Admissions to change at Thomas Jefferson High, and others

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As an immigrant from Eastern Europe, who finished a "special" (i.e. advanced) school, I see this whole discussion from a different perspective. Many ex Soviet countries have special public schools for gifted in different disciplines (math, languages, music, ballet, etc). They are very competitive and kids prepare for those from a very young age. Preparing is necessary and something that is actually measured and taken into account (how many years did you compete in the math competitions, how many years did you play the instrument etc). It is something which is considered very positive and shows that the kid is a hard working student. Also, teachers believe that intelligence and gifts can be developed and improved and they will never accept a kid who is not ready. To prepare for a math school, kids have workbooks starting from (if I remember well) second grade. Every workbook has 200 - 300 problems, and by 8th grade, the books have about 500 problems. You must do every single problem from those books during the academic year. On top of that, you have to take extra classes and to finish extra books. The kids have to take an exam in the end of the 8th grade. Kids with top-200 results are accepted into the school. You don't submit a name or school (race, gender and ethnicity are unknown), and it is double blind. You get a number, and search for your score based on that number. The school is very difficult and you can easily fail a grade if you don't prepare for it.

I don't think that preparation is a bad thing. Give every single ES kid a workbook to do over the course of the year to prepare, and then test them. You won't get better equity than that if your goal is to build an intelligent future generation with healthy attitudes about education.

Just my 2 cents.

A system with the rigidity of Soviet Russia and the test-prep fanaticism of Asian countries doesn’t seem particularly enticing.

I don't disagree with you, but we still get very well-paying jobs here because there aren't enough qualified native-born Americans who know how to do them. And with the way people view education here, the situation will get worse and worse.

And yet those jobs are here, not Bulgaria.

If you want to have more STEM workers, you don’t necessarily just shine a light on one high school in a county with 1.2 million people and almost 200,000 students.

I absolutely agree. (I don't know why you picked Bulgaria in particular though).

Just to make sure we understand each other. Every single kid in every single elementary school would be doing all of those problems. In that way, every single kid improves their skills over the course of their education. The special schools go beyond that. You're right that the kids over there are extra motivated because they know that they are strong in STEM, and that if they can work at it they can have success if they come over here (their way of having a piece of the American Dream, if you will).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even if the proposed lottery pool is composed of those who are qualified by today's standards of admission, the bigger issue is that some of these kids who we are changing the rules to allow in STILL wont meet the higher standard and would not be in this potential lottery pool. Kids need to be preparing and working at a higher level from elementary, not just starting in 7th grade.

yup this has been tried multiple times this century already. Whenever you let a more diverse pool in the talent goes down and you have to add remedial classes.

Guess the other option is to shut it down and spread resources across the whole system to lift up a larger # of people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Posters have said on this thread over and over again that TJ should be closed or students admitted without high standards (ie. by lottery). That isnt a strawman argument. People are actually arguing to lower standards or close completely. I guess if high performers can't have nice things, no one can.

We could have a lottery where the admitted students were still qualified, or we could close TJHSST and still have nice (or nicer) things. Those who simply defend the current situation as ideal will do more to hasten the school’s closure than those who advocate for a new process.

Exactly. Find a way to make it accessible to more people or lose it.

+1000. Based on the hostility and arrogance on display in this thread, I hope they close it.

Not to mention hostility and anti Asian racism on the other side.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I dare the SJW and white guilt woke whites to try and mess with admissions

Yale Discriminated by Race in Undergraduate Admissions, Justice Department Says
Federal officials give university two weeks to agree to adjust practices or face lawsuit after probe finds white, Asian-American applicants rejected based on race

https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-finds-yale-discriminated-based-on-race-in-undergraduate-admissions-11597351675?fbclid=IwAR27nuVC6qeQBosKUZYKftNfgqyUd3GrN-FVSYmdPK9wnyWquk9sKjxQHJc

Yale will contest, as Harvard successfully did, and not cave to this election-year pandering. This will likely never make it to court.

It is no accident that the Justice Department - which has been successfully turned by Trump into the President's personal law office - undertook this action literally the day after the Biden campaign announced an Indian-American woman as their VP pick.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even if the proposed lottery pool is composed of those who are qualified by today's standards of admission, the bigger issue is that some of these kids who we are changing the rules to allow in STILL wont meet the higher standard and would not be in this potential lottery pool. Kids need to be preparing and working at a higher level from elementary, not just starting in 7th grade.

yup this has been tried multiple times this century already. Whenever you let a more diverse pool in the talent goes down and you have to add remedial classes.

Guess the other option is to shut it down and spread resources across the whole system to lift up a larger # of people.

Except there won’t be much resources left to spread around to other schools when TJ is shut down by fools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As an immigrant from Eastern Europe, who finished a "special" (i.e. advanced) school, I see this whole discussion from a different perspective. Many ex Soviet countries have special public schools for gifted in different disciplines (math, languages, music, ballet, etc). They are very competitive and kids prepare for those from a very young age. Preparing is necessary and something that is actually measured and taken into account (how many years did you compete in the math competitions, how many years did you play the instrument etc). It is something which is considered very positive and shows that the kid is a hard working student. Also, teachers believe that intelligence and gifts can be developed and improved and they will never accept a kid who is not ready. To prepare for a math school, kids have workbooks starting from (if I remember well) second grade. Every workbook has 200 - 300 problems, and by 8th grade, the books have about 500 problems. You must do every single problem from those books during the academic year. On top of that, you have to take extra classes and to finish extra books. The kids have to take an exam in the end of the 8th grade. Kids with top-200 results are accepted into the school. You don't submit a name or school (race, gender and ethnicity are unknown), and it is double blind. You get a number, and search for your score based on that number. The school is very difficult and you can easily fail a grade if you don't prepare for it.

I don't think that preparation is a bad thing. Give every single ES kid a workbook to do over the course of the year to prepare, and then test them. You won't get better equity than that if your goal is to build an intelligent future generation with healthy attitudes about education.

Just my 2 cents.

A system with the rigidity of Soviet Russia and the test-prep fanaticism of Asian countries doesn’t seem particularly enticing.

I don't disagree with you, but we still get very well-paying jobs here because there aren't enough qualified native-born Americans who know how to do them. And with the way people view education here, the situation will get worse and worse.

And yet those jobs are here, not Bulgaria.

If you want to have more STEM workers, you don’t necessarily just shine a light on one high school in a county with 1.2 million people and almost 200,000 students.

I absolutely agree. (I don't know why you picked Bulgaria in particular though).

Just to make sure we understand each other. Every single kid in every single elementary school would be doing all of those problems. In that way, every single kid improves their skills over the course of their education. The special schools go beyond that. You're right that the kids over there are extra motivated because they know that they are strong in STEM, and that if they can work at it they can have success if they come over here (their way of having a piece of the American Dream, if you will).

Totally agree. And, it is carefully laid out and supplies are given out so that everyone knows what is expected to get into the better schools. Not like it is for TJ where wealthier schools get the extra classes and/or social circles know which classes to take.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I dare the SJW and white guilt woke whites to try and mess with admissions

Yale Discriminated by Race in Undergraduate Admissions, Justice Department Says
Federal officials give university two weeks to agree to adjust practices or face lawsuit after probe finds white, Asian-American applicants rejected based on race

https://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-finds-yale-discriminated-based-on-race-in-undergraduate-admissions-11597351675?fbclid=IwAR27nuVC6qeQBosKUZYKftNfgqyUd3GrN-FVSYmdPK9wnyWquk9sKjxQHJc

Yale will contest, as Harvard successfully did, and not cave to this election-year pandering. This will likely never make it to court.

It is no accident that the Justice Department - which has been successfully turned by Trump into the President's personal law office - undertook this action literally the day after the Biden campaign announced an Indian-American woman as their VP pick.

I thought she was pretending to be black.

[Anonymous]

The standards as they currently exist for admission favor families that are willing to track their children as early as possible into STEM areas.

Fixing the TJ Admissions process isn't about LOWERING the standards. Claiming that it is presumes that they're perfect and can't be improved upon. It's about CHANGING the standards to do a better job of identifying a broader pool of talent and potential - and, believe it or not, to attract a stronger pool of applicants.

Changing doesn't necessarily mean lowering. The TJ Admissions process could do a much better job with teacher recommendations, with the Student Information Sheet, and with contextualizing each student's performance to their circumstances to better identify a class that will create a positive academic environment, an atmosphere of collaboration and synergy, and do so in an ethical manner.

And by the way - there are plenty of Asian-American students who would benefit from these changes as well and would create a far superior academic environment.

[Anonymous]

People here value and spend more time and money on sport than academics.
As a society, if we dont hold higher expectations and standards toward our kids, sooner or later we will lose our edge in the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The standards as they currently exist for admission favor families that are willing to track their children as early as possible into STEM areas.

This reads suspiciously like "the ability to plan ahead is highly frowned upon"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As an immigrant from Eastern Europe, who finished a "special" (i.e. advanced) school, I see this whole discussion from a different perspective. Many ex Soviet countries have special public schools for gifted in different disciplines (math, languages, music, ballet, etc). They are very competitive and kids prepare for those from a very young age. Preparing is necessary and something that is actually measured and taken into account (how many years did you compete in the math competitions, how many years did you play the instrument etc). It is something which is considered very positive and shows that the kid is a hard working student. Also, teachers believe that intelligence and gifts can be developed and improved and they will never accept a kid who is not ready. To prepare for a math school, kids have workbooks starting from (if I remember well) second grade. Every workbook has 200 - 300 problems, and by 8th grade, the books have about 500 problems. You must do every single problem from those books during the academic year. On top of that, you have to take extra classes and to finish extra books. The kids have to take an exam in the end of the 8th grade. Kids with top-200 results are accepted into the school. You don't submit a name or school (race, gender and ethnicity are unknown), and it is double blind. You get a number, and search for your score based on that number. The school is very difficult and you can easily fail a grade if you don't prepare for it.

I don't think that preparation is a bad thing. Give every single ES kid a workbook to do over the course of the year to prepare, and then test them. You won't get better equity than that if your goal is to build an intelligent future generation with healthy attitudes about education.

Just my 2 cents.

Another Eastern European immigrant here with a different perspective. The system PP describes is GREAT if you are one of the kids who is not broken by the experience. The whole model is that start with 100 kids and break 99 of them along the way, but the one who doesn't drop out, commit suicide, fail, or develop a repetitive stress injury from practicing violin 8 hours a day - that kid is a winner.

There is no culture of doing music or math or gymnastic (or whatever) for fun or for joy. You do it to attend the conservatory, or gymnasium, or Olympics.

I would much much rather raise my kids here than there, because I've seen what that system does to the kids who don't end up as "winners."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The standards as they currently exist for admission favor families that are willing to track their children as early as possible into STEM areas.

Fixing the TJ Admissions process isn't about LOWERING the standards. Claiming that it is presumes that they're perfect and can't be improved upon. It's about CHANGING the standards to do a better job of identifying a broader pool of talent and potential - and, believe it or not, to attract a stronger pool of applicants.

Changing doesn't necessarily mean lowering. The TJ Admissions process could do a much better job with teacher recommendations, with the Student Information Sheet, and with contextualizing each student's performance to their circumstances to better identify a class that will create a positive academic environment, an atmosphere of collaboration and synergy, and do so in an ethical manner.

And by the way - there are plenty of Asian-American students who would benefit from these changes as well and would create a far superior academic environment.

SB is constantly trying to get more black kids in and they never make the cut however holistic the SB tries to make the admissions process.

Are the actual black and Hispanic students complaining that they are not getting in? It seems like they are not even applying.

[Anonymous]

The school board has NEVER looked at the issue of girls applying but being denied admission at higher rates than boys. These girls are at a very vulnerable time of their lives and the process is NOT kind to them. A more holistic approach that values the contributions of girls would benefit the entire community.

Time to make it 50/50

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The standards as they currently exist for admission favor families that are willing to track their children as early as possible into STEM areas.

This reads suspiciously like "the ability to plan ahead is highly frowned upon"

You know what, if it were the kid's ability to plan ahead, I'd be all for it. But it's not. It's the parents. And the parents aren't the ones going to TJ. So they should be able to do everything that they can for their kids - it just shouldn't have a direct impact on the TJ admissions process.

[Anonymous]

There was a thread recently on the TJ Vents FB Group that talked about the class of 2023 and how their was an Indian man who ran a prepping business that HAD THE ACTUAL test. Apparently it was very similar to the 2022 test and he had gotten a copy of it somehow. Multiple kids responding to the thread indicated that they knew what had happened. There are similar rumors that the class of 2024 also had these issues.

Most of the prep companies do not teach the kid’s to cheat. This company was an outlier, but who knows how many kids he got in.