TJHSST Director of Admissions leaves FCPS after 25 years

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

"Undervalued communities" is just a doushebag of bullsheet. Nobody can undervalue you except yourself. Don't blame others when you haven't worked hard enough.

Presuming that folks haven't worked hard enough just because they're poor, Black, or Hispanic isn't really a good look. It's also not a good look when the "work" they've had access to isn't narrowly tailored to success on a specific exam or in a specific admissions process.

You want to protect the advantages of groups that already have advantages. Just own up to that and be fine with it - it is a legitimate political position that I happen to disagree with.

When people start questioning DEI, you immediately think of Black and Hispanic. Do you see the problem with this kneejerk? You choose to stay in your pit and never get out. Or you see it as a privilege or entitlement that you don't want to lose.

Those are the communities that have been undervalued. Until that is no longer the case, it's good policy to create an atmosphere where everyone has a chance to compete and have input. Full stop.

They have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. Full stop.

First of all, no, they really don't have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. When the most successful prep company releases their list of admits three years in a row and literally every single name of the nearly 300 on those lists is of South Asian descent, you don't have equality of opportunity. When access to bespoke prep courses that are narrowly tailored to the TJ admissions process costs $5,000 and requires hundreds of hours of additional time, you don't have equality of opportunity. And when communities of parents build their child's entire elementary and middle school career on optimizing their applications, using tips and tricks cobbled together from their WhatsApp chats and Facebook groups, you don't have equality of opportunity.

Second of all, framing the admissions process as a competition or as a contest/prize to be won is problematic as well. TJ doesn't exist for the purpose of giving a small group of Northern Virginia parents something to brag about - it exists to serve and enhance the STEM community writ large. And you cannot tell me that STEM is better served by TJ admitting the 80th strongest kid at Carson, with the same relative profile as the kids ahead of them but just weaker, rather than the 2nd or 3rd strongest kid at Poe.

You think there is such a bigger delta between those two than there really is and it's just not the case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

When those additional factors are driven by considerations of skin color, you're engaging in racial discrimination.

No, you're not. You're correcting decades of demonstrable, statistically significant racial discrimination that you happen to be comfortable with because of your narrow, outdated, and self-serving concept of "merit".

Any proper understanding of merit in any evaluation process MUST include context. And that context includes the applicant's circumstances, and as of now it is an undeniable fact that race and socioeconomic status are closely enough aligned in Northern Virginia as to be considered correlated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

What's more correct is that we have a political environment right now where if you're not solidly in one of two camps:

1) All DEI all the time! or
2) All efforts to support marginalized populations are garbage!

... then you don't have a home. If you want to belong to ANYTHING, you have to pick one or the other. There's no room for a commonsense middle path anymore.

The real answer in this situation is that defining acceptance to TJ as an "outcome" is problematic. Framing it as a contest or a prize to be won rather than as an opportunity to be properly distributed for maximum effect is awful.

TJ's job is to serve the STEM community writ large, not to serve parents who are trying to maximize their child's life outcomes. So a proper admissions policy for such a school would necessarily balance the need to identify top talent with the need to include populations that are underrepresented in STEM fields so as to grow the base of talent for the future and to address the needs of communities that are being harmed by the profit motive.

The new admissions process took a step in a positive direction by including students from those undervalued communities, but did so partly at the expense of identifying top talent (this is at once both inarguable AND overblown - it's a problem but by no means a crisis).

The next step will be to figure out a way to more concretely identify a strong group of talent from all of those communities - which will probably require different methods and priorities of evaluation for each of those groups. But one thing that will not succeed at all is to evaluate all of them along the same metric out of a misplaced loyalty to "objectivity". That way lies madness and a return to the dark years of the mid-2010s where TJ produced high rankings (thanks to a retrograde system that relied on exam performance) - but very, very little else thanks to a staggering homogeneity of the student population.

Why is there a "need" to include underrepresented populations? Why can't we stop at identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color?

Academics undervalued communities that undervalue academics.

We should absolutely be identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color. But you can't possibly believe that we were doing that in the before times unless you think it was correct to admit a larger number of Asian students in the Class of 2024 than they'd admitted Black students in TJ's entire history in total to that point.

I am not here to argue that STEM talent is evenly distributed - it's not because the Asian immigrants who came to this area did so in order to leverage their STEM skills in America's second most significant tech market (after Silicon Valley). But the distribution is not so overwhelming as to produce that outcome, and to believe it is is to have a deeply disturbing view of Black people in this country.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

"Undervalued communities" is just a doushebag of bullsheet. Nobody can undervalue you except yourself. Don't blame others when you haven't worked hard enough.

Presuming that folks haven't worked hard enough just because they're poor, Black, or Hispanic isn't really a good look. It's also not a good look when the "work" they've had access to isn't narrowly tailored to success on a specific exam or in a specific admissions process.

You want to protect the advantages of groups that already have advantages. Just own up to that and be fine with it - it is a legitimate political position that I happen to disagree with.

When people start questioning DEI, you immediately think of Black and Hispanic. Do you see the problem with this kneejerk? You choose to stay in your pit and never get out. Or you see it as a privilege or entitlement that you don't want to lose.

Those are the communities that have been undervalued. Until that is no longer the case, it's good policy to create an atmosphere where everyone has a chance to compete and have input. Full stop.

They have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. Full stop.

This is the poster who want everybody to believe that 1:1 tutor at $180 per hour rate in the comfort of fancy home, is the same with self study (while also babysitting 3 little sibling) from $20 prep books from amazon.

The idea was not to take a way the first, but, only hope to at least give a chance to the latter.

That’s a fair point, but the real solution is to provide early support rather than guaranteeing outcomes in high school, especially at a place like TJ. I’m even okay with tax-funded tutoring and mentoring at the elementary level, but forcing guaranteed outcomes through DEI at high schools or TJ is not the answer. And smearing hardworking middle-class parents for investing in their children's education is utter nonsense.

DP

1) That's a false choice for multiple reasons, first because no one is guaranteeing outcomes at all, and second because there's no reason for us to choose between providing additional support AND evaluating students' merit based on the context of their circumstances. We can and should be doing both.

2) No one is smearing hard-working middle class parents for investing in their children's education. What we're smearing about you is your insistence that admissions processes should be tailored to incentivize an imbalanced childhood. By all means, raise your kid however you want to and streamline their educational process to be STEM-focused for their own sake - just stop expecting that elite schools are going to reward you for doing so. And by the way, they shouldn't punish you for it either - and they're not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

"Undervalued communities" is just a doushebag of bullsheet. Nobody can undervalue you except yourself. Don't blame others when you haven't worked hard enough.

Presuming that folks haven't worked hard enough just because they're poor, Black, or Hispanic isn't really a good look. It's also not a good look when the "work" they've had access to isn't narrowly tailored to success on a specific exam or in a specific admissions process.

You want to protect the advantages of groups that already have advantages. Just own up to that and be fine with it - it is a legitimate political position that I happen to disagree with.

When people start questioning DEI, you immediately think of Black and Hispanic. Do you see the problem with this kneejerk? You choose to stay in your pit and never get out. Or you see it as a privilege or entitlement that you don't want to lose.

Those are the communities that have been undervalued. Until that is no longer the case, it's good policy to create an atmosphere where everyone has a chance to compete and have input. Full stop.

They have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. Full stop.

You can't possibly believe this. Opportunity includes access to resources. Freedom of time. Food security. A heightened sense of safety in and around the home. Supports, academic and otherwise, as needed, often from a parent who is not overworked and/or commuting extensively and/or who can afford to hire help. Early childhood exposure to language. Kids have absolutely no control over these things for the vast majority of their lives prior to 8th grade when they apply to TJ. Are there other aspects of effort and achievement and hard work they CAN control? Absolutely! But that doesn't negate that there are other opportunity factors with gross imbalances.

Putting kids at different starting points on the track before you yell "go" and claiming they all have equal opportunity to run as fast as they can within their lanes to the finish line is willfully ignoring some realities to focus only on others, usually the ones that benefit you and whatever you perceive your in-group to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

What's more correct is that we have a political environment right now where if you're not solidly in one of two camps:

1) All DEI all the time! or
2) All efforts to support marginalized populations are garbage!

... then you don't have a home. If you want to belong to ANYTHING, you have to pick one or the other. There's no room for a commonsense middle path anymore.

The real answer in this situation is that defining acceptance to TJ as an "outcome" is problematic. Framing it as a contest or a prize to be won rather than as an opportunity to be properly distributed for maximum effect is awful.

TJ's job is to serve the STEM community writ large, not to serve parents who are trying to maximize their child's life outcomes. So a proper admissions policy for such a school would necessarily balance the need to identify top talent with the need to include populations that are underrepresented in STEM fields so as to grow the base of talent for the future and to address the needs of communities that are being harmed by the profit motive.

The new admissions process took a step in a positive direction by including students from those undervalued communities, but did so partly at the expense of identifying top talent (this is at once both inarguable AND overblown - it's a problem but by no means a crisis).

The next step will be to figure out a way to more concretely identify a strong group of talent from all of those communities - which will probably require different methods and priorities of evaluation for each of those groups. But one thing that will not succeed at all is to evaluate all of them along the same metric out of a misplaced loyalty to "objectivity". That way lies madness and a return to the dark years of the mid-2010s where TJ produced high rankings (thanks to a retrograde system that relied on exam performance) - but very, very little else thanks to a staggering homogeneity of the student population.

Why is there a "need" to include underrepresented populations? Why can't we stop at identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color?

Academics undervalued communities that undervalue academics.

We should absolutely be identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color. But you can't possibly believe that we were doing that in the before times unless you think it was correct to admit a larger number of Asian students in the Class of 2024 than they'd admitted Black students in TJ's entire history in total to that point.

I am not here to argue that STEM talent is evenly distributed - it's not because the Asian immigrants who came to this area did so in order to leverage their STEM skills in America's second most significant tech market (after Silicon Valley). But the distribution is not so overwhelming as to produce that outcome, and to believe it is is to have a deeply disturbing view of Black people in this country.

The overwhelming majority of applications are from Asian students, of course they will have a greater number of students when other races do not apply at anywhere near the same rates. How is it deeply disturbing to any other race to realize that if one race applies at a rate significantly higher than any other race, that particular race (Asian) would also have significantly more students accepted???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

What's more correct is that we have a political environment right now where if you're not solidly in one of two camps:

1) All DEI all the time! or
2) All efforts to support marginalized populations are garbage!

... then you don't have a home. If you want to belong to ANYTHING, you have to pick one or the other. There's no room for a commonsense middle path anymore.

The real answer in this situation is that defining acceptance to TJ as an "outcome" is problematic. Framing it as a contest or a prize to be won rather than as an opportunity to be properly distributed for maximum effect is awful.

TJ's job is to serve the STEM community writ large, not to serve parents who are trying to maximize their child's life outcomes. So a proper admissions policy for such a school would necessarily balance the need to identify top talent with the need to include populations that are underrepresented in STEM fields so as to grow the base of talent for the future and to address the needs of communities that are being harmed by the profit motive.

The new admissions process took a step in a positive direction by including students from those undervalued communities, but did so partly at the expense of identifying top talent (this is at once both inarguable AND overblown - it's a problem but by no means a crisis).

The next step will be to figure out a way to more concretely identify a strong group of talent from all of those communities - which will probably require different methods and priorities of evaluation for each of those groups. But one thing that will not succeed at all is to evaluate all of them along the same metric out of a misplaced loyalty to "objectivity". That way lies madness and a return to the dark years of the mid-2010s where TJ produced high rankings (thanks to a retrograde system that relied on exam performance) - but very, very little else thanks to a staggering homogeneity of the student population.

Why is there a "need" to include underrepresented populations? Why can't we stop at identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color?

Academics undervalued communities that undervalue academics.

We should absolutely be identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color. But you can't possibly believe that we were doing that in the before times unless you think it was correct to admit a larger number of Asian students in the Class of 2024 than they'd admitted Black students in TJ's entire history in total to that point.

I am not here to argue that STEM talent is evenly distributed - it's not because the Asian immigrants who came to this area did so in order to leverage their STEM skills in America's second most significant tech market (after Silicon Valley). But the distribution is not so overwhelming as to produce that outcome, and to believe it is is to have a deeply disturbing view of Black people in this country.

The overwhelming majority of applications are from Asian students, of course they will have a greater number of students when other races do not apply at anywhere near the same rates. How is it deeply disturbing to any other race to realize that if one race applies at a rate significantly higher than any other race, that particular race (Asian) would also have significantly more students accepted???

Also, when 74% of the applicants are Asian American, how is it that their admitted percent is disproportionately restricted to 57% of the class?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

"Undervalued communities" is just a doushebag of bullsheet. Nobody can undervalue you except yourself. Don't blame others when you haven't worked hard enough.

Presuming that folks haven't worked hard enough just because they're poor, Black, or Hispanic isn't really a good look. It's also not a good look when the "work" they've had access to isn't narrowly tailored to success on a specific exam or in a specific admissions process.

You want to protect the advantages of groups that already have advantages. Just own up to that and be fine with it - it is a legitimate political position that I happen to disagree with.

When people start questioning DEI, you immediately think of Black and Hispanic. Do you see the problem with this kneejerk? You choose to stay in your pit and never get out. Or you see it as a privilege or entitlement that you don't want to lose.

Those are the communities that have been undervalued. Until that is no longer the case, it's good policy to create an atmosphere where everyone has a chance to compete and have input. Full stop.

They have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. Full stop.

This is the poster who want everybody to believe that 1:1 tutor at $180 per hour rate in the comfort of fancy home, is the same with self study (while also babysitting 3 little sibling) from $20 prep books from amazon.

The idea was not to take a way the first, but, only hope to at least give a chance to the latter.

So we went from $2000/year enrichment at curie to $180/hour tutoring to get into TJ? And all of a sudden all the FARM kids are babysitting 3 younger siblings? GTFOH.

They have the opportunity to compete. Not everyone has the same ability to compete.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

"Undervalued communities" is just a doushebag of bullsheet. Nobody can undervalue you except yourself. Don't blame others when you haven't worked hard enough.

Presuming that folks haven't worked hard enough just because they're poor, Black, or Hispanic isn't really a good look. It's also not a good look when the "work" they've had access to isn't narrowly tailored to success on a specific exam or in a specific admissions process.

You want to protect the advantages of groups that already have advantages. Just own up to that and be fine with it - it is a legitimate political position that I happen to disagree with.

When people start questioning DEI, you immediately think of Black and Hispanic. Do you see the problem with this kneejerk? You choose to stay in your pit and never get out. Or you see it as a privilege or entitlement that you don't want to lose.

Those are the communities that have been undervalued. Until that is no longer the case, it's good policy to create an atmosphere where everyone has a chance to compete and have input. Full stop.

They have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. Full stop.

This is the poster who want everybody to believe that 1:1 tutor at $180 per hour rate in the comfort of fancy home, is the same with self study (while also babysitting 3 little sibling) from $20 prep books from amazon.

The idea was not to take a way the first, but, only hope to at least give a chance to the latter.

That’s a fair point, but the real solution is to provide early support rather than guaranteeing outcomes in high school, especially at a place like TJ. I’m even okay with tax-funded tutoring and mentoring at the elementary level, but forcing guaranteed outcomes through DEI at high schools or TJ is not the answer. And smearing hardworking middle-class parents for investing in their children's education is utter nonsense.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

"Undervalued communities" is just a doushebag of bullsheet. Nobody can undervalue you except yourself. Don't blame others when you haven't worked hard enough.

Presuming that folks haven't worked hard enough just because they're poor, Black, or Hispanic isn't really a good look. It's also not a good look when the "work" they've had access to isn't narrowly tailored to success on a specific exam or in a specific admissions process.

You want to protect the advantages of groups that already have advantages. Just own up to that and be fine with it - it is a legitimate political position that I happen to disagree with.

When people start questioning DEI, you immediately think of Black and Hispanic. Do you see the problem with this kneejerk? You choose to stay in your pit and never get out. Or you see it as a privilege or entitlement that you don't want to lose.

Those are the communities that have been undervalued. Until that is no longer the case, it's good policy to create an atmosphere where everyone has a chance to compete and have input. Full stop.

They have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. Full stop.

This is the poster who want everybody to believe that 1:1 tutor at $180 per hour rate in the comfort of fancy home, is the same with self study (while also babysitting 3 little sibling) from $20 prep books from amazon.

The idea was not to take a way the first, but, only hope to at least give a chance to the latter.

That’s a fair point, but the real solution is to provide early support rather than guaranteeing outcomes in high school, especially at a place like TJ. I’m even okay with tax-funded tutoring and mentoring at the elementary level, but forcing guaranteed outcomes through DEI at high schools or TJ is not the answer. And smearing hardworking middle-class parents for investing in their children's education is utter nonsense.

While you are fine with tax funded tutor, there will be outrage from the rest, because they won’t even let their kids sit next to the poor in AAP.

And nobody smearing middle class for investing in their children’s education. TJ was added 10% seat. The Farms rate was 1% and went up to 11%, just about it, none of MC seats taken.

And I think there is never a “guarantee outcomes” as you said. Remember that this kid is also very likely have the same 4.0 gpa with your kid, and they are 1.5% highest at their MS, and they are also able to produce decent essay writing.
The difference is that they might not enrolled in Algebra2 nor even Geometry in MS, and that will cause decline in the TJ rank. That will seen as the greatest lost for some, losing the bragging rights that their kids attend the greatest HS in the world. Thats about it.

Of course your smearing middle class people for investing in their children. That's what all the fkn test prep rhetoric is about.

I don't think guarantee outcomes is the right word. You're trying to equalize outcomes despite differences in ability or effort.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST) Admissions Office manages the application process for students applying for admission.

The TJHSST Admissions Office is responsible for administering an objective, equitable admissions process to the school, supporting its goal to serve a diverse student population demonstrating excellence and passion for science, technology, engineering, and math.

The Admissions Office operates independently of the school.

The TJHSST Admissions Office reports to the Chief Equity Officer.

FCPS should not have a “Chief Equity Officer” nor even a DEI office.

The money FCPS would save by disbanding their DEI office would pay the yearly salaries of 125 additional classroom teachers.

DEI might be a useful tool to assist in the mission but for to many institutions, it has become the mission.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

+1,000,000

Everything that is happening now is precisely because of people like above, 100% DEI, 100% of the time, in every possible situation.

1000%

No, it’s a bunch of greedy MFers, primarily rich white men, trying to hoard resources.

In this thread context, I believe is rich Asian (mainly south).

Most South Asian people I know voted for Harris, but I’m sure there were some who bought into the rich white man entitlement mentality.

They went for Youngkin back in 2021, though. May have had a hand in tipping that election.

It was hard to see the TJ changes as anything other than a signal from FCPS that they thought there were too many Indians at TJ. Even if you have no interest in TJ, it leave a bag taste in your mouth if you're Indian.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

"Undervalued communities" is just a doushebag of bullsheet. Nobody can undervalue you except yourself. Don't blame others when you haven't worked hard enough.

Presuming that folks haven't worked hard enough just because they're poor, Black, or Hispanic isn't really a good look. It's also not a good look when the "work" they've had access to isn't narrowly tailored to success on a specific exam or in a specific admissions process.

You want to protect the advantages of groups that already have advantages. Just own up to that and be fine with it - it is a legitimate political position that I happen to disagree with.

When people start questioning DEI, you immediately think of Black and Hispanic. Do you see the problem with this kneejerk? You choose to stay in your pit and never get out. Or you see it as a privilege or entitlement that you don't want to lose.

Those are the communities that have been undervalued. Until that is no longer the case, it's good policy to create an atmosphere where everyone has a chance to compete and have input. Full stop.

They have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. Full stop.

First of all, no, they really don't have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. When the most successful prep company releases their list of admits three years in a row and literally every single name of the nearly 300 on those lists is of South Asian descent, you don't have equality of opportunity. When access to bespoke prep courses that are narrowly tailored to the TJ admissions process costs $5,000 and requires hundreds of hours of additional time, you don't have equality of opportunity. And when communities of parents build their child's entire elementary and middle school career on optimizing their applications, using tips and tricks cobbled together from their WhatsApp chats and Facebook groups, you don't have equality of opportunity.

Second of all, framing the admissions process as a competition or as a contest/prize to be won is problematic as well. TJ doesn't exist for the purpose of giving a small group of Northern Virginia parents something to brag about - it exists to serve and enhance the STEM community writ large. And you cannot tell me that STEM is better served by TJ admitting the 80th strongest kid at Carson, with the same relative profile as the kids ahead of them but just weaker, rather than the 2nd or 3rd strongest kid at Poe.

You think there is such a bigger delta between those two than there really is and it's just not the case.

Your confusing opportunity and ability.

Everyone had the same opportunity. Not everyone has the same ability.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

When those additional factors are driven by considerations of skin color, you're engaging in racial discrimination.

No, you're not. You're correcting decades of demonstrable, statistically significant racial discrimination that you happen to be comfortable with because of your narrow, outdated, and self-serving concept of "merit".

Any proper understanding of merit in any evaluation process MUST include context. And that context includes the applicant's circumstances, and as of now it is an undeniable fact that race and socioeconomic status are closely enough aligned in Northern Virginia as to be considered correlated.

And how are you"correcting" for pay discrimination? With current racial discrimination.

So a bunch of white people did horrible things to a bunch of black people so we must compensate the black people at the expense of asian people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

What's more correct is that we have a political environment right now where if you're not solidly in one of two camps:

1) All DEI all the time! or
2) All efforts to support marginalized populations are garbage!

... then you don't have a home. If you want to belong to ANYTHING, you have to pick one or the other. There's no room for a commonsense middle path anymore.

The real answer in this situation is that defining acceptance to TJ as an "outcome" is problematic. Framing it as a contest or a prize to be won rather than as an opportunity to be properly distributed for maximum effect is awful.

TJ's job is to serve the STEM community writ large, not to serve parents who are trying to maximize their child's life outcomes. So a proper admissions policy for such a school would necessarily balance the need to identify top talent with the need to include populations that are underrepresented in STEM fields so as to grow the base of talent for the future and to address the needs of communities that are being harmed by the profit motive.

The new admissions process took a step in a positive direction by including students from those undervalued communities, but did so partly at the expense of identifying top talent (this is at once both inarguable AND overblown - it's a problem but by no means a crisis).

The next step will be to figure out a way to more concretely identify a strong group of talent from all of those communities - which will probably require different methods and priorities of evaluation for each of those groups. But one thing that will not succeed at all is to evaluate all of them along the same metric out of a misplaced loyalty to "objectivity". That way lies madness and a return to the dark years of the mid-2010s where TJ produced high rankings (thanks to a retrograde system that relied on exam performance) - but very, very little else thanks to a staggering homogeneity of the student population.

Why is there a "need" to include underrepresented populations? Why can't we stop at identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color?

Academics undervalued communities that undervalue academics.

We should absolutely be identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color. But you can't possibly believe that we were doing that in the before times unless you think it was correct to admit a larger number of Asian students in the Class of 2024 than they'd admitted Black students in TJ's entire history in total to that point.

I am not here to argue that STEM talent is evenly distributed - it's not because the Asian immigrants who came to this area did so in order to leverage their STEM skills in America's second most significant tech market (after Silicon Valley). But the distribution is not so overwhelming as to produce that outcome, and to believe it is is to have a deeply disturbing view of Black people in this country.

Truth can sometimes be disturbing.

At the far right end tail of the curve, black students are rare.

https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/sat-percentile-ranks-gender-race-ethnicity.pdf

9% of asians get a 1500+ on the sat
<1% of blacks get a score of 1500+ on the SAT

23% of asians get a 1400+ on the SAT
1% of blacks get a 1400+ on the SAT

40% of asians get a 1300+ on the SAT
3% of blacks get a 1300+ on the SAT

56% of asians get a 1200+ on the SAT
8% of blacks get a 1200+ on the SAT

This is not close.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

"Undervalued communities" is just a doushebag of bullsheet. Nobody can undervalue you except yourself. Don't blame others when you haven't worked hard enough.

Presuming that folks haven't worked hard enough just because they're poor, Black, or Hispanic isn't really a good look. It's also not a good look when the "work" they've had access to isn't narrowly tailored to success on a specific exam or in a specific admissions process.

You want to protect the advantages of groups that already have advantages. Just own up to that and be fine with it - it is a legitimate political position that I happen to disagree with.

When people start questioning DEI, you immediately think of Black and Hispanic. Do you see the problem with this kneejerk? You choose to stay in your pit and never get out. Or you see it as a privilege or entitlement that you don't want to lose.

Those are the communities that have been undervalued. Until that is no longer the case, it's good policy to create an atmosphere where everyone has a chance to compete and have input. Full stop.

They have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. Full stop.

This is the poster who want everybody to believe that 1:1 tutor at $180 per hour rate in the comfort of fancy home, is the same with self study (while also babysitting 3 little sibling) from $20 prep books from amazon.

The idea was not to take a way the first, but, only hope to at least give a chance to the latter.

That’s a fair point, but the real solution is to provide early support rather than guaranteeing outcomes in high school, especially at a place like TJ. I’m even okay with tax-funded tutoring and mentoring at the elementary level, but forcing guaranteed outcomes through DEI at high schools or TJ is not the answer. And smearing hardworking middle-class parents for investing in their children's education is utter nonsense.

DP

1) That's a false choice for multiple reasons, first because no one is guaranteeing outcomes at all, and second because there's no reason for us to choose between providing additional support AND evaluating students' merit based on the context of their circumstances. We can and should be doing both.

2) No one is smearing hard-working middle class parents for investing in their children's education. What we're smearing about you is your insistence that admissions processes should be tailored to incentivize an imbalanced childhood. By all means, raise your kid however you want to and streamline their educational process to be STEM-focused for their own sake - just stop expecting that elite schools are going to reward you for doing so. And by the way, they shouldn't punish you for it either - and they're not.

DP

Life does not grade on a curve.

What you consider an imbalanced childhood is the typical childhood of 90% of the rest of the world outside of the USA.

No elite school is punishing any individual asian kid for studying too hard but they are punishing asian kids in general for being a member of a race that is disproportionately hardworking and academically successful. We live in a world where our country really can't afford to elevate mediocrity in an effort to equalize outcomes based or race. We have to become more merit based. There's a place for everyone but those places should not be allocated based on race in an effort to equalize racial outcomes.