The school board has decided that broader access is more important than identifying a class of the absolute strongest/most gifted students (even assuming that would be possible). If they can do it in a legal (non-racially discriminatory way), will you accept that decision? If they win the court case, will you let it go? If they make whatever change the court requires to make it non-racially discriminatory will you accept that? For example, if all they did was require seats be set aside for each middle school and those seats be filled without considering the race or gender of the students, would you be OK with that? |
No, because it's contrary to the mission of VA Governor's Schools. Their mission is to identify the strongest/most gifted students whose needs can't be met at their local school. FCPS can open its own magnet STEM school, but it can't rewrite the mission of a Governor's School. |
whether I accept or not, doesn't matter, the question is whether the community wants TJ as a school for the most gifted. You do realize that the academic quality of a school is directly related to its selection process, don't you? TJ is TJ because of the quality of the cohort. MIT is MIT because of the quality of the cohort. Yeah. the curriculum and instructors are important but it starts with the cohort. I would say 75% of the succes is due to quality of cohort. |
Every single well-regarded American university selects its cohort with an eye toward diversity. Most of them do so explicitly with respect to geographic diversity. Yes, even MIT and Caltech. |
No, because it's contrary to the mission of VA Governor's Schools. Their mission is to identify the strongest/most gifted students whose needs can't be met at their local school. FCPS can open its own magnet STEM school, but it can't rewrite the mission of a Governor's School. +1. Diversity is a fine goal to strive for and we can debate the best way to do so, but Governor's Schools have a clear charter which the current TJ admissions policy is at odds with. I'm not sure how they got away with any of this to begin with, but it probably won't be long befe the state stops permitting FCPS to be the sole administrator of TJ. |
You guys can't keep your squabble out of a thread that has nothing to do with your squabble. Can you please take your "What TJ should be" and "How can we make TJ what we want again" debate back to one of the other threads and leave this one for the students to answer questions. There are at least 6 other threads with the same discussion on the main page. |
+1. Diversity is a fine goal to strive for and we can debate the best way to do so, but Governor's Schools have a clear charter which the current TJ admissions policy is at odds with. I'm not sure how they got away with any of this to begin with, but it probably won't be long befe the state stops permitting FCPS to be the sole administrator of TJ. It's not at odds at all. The Governor's School charter simply requires them to select students who are sufficiently advanced, not the most advanced. |
Thank you PP! Just now getting to lunch and have some free time if anyone wants to ask something that I can help with. |
Thank you for offering to answer questions during your lunch! Can you talk a bit about your peer group, friendships, etc.? Are students supportive of each other or does competition win out? Is there good school spirit? Would love to hear whatever you can share about the social aspects of the school. |
School spirit is AMAZING!!! I still have a lot of base school friends and they're all jealous of TJ homecoming. The whole week is filled with spirit and friendly competitions among the classes, and everyone always cheers for the freshmen to do well. There are definitely pockets of the school that are really competitive, but I've been surprised at how easy it's been to block that stuff out. All of the clubs in 8th period allow you to find your people and it makes it easy to develop friendships and connect with older students like myself who can help you get through the tough times. The toughest times of year as far as the toxic stuff goes is probably college app season. I'm not looking forward to that because a lot of my senior friends struggled with not getting in where they wanted to and having to see others get in. But the whole "it's easier to get in from your base school" is overblown, I think. But there are a ton of groups that are really supportive of one another and I think there's more awareness of mental health stuff because of programs like Challenge Success. I wish more people paid attention to that program and stopped comparing themselves to one another. |
Exactly. Congrats to all of the WELL-QUALIFIED kids who will be joining TJ in the fall. |
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Thank you! I appreciate your perspective. If TJ is full of kids like you, it's sure to be a great experience. |
+1000 |
That's exactly what the new selection criteria does! It evaluates all students relative to their home school. They do not know anyone's race. Seems perfect to me. |