Kill dei |
Or maybe he didn’t say that but it fits into PP’s narrative. |
Replacing the principal midyear seems to be a step in that direction. The drop in rankings may have led to the realization that there is no substitute for merit in advanced academics. |
If you don't have a merit based selection process, the principal can only do so much. |
I don't think teacher quality is the problem. I'm sure there are a few that aren't great but that is not the bottleneck. In fact, I think the over-zealous teachers are more of a problem. You should have written exams in PE. You shouldn't have so many of the smartest kids in the county opt out of higher level Spanish because the Spanish teachers think Spanish should be harder than calculus. |
I don't know if there is a recording available but he said his primary goal is the success of all the students. He spent a time taking about college admissions. He spent time taking about the curriculum. He spent time talking about the after school teams clubs and activities. He didn't spend a lot of time talking about diversity or virtue signaling. So it was more in his focus and what he didn't say. |
Or maybe we finally have a principal that puts excellence and academic success ahead of a well curated palette of skin colors in the student population |
completely agree. My kid has had 3-4 teachers over the past 4 years who just read off some basic slides that you could get in any FCPS high school. But the questions on the exams are super hard and at a completely different level. |
This is a feature not a bug. It is what makes TJ unique. |
Not quite - for the same course - other section teachers cover the materials in depth and at the level of what is in the exam.
Its nothing to be proud of or consider to be part of what it means to be at TJ. If the principal is really good - he will do some analysis and see that class averages for the same course, and same cohort will vary significantly. And that speaks to teacher quality/ability. |
Curious what his philosophy on college applications is. |
College admissions are driven by GPA and SAT. Nothing new he can say here. Smart parents will send their kids to Base school as the GPA there will be much higher - for the same course such as AP Calc B/C and Physics E&M |
Under previous principal, DEI influenced teacher recruitment as well |
Kid really likes their AP Physics teacher - TJ and MIT grad |
You mean no substitute for test buying? |