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TJ Discrimination Case
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Anonymous
No one has claimed that it does. The question is whether high scores indicate math talent or whether they're just indicative of a slightly above average kid. MIT, Caltech, and more elite schools say they indicate talent. PP math coach says that they are meh. |
Anonymous
Clearly you're confused. Of course they indicate talent.. at math contests! And that talent was slowly built by systematic training often spanning across multiple years. Kind of like, I don't know.... EXPERTISE gets built up in all other aspects of life, or how one trains in sports from barely being able to kick a ball to being in a respected league. |
Anonymous
I agree that talent for contest math differs from being a talented mathematician. It's more about memorizing types of problems which is a rote exercise that requires a lot of time and effort. This is all good and well but we're talking about children who have barely begun their journey, and offering them an opportunity to help nurture their talents. Kids who have had years of math coaching to do well on these contests early on will be fine anywhere. |
Anonymous
| And like everything else in this world, both innate ability and hard work are required to rise to the top. Being slightly above average, but working hard is not sufficient. |
Anonymous
in this case, being average but hard working suffices just look at all the kids that got into TJ from Curie half are run of the mill |
Anonymous
That is not the kids' purpose, but AoPS classes are geared towards AMC 8 and 10 problem solving, unlike other enrichment schools. |
Anonymous
It is all quite incredible that all these average kids have produced the top ranked US high school. What gives? 
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Anonymous
While there are repeated types of questions, usually when you get into the harder sections kids have to do more than recall previous problems. For example, a flat solar panel is resting above a regular hexagon with different length pillars. Three are height 12,10,9 in order. What is the height of the next pillar? |
Anonymous
These days the latter half of the AMC 10 test is very challenging, especially under the given time conditions. There are some annoying problems found in the first half, which can trip up kids (or suck up significant time, if they're not careful). The process of learning more math combined with practicing creative problem solving yields a lot of benefits in life, including finding many things at TJ relatively easy by comparison. Again it's not easy to acquire these problem solving skills; that's why the dedicated kids tend to spend a few years honing them starting from early middle school or even elementary. It's not really about IQ as others keep trying to claim. Yes, kids who are having a hard time in school, are not generally ahead with reading and learning, will have a much harder time do well in these higher level math contests, so of course having above average learning abilities will help. But it's nowhere near enough (if it was, there would be hundreds and hundreds of AIME qualifiers). I think the TJ application process should respect the kids that put in significant work and effort building up their problem solving skills, as their skills will easily transfer over to TJ and STEM in general. This is why people are skeptical of many other disadvantaged kids applying to TJ. If they're struggling at all in the classroom, how will they cope with TJ classes? It's not obvious that they will just magically adapt (some will, but likely more will not, and will end up struggling). Just because some of these kids have 'innate IQ' that is high will not help if they are academically behind and do not have the time to get up to speed. In this sense, the road to TJ has become an arms race (sadly), which makes it very difficult for some kids who have never been exposed to serious academics in middle school to be able to handle TJ without a lot of assistance. If we want to support these kids (assuming they somehow decided they really want to go to TJ late in middle school while realizing they're not prepared), then we should enroll these kids in programs designed to get them ready and up to speed by the beginning of 7th grade. Someone will have to pay for this and it's clear that schools will not support it. |
Anonymous
Rarely do any of these kids do well on any new problem. They seem to only excel at ones they've seen before. This isn't my opinion. It's a matter of fact to anyone familiar with these contests. |
Anonymous
Yes that is true with seemingly "novel" problems such as the one above, but there are definitely kids who can and do solve them. But that is the point, the AMC 10 is designed to have a very high ceiling, each year there are "novel" looking questions that require kids to apply/connect what they know in a new way. There are definitely kids who can do this, in particular the ones who are very strong at problem solving, usually the ones who practice doing difficult problems and have lots of experience. Yes, one can't expect the average math contest kid to likely solve the above problem, but they can definitely solve some of the other ones on the test. Most kids will logically excel at what they've seen/practiced in the past, so of course the ones who have worked/practiced much more can solve more difficult problems. |
Anonymous
I agree with a lot of what you're saying but making TJ a reward for kids who have had the privilege of honing these skills on their parent's dime seems unfair for a public school program that should be open to all kids. I agree these kids would do better at TJ but maybe there's a bigger picture and providing opportunities to gifted students who may not be so lucky is lifechanging. |
Anonymous
Sure, but applying to TJ will never be perfectly fair, right? Kids (parents?) who are dead set on TJ from a very early age and assuming their kids cooperate, will always have an unfair advantage. The application process should be optimized to make it as fair as possible for all types of kids, that is optimized for an overall level of fairness. So what does this mean? Some kids from every school should be given a chance (and I assume this is the reason the 1.5% was set up). It should be recognized that kids who are underrepresented or not high income will be very disadvantaged in enrichment and learning opportunities (this is not always true, but mostly true), so the application process should figure out how to help them be successful (in both applying and thriving if they get in). Some ways would be to get the word out about TJ and encourage them to excel academically from a younger age (this is very hard to do, and frankly I'm not seeing schools will ever do this; they're not going to prioritize a small subset of kids at each school for optimizing for TJ as they have bigger problems to deal with). Other ways would be to give "points" in the application process to make up for the unfairness -- here I believe this is being done under the new system. Another thing is to remove obstacles -- this one is probably the most contentious as seen on these threads because people believe that removing certain things will 'dilute' or otherwise make it unable to compare applicants. I think there are arguments for and against (teacher recs in my opinion are telling and important and teachers generally give honest feedback, rich kids cannot really game these). Removing the test, (the most contentious change) makes it much easier for kids who don't have the same problem solving skills to at least be considered in the final round now. Is this a good thing? Perhaps, but in my view especially without recommendations, will almost certainly result in kids who are false positives... they'll get in and struggle very hard without being able to adapt. I agree of course that the old test was inadequate because it did not have a super high ceiling as some of the math contests such as the AMC 10+ do. But the old test simply could have been weighted much less, just like colleges weight the SAT. Just the use the quant test as a low bar filter; if the score is high great (it could mean kid is very strong at problem solving, or they prepped, or a combination of both, but without more info it doesn't necessarily suggest something special about the kids), but if the score is low, that could be a red flag that kids may not be able to handle the environment at TJ, so the rest of the application should be more carefully scrutinized. This is what colleges do these days; their main concern is to not only get a diverse class, but also to make sure kids can thrive and graduate (and hopefully give back at some point). |
Anonymous
But we're only talking about 16 or so kids in the entire TJ catchment area. It's not like making TJ a reward for those kids would prevent less fortunate kids from being admitted, especially since the 1.5% quota would still be in place. |
Anonymous
Yes that is true with seemingly "novel" problems such as the one above, but there are definitely kids who can and do solve them. But that is the point, the AMC 10 is designed to have a very high ceiling, each year there are "novel" looking questions that require kids to apply/connect what they know in a new way. There are definitely kids who can do this, in particular the ones who are very strong at problem solving, usually the ones who practice doing difficult problems and have lots of experience. Yes, one can't expect the average math contest kid to likely solve the above problem, but they can definitely solve some of the other ones on the test. Most kids will logically excel at what they've seen/practiced in the past, so of course the ones who have worked/practiced much more can solve more difficult problems. State MathCounts last year did not do a good job with new questions. Sprint 29 & 30 had been seen before with 30 available on the SAAB practice site. 23-25 were all practiced by my school's team, it was just a matter of how many kids could get that far. |