Race and TJ admissions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think another poster said this, but the history of racism in the US for the last 150 years is literally the history of facially neutral laws with racist intent and effect. You can't assess race blindness without understanding the circumstances.

And affirmative action is facially "racist" with racist intent and effect - just the opposite of previous. Affirmative action is under fire because it is not neutral -- but it's not supposed to be. The question is, why is that not okay?

Affirmative action is intended to counteract the effects of structural racism. While it's intended impact is racial in nature, when properly executed it's meant to be a temporary cure for racism.

People have to remember here that the end of the pipeline is STEM careers, not TJ. TJ is a part of that pipeline.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:if you understand statistics, its not that hard to come up with a classification that is proxy to the race with out actually saying the word 'race'. This is very similar to voter suppression efforts as you may not find anything explicit in the law, but you will find that there are certain restrictions that overwhelmingly affect specific groups such as minorities, students etc. (ex: reducing poling locations, voting hours, early voting/mail-in, only allow certain type of photo ids and/or making it a little harder to get photo ids just to name a few).

In case of TJ admission changes, its no secret that attending school base quotas (not base school) and all of the bonus points given to 'other' experience factors are specifically designed to suppress kids who go to AAP centers and do not qualify for reduced meals. From what I read, new admissions are based on 1200 points where 300 comes for entire GPA (all core courses), 300 from single math/science essay, 300 from portrait sheet and remaining 300 comes from other factors such as under represented schools, esol, reduced meals etc. So, the AAP center kids who do not qualify for reduced meals max out at 900 in the point based system and hope best that their points are enough to compete. This affect is even dramatic for schools like Carson, which is predominantly AAP (ie., 67% of school or about 500 kids from each grade are in AAP) and represents entire north western part of Fairfax county and Carson is treated just like any other non-AAP school in the county. Rocky Run and Longfellow are very similar. These schools do get spill over seats, but we can clearly see which specific schools were negatively affected. FCPS knows that this geographic area is popular for working/middle/upper-middle class parents who tend to focus on academics and asians do represent a good percent. Judge had enough proof to agree that changes were racially motivated.

Geography is literally race-blind. Anyone in the county is now free to move to any middle school they want if they believe they stand a better chance to get into TJ from a specific base school. Yes, right now, wealthy Asian families are concentrated in the northwest, so on the surface it seems that you can accuse FCPS of using zip code as a "proxy" for race at this moment in time. But again, now anyone in the county can choose to move anywhere they want for a potentially better chance at admission to TJ, so the proxy accusation falls apart.

This is really funny! This is literally the argument used to defend voter suppression. It is a well documented that people tend to segregate based on race, political leanings etc. and this is essentially the basis for voter suppression. If you don't believe, just look at the census data. TJ admission changes might not be as blatant as voter suppression, but did use similar tactics though to a lesser extent. Yes, people are free to move to anywhere in the county or even country, but every time there is a change in an admission process for one school that your kid may or may not get into, do you expect a mass migration of families from our geographical area to other? It is simply not a big enough reason to put up with hassle and expense for the most people. Honestly, will you move for this reason alone?

"Every time there is a change in an admission process" should never happen again. By finally using a process that distributes some portion of seats to TJ across the entire county that it serves, we've reached a fair solution. Perhaps the 1.5% could be toyed with, but there won't be "mass migrations" every few years. Starting now is a new era, and prospective parents and families can make new educated decisions where staying at a specific under-represented middle school could be a better decision than striving and sacrificing so much to get into Longfellow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

I think this is another reasoned take here. What you may learn as a function of this situation is how much of TJ's excellence is due to the environment and how much of it has simply been due to selecting the types of students who tend to perform well on historically valued metrics (like standardized exams).

I am the most vocal and experienced pro-reform poster on this board, and in the end, I am hoping that they come to something of a middle ground where there remains no standardized exam but perhaps where the allocated seats are lowered to 1% and teacher recommendations return to the overall evaluation.

While the updated process is a significant improvement, I think it represents a bit of an overcorrection and I'm hoping that the increase in students from underrepresented groups in this class results in a significant uptick in interest in TJ from the top-performing members of those groups.

quotas based on attending school isn't fair for center schools and why can't it be at pyramid level or based on base school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

TJ is still going to have better environment, offer courses that are unique to the school though it may not be as competitive as it once was. Since it still represents students with high enough GPA, it might look more like an average AP/Honors class (as an earlier poster said) at other high schools and not like school for genius kids as it once did. Having said, you might be able to find quite a few kids at base high schools who would have gotten into TJ under older process. So not base school as whole improves, but you might expect to see more competition and participation in tougher courses at base school along with more after school activities, which isn’t bad. I hope base schools add more courses and then TJ becomes irrelevant. However, for college admissions, base school is usually better. My kid is unlikely to get into TJ in the new process (a little weak on writing skills, though strong in math/sci and obsessed with tech), so I think he might stand out better in base school even if gets into TJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This issue is much more nuanced than simply low expectations for URMs. Imagine the great majority of Black and Hispanic kids in Fairfax County had similar (very high) socio-economic status equivalent to the average wealth of Langley, McLean, Chantilly families who are sending their kids to TJ. In that case, yes, giving URMs bonus points to get into TJ would be ridiculous.

However, the reality is that the majority of URMs are living in the lower-middle class or below poverty level. Why do you think all the "good" school districts have very few Hispanic and Black kids? Why do all the "bad" schools have so many Hispanic and Black kids? It always goes back to the inability to afford expensive housing, which leads to concentrated pockets of poverty in specific schools, which leads to bad outcomes in schools, which leads to what we have now.

Then why not tie favoritism to socio-economic class and not race?

They won't because many Asians are from middle or lower middle class and they do not want to give any preference to lower or lower middle class Asian students. Only to black or Hispanic students. Hypocrites.

This point is often touted, but I'd be very curious to see real data on wealth of Asians (those applying and getting into TJ). I'd bet they skew heavily to the upper-middle class and above. Which schools have highest concentrations of Asian students? Chantilly, Langley, Woodson, Centreville, McLean, Oakton. Those also happen to be the ones sending the majority of kids to TJ. Also I don't see a whole lot of low-income apartments or cheap homes in those boundaries. So where exactly are all the masses of poor, super hard-working Asians that are now being denied acceptance to TJ? Are they at Whitman MS? Poe MS?

I was a child of poor Asian immigrants. I attended a similar magnet high school in another state and am ivy educated. My parents worked blue collar jobs and we lived in the cheapest house in a top school district.

We live in McLean now. Yes, there are some UMC Asian Americans but there are also a lot of Asian kids living in the more modest homes in McLean. The modest homes are still not cheap but they are not rich kids, not at all. They just aren’t free lunch poor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What I have learned in many years of experience in Northern Virginia and TJ is this:

If you have a hard and fast selection criteria that you use and apply equally to all students - basically no matter what it is - the system will favor the parents who have the resources and motivation to fit their round kid into the square hole. And you’re going to get a huge number of kids who all have relatively the same profile because the parents figured out that “that’s the profile that works”.

No matter what racial balance that creates, it’s a negative outcome for TJ. Too many similar kids results in mental health issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What I have learned in many years of experience in Northern Virginia and TJ is this:

If you have a hard and fast selection criteria that you use and apply equally to all students - basically no matter what it is - the system will favor the parents who have the resources and motivation to fit their round kid into the square hole. And you’re going to get a huge number of kids who all have relatively the same profile because the parents figured out that “that’s the profile that works”.

No matter what racial balance that creates, it’s a negative outcome for TJ. Too many similar kids results in mental health issues.

It is funny how many people/parents are worried about supposed mental health issues of other people's kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

Wow, thanks for sharing the link. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize that how much it’s changed. My kid goes to Carson and we don’t qualify for any of the factors. He thought he did well and has high expectations, but I need to warn him not to keep hopes high as he will only really be competing for remaining 30% of available seats and face competition from everyone in the similar boat. We can’t simply assume it’s still at least half as good compared to previous years as a good percent of acceptance from Carson also likely benefited by experience factors. He is better of at base high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

That’s… not how statistical analysis works at all. At most you can claim for certain that 30% of offers went to students with experience factors. Now, the number may be slightly higher than that as you MAY have a few students who do NOT have multiple EFs. But given the history of who has attended TJ and who has not, it is entirely reasonable to assume, for instance, that most students who are Economically Disadvantaged also come from Underrepresented Schools.

A TJ RS1 student who sent in your analysis would flunk and be sent back to their base school.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

That’s… not how statistical analysis works at all. At most you can claim for certain that 30% of offers went to students with experience factors. Now, the number may be slightly higher than that as you MAY have a few students who do NOT have multiple EFs. But given the history of who has attended TJ and who has not, it is entirely reasonable to assume, for instance, that most students who are Economically Disadvantaged also come from Underrepresented Schools.

A TJ RS1 student who sent in your analysis would flunk and be sent back to their base school.

Do you have any hard number to back your claim that only 30% of students admitted have experience factors? Lack their of, we will take what’s published with some grain salt. Your interpretation is as good as anyone who picks a random number from air. Granted, it’s not 70%, but if say, it would be at least 50% went to these factors, can you prove me wrong with actual published data? Then I will agree. You don’t need to make derogatory statements that pp will flunk stats class - for ref, I have masters in engineering 😀