t we already discuss this? The number of NMSFs in FCPS and Virginia declined as well. That accounts for part of the decline at TJ.

Also, the decline in Virginia was actually an improvement in absolute scores, resulting in an increase in the NMSF cut score from 219 to 222, resulting in a lower number of NMSFs in Virginia. If TJ students are disproportionately clustered in the 219-221 range, which is plausible because TJ emphasizes math while the NMSF formula emphasizes verbal, the number of students at TJ with an NMSF selection index score of 219+ might actually have gone up.

TLDR, yoy NMSF count is not a very reliable metric of quality, especially if what you care about is math.

Do you even know how NMSFs cutoff scores are established?

DP. I don't know. Can you tell me?

Since you know how internet works, learning how google works shouldn't be a huge step.

So you don't know.

DP here. It's a percentile. The top X% get NMSF.

https://www.collegevine.com/faq/53783/understanding-national-merit-finalist-cutoffs

Okay - is it exact though or does the number vary a bit year to year? Is there a list of total NMSF for Virginia (and Maryland and DC) each year? I know there are lists of cutoffs per state per year, including estimated cutoffs for next year. I'm not sure if the total number for the state is fixed or not (with a percentile, the number could vary). The cutoff was 3 points higher this year than last year, fwiw. So while fewer at TJ this year, they scored higher.

The number obviously would have to vary somewhat. Hypothetically speaking, let's say VA has 84,000 12th graders each year. Then there ought to be 420 NMSF slots. If a index of 221 gives 460 and an index of 222 gives only 390, they have to pick one or the other.

The better metric is the percent share of VA NMSF at TJ. For the class of 2024, it was 35%. For 2025, it's 20%. It would also be useful to know the number of commended scholars at TJ for the class of 2024 and 2025. I wouldn't be surprised if there's also a huge drop in the number of commended scholars.

The PSAT last year was easier than normal, and almost every state had an increase in the NMSF index. https://www.compassprep.com/national-merit-semifinalist-cutoffs/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s such a dramatic drop. And the numbers at other FCPS schools didn’t increase enough to cover the decline. It suggests that TJ’s education and experience was contributing to the success. It’s not a case of just moving these students to another school. It’s a real shame. Tj was an amazing experience for my kids (who didn’t prep to get in), with high rigor and a peer group who also loved to be challenged and learn. The admissions changes were done so haphazardly during COVID. FCPS doesn’t seem inclined to study the changes and see if it anything should be done to tweak it. And they ignore the indicators, such as this one, that the quality of the school has declined.

FCPS never admits it’s made mistakes and those mistakes just keep piling up. The huge decline in the number of NMSF at TJ speaks for itself, but people call attention to it because FCPS itself will never acknowledge it’s symptomatic of the rot within the system.

It’s what happens when a school system is no longer run by people with a commitment to academic excellence, but instead only to virtue signaling designed to appease political hacks.

“Academic excellence” is not determined by standardized test scores.

It is certainly one very good indicator.

Eh, it can be one of a number of indicators, but by itself it is not necessarily a “very good” indicator of academic excellence.

It's pretty good. There's a reason why pretty much the entire rest of the world uses a standardized test to determine college admissions.

It can, though, be a “very good” indicator of amount of test prep a student has engaged in. Maybe there’s less test prep going on among TJ students nowadays? That would be a great move forward for the school community.

Nope, that's not it. The Harvard/Brown study proves that's not what standardized tests measure. There is literally more research proving the legitimacy of standardized tests than there is for anthropogenic global warming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn’t we already discuss this? The number of NMSFs in FCPS and Virginia declined as well. That accounts for part of the decline at TJ.

Also, the decline in Virginia was actually an improvement in absolute scores, resulting in an increase in the NMSF cut score from 219 to 222, resulting in a lower number of NMSFs in Virginia. If TJ students are disproportionately clustered in the 219-221 range, which is plausible because TJ emphasizes math while the NMSF formula emphasizes verbal, the number of students at TJ with an NMSF selection index score of 219+ might actually have gone up.

TLDR, yoy NMSF count is not a very reliable metric of quality, especially if what you care about is math.

Do you even know how NMSFs cutoff scores are established?

DP. I don't know. Can you tell me?

Since you know how internet works, learning how google works shouldn't be a huge step.

So you don't know.

DP here. It's a percentile. The top X% get NMSF.

https://www.collegevine.com/faq/53783/understanding-national-merit-finalist-cutoffs

Okay - is it exact though or does the number vary a bit year to year? Is there a list of total NMSF for Virginia (and Maryland and DC) each year? I know there are lists of cutoffs per state per year, including estimated cutoffs for next year. I'm not sure if the total number for the state is fixed or not (with a percentile, the number could vary). The cutoff was 3 points higher this year than last year, fwiw. So while fewer at TJ this year, they scored higher.

If you don't understand how the NMSF works then why are you having an opinion?
You can literally just google it and find out that you are wrong about everything and I am right about everything.
The number of Semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.
That's it. So unless Virginia's graduating seniors dropped in fkn half since last year, this drop at TJ cannot be explained by any of your bullsg*t theories.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, they publish the numbers of NMSF and commended for each state each year.

It does look like last year was a bumper crop, with 467 NMSFs. In previous years, there have been closer to 400, and in this year, there were 394 NMSFs. This is Virginia data, I didn't look at other states.

We listed the last 12 years of TJ NMSF and it was pretty consistent until this year when it dropped in half despite a 12% larger student body.