Tj prep companies $$$ wow!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's all wishful interpretation. The material Insight chose to include in quant-q is based on generic knowledge, and that's what the prep books available on Amazon contain. It is ridiculous to suggest it is any different from sat, act, etc, or any workbook, textbook for that matter. If Insight believed the amazon prep books had their proprietary information, those wouldn't be allowed to be sold by Amazon for decades for $19.95.

Quant-Q is absolutely different than SAT, ACT, etc. It’s not based on general knowledge - it tests critical thinking skills.

The sections are:
Pattern Recognition
Probability Combinatorics
Out-of-the-Box Algebra
Geometry and Optimization

If you have seen previous Quant-Q problems then it will not accurately measure “out of the box algebra”.

It’s more like the WISC test. Prior exposure invalidates results. Just because Amazon sells WISC prep books doesn’t mean it’s ok.

Maybe so, but it also means that the "wealth hurdle" is $20.

[Anonymous]

Good heavens, the back and forth on this is exhausting.

The SAT and ACT are content-knowledge exams. They are designed to test whether or not you know how to solve the problems that are presented to you. The problems are in most cases reasonably advanced and so it is an exam that largely tests your level of advancement in certain content areas.

The Quant-Q is NOT a content-knowledge exam. It is a problem-solving exam. I've said this approximately a thousand times on this forum, but its entire purpose is to present students with problems of types that they're unlikely to have seen before and evaluate their ability to develop a solution on the fly.

The questions are fairly challenging if you have never seen the problem types before. But if someone has shown them to you previously, they are staggeringly easy in most cases. Allowing students to prepare for an exam like the Quant-Q not only makes it worthless, it makes it obscurative to the admissions process and invites admitting the WRONG kids. So why use an exam like this?

Native problem-solving ability tracks well with innovation, which is the broad purpose of STEM disciplines. There is obviously some limited value in bringing in kids who are advanced in STEM but whose ceilings are limited to doing things other people have already done - but there is obviously much greater value in sending kids to TJ who have the ability to develop solutions to problems on their own.

The Quant-Q is perfect for sussing out that ability, and it was destroyed in its use for TJ by programs like Curie, which taught kids how to do the types of problems that are found on the exam. There's probably not a good solution to this problem, because no matter what type of exam you use, you're going to engage with the multi-million dollar industry for getting kids into TJ.

Any solution has to be significantly opaque and must prioritize actively seeking kids who have different goals, aims, priorities, and backgrounds so as to limit the impact of parent investment in the process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC attends Curie, and we moved from Kumon for cost reasons. For multiple subjects, Curie is much cheaper than Kumon. Curie as year long grade enrichment for advanced math, english, science and summer courses, has been working well.

But not sure how effective it is to enroll just at the tail end in one month tj essay prep course. Think of this in terms of - how effective would Kumon be if student enrolled for just a month before final exam. Mastering math takes years, not a month or two.

There is a difference between year long enrichment and test prep. Test prep is about 10 hours of instruction on testing format, time management, things like process of elimination and how to guess, and practice exams. Some commenters are basically saying that practice exams are cheating.
If you are learning substantive material that might be useful on a mathcounts competition, etc. then this is just studying.

What do practice exams mean? periodic assessments? At Curie, there are upfront placement tests and periodic assessments along the way, and before moving to the next level, similar to Kumon. The overall curriculum is fast paced and high rigor, so these checkpoint assessments help in deciding if student wants to continue to dropout. Considerable number dropout.

Practice exams in the test prep context means taking a previously administered test from a few years ago.

This whole curie thing comes from a bunch of people who are just looking for reasons to justify their racism by saying that the reason they changed the admissions process was to combat the rampant cheating coming out of curie. They accuse curie of selling TJ test answers and allowing their students to effectively buy their way into tj. It's stupid and racist. if you watched the hearings surrounding the change in admissions process, there was a lot of ugly racism on display against all asians but particulary against the indians because they are the newcomers.

Too bad it all actually happened and has been proven here over and over.

The only part that actually happened was the racism during the hearings and the racism driving the changes to the admissions process.

The admissions changes were driven by a desire for racial balancing not to counteract cheating.
BTW, the cheating at question here is that some kids shared their recollection about the test questions and format with curie after the test.

People are guessing that this happened. What is known (at least some have said they saw it) is that Curie gave had a bank of qiuestions that might be asked and kids said they saw exact questions.

But many more have said it's a made-up story! A fabricated story concocted to hurt Curie's reputition, but paradoxically sends more business towards them

No, it's not a made-up story. It's real.
Curie posted names of students but had to remove them when the scandal came out.

It's been covered here over and over. There were links to multiple news sources just a few weeks ago and god knows how many first-hand accounts.

other than fake posts on this forum and facebook tj vents, what news sources?

It was covered extensively here the other week in a recent thread. There were a half-dozen links there. You're going to have to do your own leg work this time, but I imagine you already know all this and just like to keep asking.

It wasn't exactly a scandal but some students shared what they saw at the test and this gave people an idea of the test format and question type.

There are claims that the test company used the same question year after year, effectively giving some kids advance knowledge of the test questions.
This is effectively malpractice in the testing world and seems hard to believe.
The format of the test is well known enough that you can buy books on amazon about the test.
https://www.amazon.com/Quant-Test-Prep-Book-Practice/dp/109286427X

If you think people shouldn't be allowed to study for a test then that is a different conversation.

so the bogus claim is a student shared questions from a test prep book widely available on amazon?

I think the claim is that some of the test questions given in year two were identical to test questions given in year one, so if a tutor got the test questions from last year's students, then this year's students walk into the test having already seen some of the questions before. If that in fact happened then the testing company is guilty of testing malpractice and that would have been newsworthy. But yeah, the test question format and type are publicly known.

It's mostly just racist envy. People trying to explain away the success of a minority so the world makes more sense to them. In a world of structural racism and white supremacy, somehow the children of brown skinned indian immigrants are the ones coming out on top. You have to make it make sense, so you pretend that they were all born rich and this is all wealth advantage. That plus the cheating.

Jim crow whites used to do something similar with blacks and jews so their white supremacist worldview made sense.

These days it is racism from the left trying to make their DEI/CRT worldview make sense.

The questions were similar, which invalidates the results given that they are trying to evaluate the critical thinking skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's all wishful interpretation. The material Insight chose to include in quant-q is based on generic knowledge, and that's what the prep books available on Amazon contain. It is ridiculous to suggest it is any different from sat, act, etc, or any workbook, textbook for that matter. If Insight believed the amazon prep books had their proprietary information, those wouldn't be allowed to be sold by Amazon for decades for $19.95.

Quant-Q is absolutely different than SAT, ACT, etc. It’s not based on general knowledge - it tests critical thinking skills.

The sections are:
Pattern Recognition
Probability Combinatorics
Out-of-the-Box Algebra
Geometry and Optimization

If you have seen previous Quant-Q problems then it will not accurately measure “out of the box algebra”.

It’s more like the WISC test. Prior exposure invalidates results. Just because Amazon sells WISC prep books doesn’t mean it’s ok.

Maybe so, but it also means that the "wealth hurdle" is $20.

Were those books sharing test questions from prior years?

Paying $$$$ to have access to previous test questions on an NDA-protected test provides an unfair advantage to wealthy kids in admissions for a public school program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Good heavens, the back and forth on this is exhausting.

The SAT and ACT are content-knowledge exams. They are designed to test whether or not you know how to solve the problems that are presented to you. The problems are in most cases reasonably advanced and so it is an exam that largely tests your level of advancement in certain content areas.

The Quant-Q is NOT a content-knowledge exam. It is a problem-solving exam. I've said this approximately a thousand times on this forum, but its entire purpose is to present students with problems of types that they're unlikely to have seen before and evaluate their ability to develop a solution on the fly.

The questions are fairly challenging if you have never seen the problem types before. But if someone has shown them to you previously, they are staggeringly easy in most cases. Allowing students to prepare for an exam like the Quant-Q not only makes it worthless, it makes it obscurative to the admissions process and invites admitting the WRONG kids. So why use an exam like this?

Native problem-solving ability tracks well with innovation, which is the broad purpose of STEM disciplines. There is obviously some limited value in bringing in kids who are advanced in STEM but whose ceilings are limited to doing things other people have already done - but there is obviously much greater value in sending kids to TJ who have the ability to develop solutions to problems on their own.

The Quant-Q is perfect for sussing out that ability, and it was destroyed in its use for TJ by programs like Curie, which taught kids how to do the types of problems that are found on the exam. There's probably not a good solution to this problem, because no matter what type of exam you use, you're going to engage with the multi-million dollar industry for getting kids into TJ.

Any solution has to be significantly opaque and must prioritize actively seeking kids who have different goals, aims, priorities, and backgrounds so as to limit the impact of parent investment in the process.

Pfft. Yeah, destroyed by Curie and Amazon.com. This was never about selecting better students, it was always about race. Everybody knows it, you're fooling noone.

Native problem solving and innovation tracks pretty well with IQ.
We know how to test IQ. It's never 100% but we can get to like 80%.
But we don't try to measure IQ because it would not yield the desired results.
So instead of getting something that roughly tracks IQ, we have a system that selects relatively randomly so that the admitted students is more or less a cross section of the applicant pool.
If what you're looking for is IQ and IQ is a combination of nature and nurture, why do we need to eliminate the nurture element of IQ and isolate the nature element of it and select for that?

Once again, this change was never about identifying the best students, it was always about achieve a more palatable racial profile at the school. Anyone saying this was about selecting the best students is lying and they know it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC attends Curie, and we moved from Kumon for cost reasons. For multiple subjects, Curie is much cheaper than Kumon. Curie as year long grade enrichment for advanced math, english, science and summer courses, has been working well.

But not sure how effective it is to enroll just at the tail end in one month tj essay prep course. Think of this in terms of - how effective would Kumon be if student enrolled for just a month before final exam. Mastering math takes years, not a month or two.

There is a difference between year long enrichment and test prep. Test prep is about 10 hours of instruction on testing format, time management, things like process of elimination and how to guess, and practice exams. Some commenters are basically saying that practice exams are cheating.
If you are learning substantive material that might be useful on a mathcounts competition, etc. then this is just studying.

What do practice exams mean? periodic assessments? At Curie, there are upfront placement tests and periodic assessments along the way, and before moving to the next level, similar to Kumon. The overall curriculum is fast paced and high rigor, so these checkpoint assessments help in deciding if student wants to continue to dropout. Considerable number dropout.

Practice exams in the test prep context means taking a previously administered test from a few years ago.

This whole curie thing comes from a bunch of people who are just looking for reasons to justify their racism by saying that the reason they changed the admissions process was to combat the rampant cheating coming out of curie. They accuse curie of selling TJ test answers and allowing their students to effectively buy their way into tj. It's stupid and racist. if you watched the hearings surrounding the change in admissions process, there was a lot of ugly racism on display against all asians but particulary against the indians because they are the newcomers.

Too bad it all actually happened and has been proven here over and over.

The only part that actually happened was the racism during the hearings and the racism driving the changes to the admissions process.

The admissions changes were driven by a desire for racial balancing not to counteract cheating.
BTW, the cheating at question here is that some kids shared their recollection about the test questions and format with curie after the test.

People are guessing that this happened. What is known (at least some have said they saw it) is that Curie gave had a bank of qiuestions that might be asked and kids said they saw exact questions.

But many more have said it's a made-up story! A fabricated story concocted to hurt Curie's reputition, but paradoxically sends more business towards them

No, it's not a made-up story. It's real.
Curie posted names of students but had to remove them when the scandal came out.

It's been covered here over and over. There were links to multiple news sources just a few weeks ago and god knows how many first-hand accounts.

other than fake posts on this forum and facebook tj vents, what news sources?

It was covered extensively here the other week in a recent thread. There were a half-dozen links there. You're going to have to do your own leg work this time, but I imagine you already know all this and just like to keep asking.

It wasn't exactly a scandal but some students shared what they saw at the test and this gave people an idea of the test format and question type.

There are claims that the test company used the same question year after year, effectively giving some kids advance knowledge of the test questions.
This is effectively malpractice in the testing world and seems hard to believe.
The format of the test is well known enough that you can buy books on amazon about the test.
https://www.amazon.com/Quant-Test-Prep-Book-Practice/dp/109286427X

If you think people shouldn't be allowed to study for a test then that is a different conversation.

so the bogus claim is a student shared questions from a test prep book widely available on amazon?

I think the claim is that some of the test questions given in year two were identical to test questions given in year one, so if a tutor got the test questions from last year's students, then this year's students walk into the test having already seen some of the questions before. If that in fact happened then the testing company is guilty of testing malpractice and that would have been newsworthy. But yeah, the test question format and type are publicly known.

It's mostly just racist envy. People trying to explain away the success of a minority so the world makes more sense to them. In a world of structural racism and white supremacy, somehow the children of brown skinned indian immigrants are the ones coming out on top. You have to make it make sense, so you pretend that they were all born rich and this is all wealth advantage. That plus the cheating.

Jim crow whites used to do something similar with blacks and jews so their white supremacist worldview made sense.

These days it is racism from the left trying to make their DEI/CRT worldview make sense.

The questions were similar, which invalidates the results given that they are trying to evaluate the critical thinking skills.

Are you saying that standardized tests cannot measure critical thinking unless noone knows the format of the test? ROFLMAO

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's all wishful interpretation. The material Insight chose to include in quant-q is based on generic knowledge, and that's what the prep books available on Amazon contain. It is ridiculous to suggest it is any different from sat, act, etc, or any workbook, textbook for that matter. If Insight believed the amazon prep books had their proprietary information, those wouldn't be allowed to be sold by Amazon for decades for $19.95.

Quant-Q is absolutely different than SAT, ACT, etc. It’s not based on general knowledge - it tests critical thinking skills.

The sections are:
Pattern Recognition
Probability Combinatorics
Out-of-the-Box Algebra
Geometry and Optimization

If you have seen previous Quant-Q problems then it will not accurately measure “out of the box algebra”.

It’s more like the WISC test. Prior exposure invalidates results. Just because Amazon sells WISC prep books doesn’t mean it’s ok.

Maybe so, but it also means that the "wealth hurdle" is $20.

Were those books sharing test questions from prior years?

Paying $$$$ to have access to previous test questions on an NDA-protected test provides an unfair advantage to wealthy kids in admissions for a public school program.

So, that's the least believable part of the whole story. If a testing company recycled the exact same test question, it would make the news. Instead, we have to rely on a now deleted social media post by a student saying they saw the test question during test prep. Pfft.

Wealthy kids don't go to public schools. Curie is like what $2k-$5k/year and the test prep part is like $300-$600 (I'm getting these from their registration page).

If you could buy your way into TJ, then TJ would be overwhelmingly white. GTFOH

[Anonymous]

Curie is cheaper than Kumon, the main reason we switched. I am not sure about others but Curie is affordable for low income middle class families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's all wishful interpretation. The material Insight chose to include in quant-q is based on generic knowledge, and that's what the prep books available on Amazon contain. It is ridiculous to suggest it is any different from sat, act, etc, or any workbook, textbook for that matter. If Insight believed the amazon prep books had their proprietary information, those wouldn't be allowed to be sold by Amazon for decades for $19.95.

Quant-Q is absolutely different than SAT, ACT, etc. It’s not based on general knowledge - it tests critical thinking skills.

The sections are:
Pattern Recognition
Probability Combinatorics
Out-of-the-Box Algebra
Geometry and Optimization

If you have seen previous Quant-Q problems then it will not accurately measure “out of the box algebra”.

It’s more like the WISC test. Prior exposure invalidates results. Just because Amazon sells WISC prep books doesn’t mean it’s ok.

My question is this: If a testing center had access to the questions and if that access significantly boosted kids' Quant-Q scores, wouldn't they have observed a lot of applicants with outlier Quant-Q scores that don't correspond to the kid's other test scores, math level, and achievements? Wouldn't kids like that have been filtered out when the kids went from TJ semifinalist to a TJ finalist? If I were reviewing the files, and a kid from an affluent area had 99th percentile Quant Q scores, but they didn't have glowing teacher recommendations, significant STEM achievements, and/or weren't highly accelerated in math, it would look pretty suspicious. It would be doubly so if there were a lot of kids fitting that profile from the same region of the county and racial group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's all wishful interpretation. The material Insight chose to include in quant-q is based on generic knowledge, and that's what the prep books available on Amazon contain. It is ridiculous to suggest it is any different from sat, act, etc, or any workbook, textbook for that matter. If Insight believed the amazon prep books had their proprietary information, those wouldn't be allowed to be sold by Amazon for decades for $19.95.

Quant-Q is absolutely different than SAT, ACT, etc. It’s not based on general knowledge - it tests critical thinking skills.

The sections are:
Pattern Recognition
Probability Combinatorics
Out-of-the-Box Algebra
Geometry and Optimization

If you have seen previous Quant-Q problems then it will not accurately measure “out of the box algebra”.

It’s more like the WISC test. Prior exposure invalidates results. Just because Amazon sells WISC prep books doesn’t mean it’s ok.

Maybe so, but it also means that the "wealth hurdle" is $20.

It's a case of you get what you pay for. It usually works best just to get your kid a private WISC test or several to get familiar with the test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's all wishful interpretation. The material Insight chose to include in quant-q is based on generic knowledge, and that's what the prep books available on Amazon contain. It is ridiculous to suggest it is any different from sat, act, etc, or any workbook, textbook for that matter. If Insight believed the amazon prep books had their proprietary information, those wouldn't be allowed to be sold by Amazon for decades for $19.95.

Quant-Q is absolutely different than SAT, ACT, etc. It’s not based on general knowledge - it tests critical thinking skills.

The sections are:
Pattern Recognition
Probability Combinatorics
Out-of-the-Box Algebra
Geometry and Optimization

If you have seen previous Quant-Q problems then it will not accurately measure “out of the box algebra”.

It’s more like the WISC test. Prior exposure invalidates results. Just because Amazon sells WISC prep books doesn’t mean it’s ok.

My question is this: If a testing center had access to the questions and if that access significantly boosted kids' Quant-Q scores, wouldn't they have observed a lot of applicants with outlier Quant-Q scores that don't correspond to the kid's other test scores, math level, and achievements? Wouldn't kids like that have been filtered out when the kids went from TJ semifinalist to a TJ finalist? If I were reviewing the files, and a kid from an affluent area had 99th percentile Quant Q scores, but they didn't have glowing teacher recommendations, significant STEM achievements, and/or weren't highly accelerated in math, it would look pretty suspicious. It would be doubly so if there were a lot of kids fitting that profile from the same region of the county and racial group.

Well, if the other test scores are more accurate there's no need for the QuantQ especially since it's so easily gamed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's all wishful interpretation. The material Insight chose to include in quant-q is based on generic knowledge, and that's what the prep books available on Amazon contain. It is ridiculous to suggest it is any different from sat, act, etc, or any workbook, textbook for that matter. If Insight believed the amazon prep books had their proprietary information, those wouldn't be allowed to be sold by Amazon for decades for $19.95.

Quant-Q is absolutely different than SAT, ACT, etc. It’s not based on general knowledge - it tests critical thinking skills.

The sections are:
Pattern Recognition
Probability Combinatorics
Out-of-the-Box Algebra
Geometry and Optimization

If you have seen previous Quant-Q problems then it will not accurately measure “out of the box algebra”.

It’s more like the WISC test. Prior exposure invalidates results. Just because Amazon sells WISC prep books doesn’t mean it’s ok.

Maybe so, but it also means that the "wealth hurdle" is $20.

Were those books sharing test questions from prior years?

Paying $$$$ to have access to previous test questions on an NDA-protected test provides an unfair advantage to wealthy kids in admissions for a public school program.

The C4TJ set wants to minimize the significance of this advantage because they prefer a system that is easily gamed by throwing money at it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC attends Curie, and we moved from Kumon for cost reasons. For multiple subjects, Curie is much cheaper than Kumon. Curie as year long grade enrichment for advanced math, english, science and summer courses, has been working well.

But not sure how effective it is to enroll just at the tail end in one month tj essay prep course. Think of this in terms of - how effective would Kumon be if student enrolled for just a month before final exam. Mastering math takes years, not a month or two.

There is a difference between year long enrichment and test prep. Test prep is about 10 hours of instruction on testing format, time management, things like process of elimination and how to guess, and practice exams. Some commenters are basically saying that practice exams are cheating.
If you are learning substantive material that might be useful on a mathcounts competition, etc. then this is just studying.

What do practice exams mean? periodic assessments? At Curie, there are upfront placement tests and periodic assessments along the way, and before moving to the next level, similar to Kumon. The overall curriculum is fast paced and high rigor, so these checkpoint assessments help in deciding if student wants to continue to dropout. Considerable number dropout.

Practice exams in the test prep context means taking a previously administered test from a few years ago.

This whole curie thing comes from a bunch of people who are just looking for reasons to justify their racism by saying that the reason they changed the admissions process was to combat the rampant cheating coming out of curie. They accuse curie of selling TJ test answers and allowing their students to effectively buy their way into tj. It's stupid and racist. if you watched the hearings surrounding the change in admissions process, there was a lot of ugly racism on display against all asians but particulary against the indians because they are the newcomers.

Too bad it all actually happened and has been proven here over and over.

The only part that actually happened was the racism during the hearings and the racism driving the changes to the admissions process.

The admissions changes were driven by a desire for racial balancing not to counteract cheating.
BTW, the cheating at question here is that some kids shared their recollection about the test questions and format with curie after the test.

People are guessing that this happened. What is known (at least some have said they saw it) is that Curie gave had a bank of qiuestions that might be asked and kids said they saw exact questions.

But many more have said it's a made-up story! A fabricated story concocted to hurt Curie's reputition, but paradoxically sends more business towards them

No, it's not a made-up story. It's real.
Curie posted names of students but had to remove them when the scandal came out.

It's been covered here over and over. There were links to multiple news sources just a few weeks ago and god knows how many first-hand accounts.

other than fake posts on this forum and facebook tj vents, what news sources?

It was covered extensively here the other week in a recent thread. There were a half-dozen links there. You're going to have to do your own leg work this time, but I imagine you already know all this and just like to keep asking.

It wasn't exactly a scandal but some students shared what they saw at the test and this gave people an idea of the test format and question type.

There are claims that the test company used the same question year after year, effectively giving some kids advance knowledge of the test questions.
This is effectively malpractice in the testing world and seems hard to believe.
The format of the test is well known enough that you can buy books on amazon about the test.
https://www.amazon.com/Quant-Test-Prep-Book-Practice/dp/109286427X

If you think people shouldn't be allowed to study for a test then that is a different conversation.

so the bogus claim is a student shared questions from a test prep book widely available on amazon?

I think the claim is that some of the test questions given in year two were identical to test questions given in year one, so if a tutor got the test questions from last year's students, then this year's students walk into the test having already seen some of the questions before. If that in fact happened then the testing company is guilty of testing malpractice and that would have been newsworthy. But yeah, the test question format and type are publicly known.

It's mostly just racist envy. People trying to explain away the success of a minority so the world makes more sense to them. In a world of structural racism and white supremacy, somehow the children of brown skinned indian immigrants are the ones coming out on top. You have to make it make sense, so you pretend that they were all born rich and this is all wealth advantage. That plus the cheating.

Jim crow whites used to do something similar with blacks and jews so their white supremacist worldview made sense.

These days it is racism from the left trying to make their DEI/CRT worldview make sense.

The questions were similar, which invalidates the results given that they are trying to evaluate the critical thinking skills.

Are you saying that standardized tests cannot measure critical thinking unless noone knows the format of the test? ROFLMAO

Are you saying it's only valid if kids are given the answers to all the questions up front?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC attends Curie, and we moved from Kumon for cost reasons. For multiple subjects, Curie is much cheaper than Kumon. Curie as year long grade enrichment for advanced math, english, science and summer courses, has been working well.

But not sure how effective it is to enroll just at the tail end in one month tj essay prep course. Think of this in terms of - how effective would Kumon be if student enrolled for just a month before final exam. Mastering math takes years, not a month or two.

There is a difference between year long enrichment and test prep. Test prep is about 10 hours of instruction on testing format, time management, things like process of elimination and how to guess, and practice exams. Some commenters are basically saying that practice exams are cheating.
If you are learning substantive material that might be useful on a mathcounts competition, etc. then this is just studying.

What do practice exams mean? periodic assessments? At Curie, there are upfront placement tests and periodic assessments along the way, and before moving to the next level, similar to Kumon. The overall curriculum is fast paced and high rigor, so these checkpoint assessments help in deciding if student wants to continue to dropout. Considerable number dropout.

Practice exams in the test prep context means taking a previously administered test from a few years ago.

This whole curie thing comes from a bunch of people who are just looking for reasons to justify their racism by saying that the reason they changed the admissions process was to combat the rampant cheating coming out of curie. They accuse curie of selling TJ test answers and allowing their students to effectively buy their way into tj. It's stupid and racist. if you watched the hearings surrounding the change in admissions process, there was a lot of ugly racism on display against all asians but particulary against the indians because they are the newcomers.

Too bad it all actually happened and has been proven here over and over.

The only part that actually happened was the racism during the hearings and the racism driving the changes to the admissions process.

The admissions changes were driven by a desire for racial balancing not to counteract cheating.
BTW, the cheating at question here is that some kids shared their recollection about the test questions and format with curie after the test.

People are guessing that this happened. What is known (at least some have said they saw it) is that Curie gave had a bank of qiuestions that might be asked and kids said they saw exact questions.

But many more have said it's a made-up story! A fabricated story concocted to hurt Curie's reputition, but paradoxically sends more business towards them

No, it's not a made-up story. It's real.
Curie posted names of students but had to remove them when the scandal came out.

It's been covered here over and over. There were links to multiple news sources just a few weeks ago and god knows how many first-hand accounts.

other than fake posts on this forum and facebook tj vents, what news sources?

It was covered extensively here the other week in a recent thread. There were a half-dozen links there. You're going to have to do your own leg work this time, but I imagine you already know all this and just like to keep asking.

It wasn't exactly a scandal but some students shared what they saw at the test and this gave people an idea of the test format and question type.

There are claims that the test company used the same question year after year, effectively giving some kids advance knowledge of the test questions.
This is effectively malpractice in the testing world and seems hard to believe.
The format of the test is well known enough that you can buy books on amazon about the test.
https://www.amazon.com/Quant-Test-Prep-Book-Practice/dp/109286427X

If you think people shouldn't be allowed to study for a test then that is a different conversation.

so the bogus claim is a student shared questions from a test prep book widely available on amazon?

I think the claim is that some of the test questions given in year two were identical to test questions given in year one, so if a tutor got the test questions from last year's students, then this year's students walk into the test having already seen some of the questions before. If that in fact happened then the testing company is guilty of testing malpractice and that would have been newsworthy. But yeah, the test question format and type are publicly known.

It's mostly just racist envy. People trying to explain away the success of a minority so the world makes more sense to them. In a world of structural racism and white supremacy, somehow the children of brown skinned indian immigrants are the ones coming out on top. You have to make it make sense, so you pretend that they were all born rich and this is all wealth advantage. That plus the cheating.

Jim crow whites used to do something similar with blacks and jews so their white supremacist worldview made sense.

These days it is racism from the left trying to make their DEI/CRT worldview make sense.

The questions were similar, which invalidates the results given that they are trying to evaluate the critical thinking skills.

Are you saying that standardized tests cannot measure critical thinking unless noone knows the format of the test? ROFLMAO

Are you saying it's only valid if kids are given the answers to all the questions up front?

Noone was given all the answers or any of the answers up front.
This was never about improving the selection process.
This was about selecting a more palatable racial mix.

We have decades of research supporting testing as a measure of academic merit.
Then someone published a paper saying that test scores track with income and everyone that was looking for an excuse to scrap testing got rid of testing.
They wanted to get rid of testing because they didn't like the racial disparity in test results.
FCPS latched onto this and said "well if it's good enough for harvard, then it should be good enough for us" and followed suit.
Now that Harvard is requiring testing again, shouldn't that argue for reinstating testing at TJ?

Once again, this had nothing to do with selecting better students and everything to do with selecting a more palatable racial mix.

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Anonymous wrote:DC attends Curie, and we moved from Kumon for cost reasons. For multiple subjects, Curie is much cheaper than Kumon. Curie as year long grade enrichment for advanced math, english, science and summer courses, has been working well.

But not sure how effective it is to enroll just at the tail end in one month tj essay prep course. Think of this in terms of - how effective would Kumon be if student enrolled for just a month before final exam. Mastering math takes years, not a month or two.

There is a difference between year long enrichment and test prep. Test prep is about 10 hours of instruction on testing format, time management, things like process of elimination and how to guess, and practice exams. Some commenters are basically saying that practice exams are cheating.
If you are learning substantive material that might be useful on a mathcounts competition, etc. then this is just studying.

What do practice exams mean? periodic assessments? At Curie, there are upfront placement tests and periodic assessments along the way, and before moving to the next level, similar to Kumon. The overall curriculum is fast paced and high rigor, so these checkpoint assessments help in deciding if student wants to continue to dropout. Considerable number dropout.

Practice exams in the test prep context means taking a previously administered test from a few years ago.

This whole curie thing comes from a bunch of people who are just looking for reasons to justify their racism by saying that the reason they changed the admissions process was to combat the rampant cheating coming out of curie. They accuse curie of selling TJ test answers and allowing their students to effectively buy their way into tj. It's stupid and racist. if you watched the hearings surrounding the change in admissions process, there was a lot of ugly racism on display against all asians but particulary against the indians because they are the newcomers.

Too bad it all actually happened and has been proven here over and over.

The only part that actually happened was the racism during the hearings and the racism driving the changes to the admissions process.

The admissions changes were driven by a desire for racial balancing not to counteract cheating.
BTW, the cheating at question here is that some kids shared their recollection about the test questions and format with curie after the test.

People are guessing that this happened. What is known (at least some have said they saw it) is that Curie gave had a bank of qiuestions that might be asked and kids said they saw exact questions.

But many more have said it's a made-up story! A fabricated story concocted to hurt Curie's reputition, but paradoxically sends more business towards them

No, it's not a made-up story. It's real.
Curie posted names of students but had to remove them when the scandal came out.

It's been covered here over and over. There were links to multiple news sources just a few weeks ago and god knows how many first-hand accounts.

other than fake posts on this forum and facebook tj vents, what news sources?

It was covered extensively here the other week in a recent thread. There were a half-dozen links there. You're going to have to do your own leg work this time, but I imagine you already know all this and just like to keep asking.

It wasn't exactly a scandal but some students shared what they saw at the test and this gave people an idea of the test format and question type.

There are claims that the test company used the same question year after year, effectively giving some kids advance knowledge of the test questions.
This is effectively malpractice in the testing world and seems hard to believe.
The format of the test is well known enough that you can buy books on amazon about the test.
https://www.amazon.com/Quant-Test-Prep-Book-Practice/dp/109286427X

If you think people shouldn't be allowed to study for a test then that is a different conversation.

so the bogus claim is a student shared questions from a test prep book widely available on amazon?

I think the claim is that some of the test questions given in year two were identical to test questions given in year one, so if a tutor got the test questions from last year's students, then this year's students walk into the test having already seen some of the questions before. If that in fact happened then the testing company is guilty of testing malpractice and that would have been newsworthy. But yeah, the test question format and type are publicly known.

It's mostly just racist envy. People trying to explain away the success of a minority so the world makes more sense to them. In a world of structural racism and white supremacy, somehow the children of brown skinned indian immigrants are the ones coming out on top. You have to make it make sense, so you pretend that they were all born rich and this is all wealth advantage. That plus the cheating.

Jim crow whites used to do something similar with blacks and jews so their white supremacist worldview made sense.

These days it is racism from the left trying to make their DEI/CRT worldview make sense.

The questions were similar, which invalidates the results given that they are trying to evaluate the critical thinking skills.

Are you saying that standardized tests cannot measure critical thinking unless noone knows the format of the test? ROFLMAO

Are you saying it's only valid if kids are given the answers to all the questions up front?

Noone was given all the answers or any of the answers up front.
This was never about improving the selection process.
This was about selecting a more palatable racial mix.

We have decades of research supporting testing as a measure of academic merit.
Then someone published a paper saying that test scores track with income and everyone that was looking for an excuse to scrap testing got rid of testing.
They wanted to get rid of testing because they didn't like the racial disparity in test results.
FCPS latched onto this and said "well if it's good enough for harvard, then it should be good enough for us" and followed suit.
Now that Harvard is requiring testing again, shouldn't that argue for reinstating testing at TJ?

Once again, this had nothing to do with selecting better students and everything to do with selecting a more palatable racial mix.

Many people were able to buy access to the test. It was a rigged and corrupt system that some still ironically prefer.