I’m so glad TJ is more inclusive!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile, China keeps cranking out engineers and isn’t lowering the bar for admission.


But, China doesn't have a diversity issue. Everyone is Asian.

'

I can't believe American's are still this ignorant. This is why the (very real) race problem in America is so unnuanced though. There are dozens of ethnicities in China, not to mention China has extreme classism( Mainland problem), racism ( Xihguer problem), bigotry ( towards everyone non-Chinese), elitism ( that brand loving stereotype didn't pop out of the void), all of which lend themselves to the same disparities that we in the States view as indicative of moral, ethical, and systemic corruption. Just because it doesn't come from people not liking the color of someone's skin, doesn't mean that people in MANY other countries have do not experience the exact same results. This is coming from a person who isn't a fan of China or the culture really. But I at least have the RUDIMENTARY knowledge to understand that culturally it's not a monolith.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More inclusive, less prestigious. That’s the choice they made.

It's possible this may be the case in the short term, but in the long term, the investment should pay off in the form of greater interest from a wider pool of applicants. It doesn't speak highly of TJ's real prestige that significantly fewer students applied for the Class of, say, 2024 than the Class of 2004. Most elite academic schools look for their application numbers to increase so that their school becomes MORE selective - not less. It's amusing to me that folks on this board feel like TJ is super-prestigious when entire segments of the population had no interest in applying for such a long time.

When you finally start seeing TJ's application numbers grow with the population of its catchment areas, you'll know that the school is becoming more prestigious.

A lot of people buy lottery tickets, too, but that doesn't mean the people with the winning ticket are highly respected.

And is it really a good thing to encourage the kids who might be the role models at a Justice or Lewis to apply to TJ instead?

The lottery analogy is irrelevant as there is no lottery aspect to the adopted process that was used to put together the Class of 2025. The obviously more relevant analogy would be to elite schools that attract a high number of applications.

And yes, of course it's a good thing, because once they get to and succeed at TJ they will be the role models for the kids at Whitman and Key and Poe and Glasgow and wherever. For all that the status-quo clowns pretend to care about the pipeline and building from the ground up, having role models to look up to is one of the best ways to achieve that goal.

It technically may not be a lottery, but there is a randomness introduced by the fact that less qualified kids will now be admitted to TJ because they happen to live in areas that haven't sent many kids to TJ in the past.

And the importance of role models arguably is much more important in a high school environment than in a middle school environment.

But maybe that's OK. This has always been mostly about making TJ alumni feel better about attending a school that had gotten "too Asian" for their friend groups, and satisfying some School Board members and their cronies that they were getting their fair share of the TJ pork. Calling the school environment "toxic" and demonizing the Asian kids who were working harder was a small price to pay.

Pretty sure you filled the status quo bingo card there. Brutal.

More important in a high school environment than a middle school environment. Proves you know nothing about child development.

When you're in a hole, stop digging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't think a high school that creates an atmosphere that pressures families into spending a ton of time and money on prep and classes outside of school (so is it really the school anyway?) and eventually causes many to submit to cheating is "best" anything.

Maybe they can start living up the reputation now.

Then the top universities aren't top anything, given all the SAT prep around here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More inclusive, less prestigious. That’s the choice they made.

More inclusive makes it more prestigious. When schools are more inclusive they rank much higher. Bet the matriculation looks better in about 5 years than it has in the recent years.

You can have the best STEM high school in the country or you can impose quotas to make it “look more like Fairfax County”, but you can’t have both. FCPS chose the latter.

I think the college acceptances will improve, since the top colleges are eager to give seats to high performing blacks and Hispanics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More inclusive, less prestigious. That’s the choice they made.

More inclusive makes it more prestigious. When schools are more inclusive they rank much higher. Bet the matriculation looks better in about 5 years than it has in the recent years.

You can have the best STEM high school in the country or you can impose quotas to make it “look more like Fairfax County”, but you can’t have both. FCPS chose the latter.

it wasn’t done to make it look more like Fairfax, it was done to be more diverse. All the best schools want more diversity, even the private ones. Even the best colleges want diversity.

Yes, but no matter the euphemisms or how you want to reconcile it, cancelling the very metrics that measure student ability to handle challenging academics seems counterintuitive. Why do we play the emperor has no clothes with reality? If you can’t read someone, how do you know what they can do? You eventually find out when the answer is obvious, or you lower the academic rigor out of “fairness”.

Meanwhile, China keeps cranking out engineers and isn’t lowering the bar for admission.

Lying flat in China...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/china-lying-flat-stress/2021/06/04/cef36902-c42f-11eb-89a4-b7ae22aa193e_story.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More inclusive, less prestigious. That’s the choice they made.

More inclusive makes it more prestigious. When schools are more inclusive they rank much higher. Bet the matriculation looks better in about 5 years than it has in the recent years.

You can have the best STEM high school in the country or you can impose quotas to make it “look more like Fairfax County”, but you can’t have both. FCPS chose the latter.

it wasn’t done to make it look more like Fairfax, it was done to be more diverse. All the best schools want more diversity, even the private ones. Even the best colleges want diversity.

Yes, but no matter the euphemisms or how you want to reconcile it, cancelling the very metrics that measure student ability to handle challenging academics seems counterintuitive. Why do we play the emperor has no clothes with reality? If you can’t read someone, how do you know what they can do? You eventually find out when the answer is obvious, or you lower the academic rigor out of “fairness”.

Meanwhile, China keeps cranking out engineers and isn’t lowering the bar for admission.

because there are no cheating scandals in China? Luckily for the US, their government is getting increasingly involved in their stock markets and banking sector.

Interesting that PP brings up China because they're having serious problems with innovation and technology development because guess what?

All their 'engineers' are worker drones instead of innovators. You can hire a person to do 9-5 coding from anywhere. What you can't hire is leadership and innovation that formulates companies like Uber, Apple, Tesla, Facebook.

China is great at copying homework and that's it.

Today, though, many believe that the West is home to creative business thinkers and innovators, and that China is largely a land of rule-bound rote learners—a place where R&D is diligently pursued but breakthroughs are rare.

https://hbr.org/2014/03/why-china-cant-innovate

[Anonymous]

TJ becoming more "inclusive" with the recent changes just INCREASES inequality in Fairfax County. Which schools do you think benefit the most from TJ being more inclusive? That's right, Langley, McLean, Oakton and Madison...where even more of the top kids who are "near misses" under the new system are going to go. And the worst schools are going to lose even more kids to TJ. The gulf between the good and bad schools is just going to grow more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meanwhile, China keeps cranking out engineers and isn’t lowering the bar for admission.


But, China doesn't have a diversity issue. Everyone is Asian.

'

I can't believe American's are still this ignorant. This is why the (very real) race problem in America is so unnuanced though. There are dozens of ethnicities in China, not to mention China has extreme classism( Mainland problem), racism ( Xihguer problem), bigotry ( towards everyone non-Chinese), elitism ( that brand loving stereotype didn't pop out of the void), all of which lend themselves to the same disparities that we in the States view as indicative of moral, ethical, and systemic corruption. Just because it doesn't come from people not liking the color of someone's skin, doesn't mean that people in MANY other countries have do not experience the exact same results. This is coming from a person who isn't a fan of China or the culture really. But I at least have the RUDIMENTARY knowledge to understand that culturally it's not a monolith.

Yep, and historically the "ruling" ethnicity has treated other groups badly. Note that the "ruling" ethnicity has changed, too; it wasn't always Han Chinese. For example, the last Dynasty was Manchurian so it was difficult for non-Manchus to reach the top class/jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More inclusive, less prestigious. That’s the choice they made.

It's possible this may be the case in the short term, but in the long term, the investment should pay off in the form of greater interest from a wider pool of applicants. It doesn't speak highly of TJ's real prestige that significantly fewer students applied for the Class of, say, 2024 than the Class of 2004. Most elite academic schools look for their application numbers to increase so that their school becomes MORE selective - not less. It's amusing to me that folks on this board feel like TJ is super-prestigious when entire segments of the population had no interest in applying for such a long time.

When you finally start seeing TJ's application numbers grow with the population of its catchment areas, you'll know that the school is becoming more prestigious.

A lot of people buy lottery tickets, too, but that doesn't mean the people with the winning ticket are highly respected.

And is it really a good thing to encourage the kids who might be the role models at a Justice or Lewis to apply to TJ instead?

The lottery analogy is irrelevant as there is no lottery aspect to the adopted process that was used to put together the Class of 2025. The obviously more relevant analogy would be to elite schools that attract a high number of applications.

And yes, of course it's a good thing, because once they get to and succeed at TJ they will be the role models for the kids at Whitman and Key and Poe and Glasgow and wherever. For all that the status-quo clowns pretend to care about the pipeline and building from the ground up, having role models to look up to is one of the best ways to achieve that goal.

It technically may not be a lottery, but there is a randomness introduced by the fact that less qualified kids will now be admitted to TJ because they happen to live in areas that haven't sent many kids to TJ in the past.

And the importance of role models arguably is much more important in a high school environment than in a middle school environment.

But maybe that's OK. This has always been mostly about making TJ alumni feel better about attending a school that had gotten "too Asian" for their friend groups, and satisfying some School Board members and their cronies that they were getting their fair share of the TJ pork. Calling the school environment "toxic" and demonizing the Asian kids who were working harder was a small price to pay.

Pretty sure you filled the status quo bingo card there. Brutal.

More important in a high school environment than a middle school environment. Proves you know nothing about child development.

When you're in a hole, stop digging.

When TJ did so little to serve your white male ego, that you feel like it owes it to you to serve as a vessel for your jealousy-infused policies, you should probably think about toning down the wording of your criticism of others.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:TJ becoming more "inclusive" with the recent changes just INCREASES inequality in Fairfax County. Which schools do you think benefit the most from TJ being more inclusive? That's right, Langley, McLean, Oakton and Madison...where even more of the top kids who are "near misses" under the new system are going to go. And the worst schools are going to lose even more kids to TJ. The gulf between the good and bad schools is just going to grow more.

Why would you keep great students in the worst schools? Even if what you say is true, these students shouldn't have to sacrifice the chance at a better education to stay at underperforming schools. The "near misses" you mention will do just fine at Langley, McLean and Oakton.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More inclusive, less prestigious. That’s the choice they made.

It's possible this may be the case in the short term, but in the long term, the investment should pay off in the form of greater interest from a wider pool of applicants. It doesn't speak highly of TJ's real prestige that significantly fewer students applied for the Class of, say, 2024 than the Class of 2004. Most elite academic schools look for their application numbers to increase so that their school becomes MORE selective - not less. It's amusing to me that folks on this board feel like TJ is super-prestigious when entire segments of the population had no interest in applying for such a long time.

When you finally start seeing TJ's application numbers grow with the population of its catchment areas, you'll know that the school is becoming more prestigious.

A lot of people buy lottery tickets, too, but that doesn't mean the people with the winning ticket are highly respected.

And is it really a good thing to encourage the kids who might be the role models at a Justice or Lewis to apply to TJ instead?

The lottery analogy is irrelevant as there is no lottery aspect to the adopted process that was used to put together the Class of 2025. The obviously more relevant analogy would be to elite schools that attract a high number of applications.

And yes, of course it's a good thing, because once they get to and succeed at TJ they will be the role models for the kids at Whitman and Key and Poe and Glasgow and wherever. For all that the status-quo clowns pretend to care about the pipeline and building from the ground up, having role models to look up to is one of the best ways to achieve that goal.

It technically may not be a lottery, but there is a randomness introduced by the fact that less qualified kids will now be admitted to TJ because they happen to live in areas that haven't sent many kids to TJ in the past.

And the importance of role models arguably is much more important in a high school environment than in a middle school environment.

But maybe that's OK. This has always been mostly about making TJ alumni feel better about attending a school that had gotten "too Asian" for their friend groups, and satisfying some School Board members and their cronies that they were getting their fair share of the TJ pork. Calling the school environment "toxic" and demonizing the Asian kids who were working harder was a small price to pay.

Why do you think they are less qualified? FCPS thinks they are more qualified.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More inclusive, less prestigious. That’s the choice they made.

It's possible this may be the case in the short term, but in the long term, the investment should pay off in the form of greater interest from a wider pool of applicants. It doesn't speak highly of TJ's real prestige that significantly fewer students applied for the Class of, say, 2024 than the Class of 2004. Most elite academic schools look for their application numbers to increase so that their school becomes MORE selective - not less. It's amusing to me that folks on this board feel like TJ is super-prestigious when entire segments of the population had no interest in applying for such a long time.

When you finally start seeing TJ's application numbers grow with the population of its catchment areas, you'll know that the school is becoming more prestigious.

A lot of people buy lottery tickets, too, but that doesn't mean the people with the winning ticket are highly respected.

And is it really a good thing to encourage the kids who might be the role models at a Justice or Lewis to apply to TJ instead?

The lottery analogy is irrelevant as there is no lottery aspect to the adopted process that was used to put together the Class of 2025. The obviously more relevant analogy would be to elite schools that attract a high number of applications.

And yes, of course it's a good thing, because once they get to and succeed at TJ they will be the role models for the kids at Whitman and Key and Poe and Glasgow and wherever. For all that the status-quo clowns pretend to care about the pipeline and building from the ground up, having role models to look up to is one of the best ways to achieve that goal.

It technically may not be a lottery, but there is a randomness introduced by the fact that less qualified kids will now be admitted to TJ because they happen to live in areas that haven't sent many kids to TJ in the past.

And the importance of role models arguably is much more important in a high school environment than in a middle school environment.

But maybe that's OK. This has always been mostly about making TJ alumni feel better about attending a school that had gotten "too Asian" for their friend groups, and satisfying some School Board members and their cronies that they were getting their fair share of the TJ pork. Calling the school environment "toxic" and demonizing the Asian kids who were working harder was a small price to pay.

Pretty sure you filled the status quo bingo card there. Brutal.

More important in a high school environment than a middle school environment. Proves you know nothing about child development.

When you're in a hole, stop digging.

When TJ did so little to serve your white male ego, that you feel like it owes it to you to serve as a vessel for your jealousy-infused policies, you should probably think about toning down the wording of your criticism of others.

1) You have no information about my race or gender

2) I'm not a policy-maker

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Why do you think they are less qualified? FCPS thinks they are more qualified.

FCPS doesn't think they are more qualified or less qualified. The only thing that FCPS cared about is that the demographics of TJ looked problematic. So, they took steps to change the demographics. The sticky part of that it that it's illegal to make the changes specifically for the purpose of reducing Asians and increasing the representation from other races. But, since there were so very few URMs and/or poor kids getting admitted, one could make the argument that the entire process, including the K-8 pipeline, was both racist and classist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Why do you think they are less qualified? FCPS thinks they are more qualified.

FCPS doesn't think they are more qualified or less qualified. The only thing that FCPS cared about is that the demographics of TJ looked problematic. So, they took steps to change the demographics. The sticky part of that it that it's illegal to make the changes specifically for the purpose of reducing Asians and increasing the representation from other races. But, since there were so very few URMs and/or poor kids getting admitted, one could make the argument that the entire process, including the K-8 pipeline, was both racist and classist.

Do *you* think the demographics at TJ were an issue before?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Why do you think they are less qualified? FCPS thinks they are more qualified.

FCPS doesn't think they are more qualified or less qualified. The only thing that FCPS cared about is that the demographics of TJ looked problematic. So, they took steps to change the demographics. The sticky part of that it that it's illegal to make the changes specifically for the purpose of reducing Asians and increasing the representation from other races. But, since there were so very few URMs and/or poor kids getting admitted, one could make the argument that the entire process, including the K-8 pipeline, was both racist and classist.

Do *you* think the demographics at TJ were an issue before?

DP. The demographics of the school itself are one thing. For me the far greater problem was the demographics of the applicant pool, which has had the largest historical impact on the demographics of the school. It's something of a chicken-and-egg problem, to be sure, but interest in TJ from non-Asian demographics plummeted in the time period between 2010-2020, and that's set against the backdrop of an exploding population base in the catchment areas.

In the year 2000 there were about 3,000 applicants for 400 seats. In 2020 there were about 2,500 applicants for 480 seats. Whatever it was that was making TJ less attractive and interesting to a broad portion of the population, whether it's the evolving racial demographic, transportation problems, a view that the school has become too STEM-oriented at the expense of a complete education, lack of non-STEM extracurricular options, an amount of workload that goes above and beyond what the rigor of the school demands, a feeling that enormous investments of time and money were required in order to keep up with the prep element, the $100 application fee or the two three-hour Saturdays previously needed for testing..... it needed a solution.

Based on the way the applicant numbers exploded for the Class of 2025, with significant increases among ALL demos and with an average applicant GPA remaining higher than 3.9, I would submit that the new admissions process has been successful in making the school more attractive for a broader coalition of applicants. In the long run, this should result in positive outcomes down the pipeline as students begin to see TJ as a goal that is worth striving for, and as they say, "a rising tide lifts all boats".

I will say two things - 1) they need to bring teacher recs back and 2) I feel for the families who invested so much in the previous application process only to have the rules changed on them at the last minute, but it was clear to dispassionate observers that something needed to be done and COVID provided a reality in which mandatory mass in-person testing simply wasn't feasible anyway.