Teacher “recommendation”/input necessary for AAP admissions, but not allowed for TJ admissions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish we hadn't gotten away from the teacher recommendations conversation here.

I think we have to get them back but that it has to be done intelligently and with an eye toward minimizing 1) the load on middle school teachers to write them and 2) the impact of experience in recommendation writing on the evaluation of the applicant. That is to say, you don't want to have a kid whose application is negatively impacted because their rec didn't come from Vern Williams or Eugene Huang.

My thought process would be to design them to be used to evaluate applicants from the same school against each other to help determine that top 1-1.5% (I am strongly pro-reform but in favor of a 1% threshold while still considering underrepresented school status as part of the holistic evaluation).

You use a Likert scale, but you ask the teachers to evaluate each of the students based on how they fit in the context of their current class and, in some rare cases, in the history of their student population. And the metrics you ask them to evaluate on go well beyond the standard evaluation of content area knowledge and include things like "intellectual curiosity", "contributions to the classroom", "collaborative instincts", and the like.

And lastly, you afford each teacher the opportunity to write on an open-ended basis about a maximum of, say, three students - and with the ability to do so either positively or negatively (to spare TJ from, for example, a problematic parent or a student who is a strongly suspected cheater).

As I've said before, it is absurd to attempt to select the most worthy students from a school with no input from the classroom teachers at that school - and while we're at it, there should be an affordance for the Student Services department to write on behalf of a small group of students as well.

Teachers can only evaluate a student's math, science, and English readiness using an evaluation Test ! If student doesn't score sufficiently, they are not ready for TJ, even if they are the only student appying for TJ from that school. Just look at the current students in remedial math.

[Anonymous]

There are 10 math and 10 science Teachers for 7th and 8th grade at Carson. Most TJ applicants are going to ask their math Teacher for a recommendation. Do you think it is reasonable to ask a Teacher to write 10-20 recommendations? I would guess that you are looking at similar numbers at Longfellow, Cooper, and Rocky Run.

Maybe a general survey regarding each applicant is doable but that is about it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish we hadn't gotten away from the teacher recommendations conversation here.

I think we have to get them back but that it has to be done intelligently and with an eye toward minimizing 1) the load on middle school teachers to write them and 2) the impact of experience in recommendation writing on the evaluation of the applicant. That is to say, you don't want to have a kid whose application is negatively impacted because their rec didn't come from Vern Williams or Eugene Huang.

My thought process would be to design them to be used to evaluate applicants from the same school against each other to help determine that top 1-1.5% (I am strongly pro-reform but in favor of a 1% threshold while still considering underrepresented school status as part of the holistic evaluation).

You use a Likert scale, but you ask the teachers to evaluate each of the students based on how they fit in the context of their current class and, in some rare cases, in the history of their student population. And the metrics you ask them to evaluate on go well beyond the standard evaluation of content area knowledge and include things like "intellectual curiosity", "contributions to the classroom", "collaborative instincts", and the like.

And lastly, you afford each teacher the opportunity to write on an open-ended basis about a maximum of, say, three students - and with the ability to do so either positively or negatively (to spare TJ from, for example, a problematic parent or a student who is a strongly suspected cheater).

As I've said before, it is absurd to attempt to select the most worthy students from a school with no input from the classroom teachers at that school - and while we're at it, there should be an affordance for the Student Services department to write on behalf of a small group of students as well.

Jumping through so many goddam hoops all to avoid using a standardized tests like the rest of the fkn world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish we hadn't gotten away from the teacher recommendations conversation here.

I think we have to get them back but that it has to be done intelligently and with an eye toward minimizing 1) the load on middle school teachers to write them and 2) the impact of experience in recommendation writing on the evaluation of the applicant. That is to say, you don't want to have a kid whose application is negatively impacted because their rec didn't come from Vern Williams or Eugene Huang.

My thought process would be to design them to be used to evaluate applicants from the same school against each other to help determine that top 1-1.5% (I am strongly pro-reform but in favor of a 1% threshold while still considering underrepresented school status as part of the holistic evaluation).

You use a Likert scale, but you ask the teachers to evaluate each of the students based on how they fit in the context of their current class and, in some rare cases, in the history of their student population. And the metrics you ask them to evaluate on go well beyond the standard evaluation of content area knowledge and include things like "intellectual curiosity", "contributions to the classroom", "collaborative instincts", and the like.

And lastly, you afford each teacher the opportunity to write on an open-ended basis about a maximum of, say, three students - and with the ability to do so either positively or negatively (to spare TJ from, for example, a problematic parent or a student who is a strongly suspected cheater).

As I've said before, it is absurd to attempt to select the most worthy students from a school with no input from the classroom teachers at that school - and while we're at it, there should be an affordance for the Student Services department to write on behalf of a small group of students as well.

Jumping through so many goddam hoops all to avoid using a standardized tests like the rest of the fkn world.

That’s a feature not a bug. Many Americans do not view those super high stakes tests as a positive thing they want to replicate here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish we hadn't gotten away from the teacher recommendations conversation here.

I think we have to get them back but that it has to be done intelligently and with an eye toward minimizing 1) the load on middle school teachers to write them and 2) the impact of experience in recommendation writing on the evaluation of the applicant. That is to say, you don't want to have a kid whose application is negatively impacted because their rec didn't come from Vern Williams or Eugene Huang.

My thought process would be to design them to be used to evaluate applicants from the same school against each other to help determine that top 1-1.5% (I am strongly pro-reform but in favor of a 1% threshold while still considering underrepresented school status as part of the holistic evaluation).

You use a Likert scale, but you ask the teachers to evaluate each of the students based on how they fit in the context of their current class and, in some rare cases, in the history of their student population. And the metrics you ask them to evaluate on go well beyond the standard evaluation of content area knowledge and include things like "intellectual curiosity", "contributions to the classroom", "collaborative instincts", and the like.

And lastly, you afford each teacher the opportunity to write on an open-ended basis about a maximum of, say, three students - and with the ability to do so either positively or negatively (to spare TJ from, for example, a problematic parent or a student who is a strongly suspected cheater).

As I've said before, it is absurd to attempt to select the most worthy students from a school with no input from the classroom teachers at that school - and while we're at it, there should be an affordance for the Student Services department to write on behalf of a small group of students as well.

Jumping through so many goddam hoops all to avoid using a standardized tests like the rest of the fkn world.

That’s a feature not a bug. Many Americans do not view those super high stakes tests as a positive thing they want to replicate here.

These are the same people that think we should
Have universal healthcare "like the rest of the world"
Ban guns "like the rest of the world"
All sorts of things "like the rest of the world"
But these same limousine liberals balk when it might disrupt their special access to the pathways to social mobility.

[Anonymous]

AAP applicants are usually elementary students, they usually don't have course history (GPA) and competition awards etc to prove their capability. Of course teacher recommendation would be proper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are 10 math and 10 science Teachers for 7th and 8th grade at Carson. Most TJ applicants are going to ask their math Teacher for a recommendation. Do you think it is reasonable to ask a Teacher to write 10-20 recommendations? I would guess that you are looking at similar numbers at Longfellow, Cooper, and Rocky Run.

Maybe a general survey regarding each applicant is doable but that is about it.

This is part of why the baseline would be a Likert-scale style survey, yes - but critically, they'd be evaluating the applicants largely against each other within the school. And again, you allow for them to write at greater length for some small maximum number.

10-20 recommendations for a middle school teacher is nothing - to be honest, I think the number would likely end up being somewhat greater. Longfellow and Carson teachers under the old system used to write a much larger number, and they were freeform letters that one had to put a considerable amount of thought into.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish we hadn't gotten away from the teacher recommendations conversation here.

I think we have to get them back but that it has to be done intelligently and with an eye toward minimizing 1) the load on middle school teachers to write them and 2) the impact of experience in recommendation writing on the evaluation of the applicant. That is to say, you don't want to have a kid whose application is negatively impacted because their rec didn't come from Vern Williams or Eugene Huang.

My thought process would be to design them to be used to evaluate applicants from the same school against each other to help determine that top 1-1.5% (I am strongly pro-reform but in favor of a 1% threshold while still considering underrepresented school status as part of the holistic evaluation).

You use a Likert scale, but you ask the teachers to evaluate each of the students based on how they fit in the context of their current class and, in some rare cases, in the history of their student population. And the metrics you ask them to evaluate on go well beyond the standard evaluation of content area knowledge and include things like "intellectual curiosity", "contributions to the classroom", "collaborative instincts", and the like.

And lastly, you afford each teacher the opportunity to write on an open-ended basis about a maximum of, say, three students - and with the ability to do so either positively or negatively (to spare TJ from, for example, a problematic parent or a student who is a strongly suspected cheater).

As I've said before, it is absurd to attempt to select the most worthy students from a school with no input from the classroom teachers at that school - and while we're at it, there should be an affordance for the Student Services department to write on behalf of a small group of students as well.

Jumping through so many goddam hoops all to avoid using a standardized tests like the rest of the fkn world.

Standardized tests can have limited value. I will submit that. The problem is that any time you use them, they take on an importance to the public (and sometimes to evaluators) that is way above their actual value because they're theoretically an objective measuring stick.

The problem is that the thing that they measure just isn't that critical. You learn absolutely nothing about what a child will contribute to a classroom dynamic from a standardized test, and the classroom dynamic is the defining feature of any quality educational experience. And it's especially critical in elite and advanced educational settings.

Failing to understand this is a failure to understand why the world's brightest minds move to America (or occasionally England) to go to college and don't move to "the rest of the fkn world".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are 10 math and 10 science Teachers for 7th and 8th grade at Carson. Most TJ applicants are going to ask their math Teacher for a recommendation. Do you think it is reasonable to ask a Teacher to write 10-20 recommendations? I would guess that you are looking at similar numbers at Longfellow, Cooper, and Rocky Run.

Maybe a general survey regarding each applicant is doable but that is about it.

This is part of why the baseline would be a Likert-scale style survey, yes - but critically, they'd be evaluating the applicants largely against each other within the school. And again, you allow for them to write at greater length for some small maximum number.

10-20 recommendations for a middle school teacher is nothing - to be honest, I think the number would likely end up being somewhat greater. Longfellow and Carson teachers under the old system used to write a much larger number, and they were freeform letters that one had to put a considerable amount of thought into.

I taught at a TJ feeder when teacher recs existed. Our principal would give us some sub hours to work on them. I never minded writing them.

[Anonymous]

A standardized test for TJ that has a cutoff of say 80% correct shouldn’t be a problem for anyone who is TJ material. The test would use Algebra/Science that students learned so far in 8th grade or earlier years. Even if some kids have to “prep” like crazy to get the 70% correct, it would still weed out any kid that doesn’t have the base knowledge required for an advanced stem high school. They could use a test to get to the 2nd round and then not include test scores in the applicants “packet” that is holistically reviewed. This would at least prevent kids that are not at all prepared for this kind of academic environment.

Nobody can argue that the top 1.5% of students from each middle school couldn’t pass a test with 80% correct.

[Anonymous]

*to get the 80% correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A standardized test for TJ that has a cutoff of say 80% correct shouldn’t be a problem for anyone who is TJ material. The test would use Algebra/Science that students learned so far in 8th grade or earlier years. Even if some kids have to “prep” like crazy to get the 70% correct, it would still weed out any kid that doesn’t have the base knowledge required for an advanced stem high school. They could use a test to get to the 2nd round and then not include test scores in the applicants “packet” that is holistically reviewed. This would at least prevent kids that are not at all prepared for this kind of academic environment.

Nobody can argue that the top 1.5% of students from each middle school couldn’t pass a test with 80% correct.

It depends on the test. There are definitely some schools where the top 1.5% would not all be in the top 20% of FCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish we hadn't gotten away from the teacher recommendations conversation here.

I think we have to get them back but that it has to be done intelligently and with an eye toward minimizing 1) the load on middle school teachers to write them and 2) the impact of experience in recommendation writing on the evaluation of the applicant. That is to say, you don't want to have a kid whose application is negatively impacted because their rec didn't come from Vern Williams or Eugene Huang.

My thought process would be to design them to be used to evaluate applicants from the same school against each other to help determine that top 1-1.5% (I am strongly pro-reform but in favor of a 1% threshold while still considering underrepresented school status as part of the holistic evaluation).

You use a Likert scale, but you ask the teachers to evaluate each of the students based on how they fit in the context of their current class and, in some rare cases, in the history of their student population. And the metrics you ask them to evaluate on go well beyond the standard evaluation of content area knowledge and include things like "intellectual curiosity", "contributions to the classroom", "collaborative instincts", and the like.

And lastly, you afford each teacher the opportunity to write on an open-ended basis about a maximum of, say, three students - and with the ability to do so either positively or negatively (to spare TJ from, for example, a problematic parent or a student who is a strongly suspected cheater).

As I've said before, it is absurd to attempt to select the most worthy students from a school with no input from the classroom teachers at that school - and while we're at it, there should be an affordance for the Student Services department to write on behalf of a small group of students as well.

Jumping through so many goddam hoops all to avoid using a standardized tests like the rest of the fkn world.

Standardized tests can have limited value. I will submit that. The problem is that any time you use them, they take on an importance to the public (and sometimes to evaluators) that is way above their actual value because they're theoretically an objective measuring stick.

The problem is that the thing that they measure just isn't that critical. You learn absolutely nothing about what a child will contribute to a classroom dynamic from a standardized test, and the classroom dynamic is the defining feature of any quality educational experience. And it's especially critical in elite and advanced educational settings.

Failing to understand this is a failure to understand why the world's brightest minds move to America (or occasionally England) to go to college and don't move to "the rest of the fkn world".

"classroom dynamic" WTF are you talking about?

That such cotton headed bull. People don't come to american colleges because of the conversation. They come here because this is where the money is. You come to school here because it means you can get a job here. How do you think you get into Oxbridge and a brit? Do you have any idea how smart the kids at tsinghua and peking are, you need a test score at least 680 out of 750. That places you in the top 0.07% that's over 3 standard deviations from the mean, 7 people out of 10,000 get a score that high. You know who is going to the IIT schools in India?

We are not producing more patents than these countries.

We are not producing more science than these countries.

These countries are going to eat our lunch if we keep promoting the wrong kids to receive scarce educational resources.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish we hadn't gotten away from the teacher recommendations conversation here.

I think we have to get them back but that it has to be done intelligently and with an eye toward minimizing 1) the load on middle school teachers to write them and 2) the impact of experience in recommendation writing on the evaluation of the applicant. That is to say, you don't want to have a kid whose application is negatively impacted because their rec didn't come from Vern Williams or Eugene Huang.

My thought process would be to design them to be used to evaluate applicants from the same school against each other to help determine that top 1-1.5% (I am strongly pro-reform but in favor of a 1% threshold while still considering underrepresented school status as part of the holistic evaluation).

You use a Likert scale, but you ask the teachers to evaluate each of the students based on how they fit in the context of their current class and, in some rare cases, in the history of their student population. And the metrics you ask them to evaluate on go well beyond the standard evaluation of content area knowledge and include things like "intellectual curiosity", "contributions to the classroom", "collaborative instincts", and the like.

And lastly, you afford each teacher the opportunity to write on an open-ended basis about a maximum of, say, three students - and with the ability to do so either positively or negatively (to spare TJ from, for example, a problematic parent or a student who is a strongly suspected cheater).

As I've said before, it is absurd to attempt to select the most worthy students from a school with no input from the classroom teachers at that school - and while we're at it, there should be an affordance for the Student Services department to write on behalf of a small group of students as well.

Jumping through so many goddam hoops all to avoid using a standardized tests like the rest of the fkn world.

Standardized tests can have limited value. I will submit that. The problem is that any time you use them, they take on an importance to the public (and sometimes to evaluators) that is way above their actual value because they're theoretically an objective measuring stick.

The problem is that the thing that they measure just isn't that critical. You learn absolutely nothing about what a child will contribute to a classroom dynamic from a standardized test, and the classroom dynamic is the defining feature of any quality educational experience. And it's especially critical in elite and advanced educational settings.

Failing to understand this is a failure to understand why the world's brightest minds move to America (or occasionally England) to go to college and don't move to "the rest of the fkn world".

"classroom dynamic" WTF are you talking about?

That such cotton headed bull. People don't come to american colleges because of the conversation. They come here because this is where the money is. You come to school here because it means you can get a job here. How do you think you get into Oxbridge and a brit? Do you have any idea how smart the kids at tsinghua and peking are, you need a test score at least 680 out of 750. That places you in the top 0.07% that's over 3 standard deviations from the mean, 7 people out of 10,000 get a score that high. You know who is going to the IIT schools in India?

We are not producing more patents than these countries.

We are not producing more science than these countries.

These countries are going to eat our lunch if we keep promoting the wrong kids to receive scarce educational resources.

Yes. Indians who can’t leave India are going to the IIT schools in India. Same thing with the Chinese and the gaokao.

And India is still India, and the ones who can leave are becoming Americans and making America a better place while India continues to suffer.

Meanwhile, the Indians who are going to TJ (because you know, they’re still a cool 40-45 percent of the school) get a stronger education because they are learning STEM and research concepts against the background of a school environment where they actually spend time with Black, Hispanic, and poor kids. So when they go to college, they’ll be far more prepared to solve problems that actually need solving in the world instead of developing facial recognition software that can’t tell two Black people apart.

And with any luck, their levels of empathy will be developed enough through that exposure that they’re motivated less by accumulation of wealth and more by actual impact on society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I wish we hadn't gotten away from the teacher recommendations conversation here.

I think we have to get them back but that it has to be done intelligently and with an eye toward minimizing 1) the load on middle school teachers to write them and 2) the impact of experience in recommendation writing on the evaluation of the applicant. That is to say, you don't want to have a kid whose application is negatively impacted because their rec didn't come from Vern Williams or Eugene Huang.

My thought process would be to design them to be used to evaluate applicants from the same school against each other to help determine that top 1-1.5% (I am strongly pro-reform but in favor of a 1% threshold while still considering underrepresented school status as part of the holistic evaluation).

You use a Likert scale, but you ask the teachers to evaluate each of the students based on how they fit in the context of their current class and, in some rare cases, in the history of their student population. And the metrics you ask them to evaluate on go well beyond the standard evaluation of content area knowledge and include things like "intellectual curiosity", "contributions to the classroom", "collaborative instincts", and the like.

And lastly, you afford each teacher the opportunity to write on an open-ended basis about a maximum of, say, three students - and with the ability to do so either positively or negatively (to spare TJ from, for example, a problematic parent or a student who is a strongly suspected cheater).

As I've said before, it is absurd to attempt to select the most worthy students from a school with no input from the classroom teachers at that school - and while we're at it, there should be an affordance for the Student Services department to write on behalf of a small group of students as well.

Jumping through so many goddam hoops all to avoid using a standardized tests like the rest of the fkn world.

Standardized tests can have limited value. I will submit that. The problem is that any time you use them, they take on an importance to the public (and sometimes to evaluators) that is way above their actual value because they're theoretically an objective measuring stick.

The problem is that the thing that they measure just isn't that critical. You learn absolutely nothing about what a child will contribute to a classroom dynamic from a standardized test, and the classroom dynamic is the defining feature of any quality educational experience. And it's especially critical in elite and advanced educational settings.

Failing to understand this is a failure to understand why the world's brightest minds move to America (or occasionally England) to go to college and don't move to "the rest of the fkn world".

"classroom dynamic" WTF are you talking about?

That such cotton headed bull. People don't come to american colleges because of the conversation. They come here because this is where the money is. You come to school here because it means you can get a job here. How do you think you get into Oxbridge and a brit? Do you have any idea how smart the kids at tsinghua and peking are, you need a test score at least 680 out of 750. That places you in the top 0.07% that's over 3 standard deviations from the mean, 7 people out of 10,000 get a score that high. You know who is going to the IIT schools in India?

We are not producing more patents than these countries.

We are not producing more science than these countries.

These countries are going to eat our lunch if we keep promoting the wrong kids to receive scarce educational resources.

You’re telling me you can’t get a job coming from Tsinghua, Peking, and IIT?

That surprises me, but it doesn’t exactly speak highly of those institutions.