How can society measure our academic abilities?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no way to measure pure aptitude that can't be "broken" through prepping. The creator of the CogAT recommended providing prep materials to everyone so that the playing field would be leveled at least somewhat.

By the time the kids are 13-14 and applying for TJ, gifted is as gifted does. It's absurd to use aptitude tests rather than achievement tests and actual accomplishments. If they want to increase URM participation, the best way is to provide more services in K-8, as well as free TJ prep courses for middle schoolers.

I totally disagree with the PP who said: "I don't support the reforms but they did get one thing right. The test should measure through Algebra 1 only because that is what is taught in school and no further". Kids who are smart can easily test into Algebra I in 7th grade using only what is taught in FCPS. They should get a boost in TJ testing or acceptance over the kids who weren't smart enough to qualify for Algebra in 7th. TJ testing should cover all of Algebra I Honors as well as half of Geometry I Honors, as that is the top track accessible to smart FCPS kids who aren't necessarily supplementing outside of school.

There is NO test component of the proposed lottery, so I don't know what the PP meant about getting one thing right. I do agree you that there should be a test on algebra and geometry, though.

I'm PP really no test at all now that's nuts so the only requirement is a 3.0 GPA and then at least Algebra 1 in 8th. That means a ton of people are going to be in the lottery

The problem I have about including Geometry is does every middle school in the county offer that course in 8th grade? I'm pretty sure the answer is no. But since there is no test now that's a moot point I guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:" Aptitude tests are not desired to be studied for. "

So true. Prepping for an aptitude test is an oxymoron.

This is actually false. Anyone can improve their result on any test through preparation. They start by first understanding they types and categories of questions and then practice similar type of questions. This is true for ANY test, including IQ tests and math competitions. Those are just harder to prep for, because the questions (at least the harder ones) are intelligently designed to be less preppable for. That is why IQ tests are oxymorons, they are just ability tests disguised as "aptitude".

Again, the real issue is that the tests are too easy, because they are lazily designed by (likely) FCPS incompetents and/or their consultant cronies. This also applies to the ridiculously easy SATs that the College Board charges ridiculous amounts of money for, yet barely makes a change year after year (because OMG making a change would throw off the historical comparisons and it'd be the end of the world...?!). So of course tens of thousands of students achieve perfect scores on the SAT, by wait for it.... prepping. That's why competitive colleges no longer look at SATs as a measure of much of anything, just a minimum low bar filter to use for struggling students who definitely should not get in.

The anti-prepping attitude is stupid. Worse, it's a hidden excuse made by some who resent the fact that they would have to put in some hard work (i.e prep) to improve their chance of attending. So they prefer to instead claim that people shouldn't prep, which muddles the whole conversation of the issue at hand.

Cheating on the other hand, is a very valid concern. But that is very different from prepping, and should be absolutely minimized. And as I've said in other threads, the best way to remove cheating is to CHANGE the test or tests every year! That means the FCPS bureaucrats should get off their butts and actually do something, it's not that hard to create a new test vs "tweaking" the prior years one, keeping it "secret", and letting the "market" (i.e the large prep companies) reap the rewards. This is just FCPS driving inequity, through laziness. FCPS should be the ones playing the prepping role, especially for low income students, and they should provide the service for free. And by not keeping past tests secret, it will absolutely tear into the large profits the prep centers are making because it will deincentivize many families from paying them money just to get a large number of practice problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've come to the point of view that this is one area where the UK gets it right: it isn't about the little tests, homework grades, attendance and participation grades along the way. What matters is mastery at the end of the line. (Though I disagree with their urge to specialize too soon and at the expense of a broader education in the more mature academic years).

Except wealthy parents in London (and abroad) hire a tutor to prep their kids for the 7+ and 8+ exams at Westminster Under or St. Paul's Juniors, which feed almost automatically into Westminster and St. Paul's, which take the same A-levels as the rest of the country except all their students get A and A* and 50% get Oxbridge offers. Or the parents pay 35,000 pounds a year for a prep school that prepares for Common Entrance and where the headmaster has connections at Eton, Winchester, and Westminster, and then the kid goes to those schools at 13+ and then goes to Oxbridge.

Or then there's the 11+, where parents prep their kids or hire tutors to get their kids into grammar schools instead of comprehensives, so they get better A-level results, so they get into Oxbridge.

It's the same situation all over the world. French parents pay for tutors to get their kids into Lycee Louis Le Grand or Henri IV. Germany has huge socioeconomic gaps between who gets into the Gymnasium track and who is in Hauptschule (hint: Turkish immigrants and poor kids) after 4th grade. Chinese parents beg, borrow, and steal to get their kids into middle schools and then high schools that have the best gaokao results. This is a human problem, not an FCPS or TJ problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:" Prepping for an aptitude test is an oxymoron. "

Worst than that, aptitude-test-prepping is a character flaw. It reveals an inferiority complex.

Quite the opposite actually. It reveals the superiority complex the anti-preppers seem to have, in that they think they can do well in anything without putting any work. But let's be real here, this is not what many of them actually believe, they are not that dense. Most anti-preppers also have an inferiority complex that they're not good enough, just like the preppers. But instead of perhaps trying to improve, they opt for the easiest claim, which is to reduce the amount of prepping. We know they're just saying it because they don't really want to do any work and think that making a claim that prepping is useless will actually dissuade others from prepping and thus lower the bar for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:" Prepping for an aptitude test is an oxymoron. "

Worst than that, aptitude-test-prepping is a character flaw. It reveals an inferiority complex.

Quite the opposite actually. It reveals the superiority complex the anti-preppers seem to have, in that they think they can do well in anything without putting any work. But let's be real here, this is not what many of them actually believe, they are not that dense. Most anti-preppers also have an inferiority complex that they're not good enough, just like the preppers. But instead of perhaps trying to improve, they opt for the easiest claim, which is to reduce the amount of prepping. We know they're just saying it because they don't really want to do any work and think that making a claim that prepping is useless will actually dissuade others from prepping and thus lower the bar for everyone.

No I want to reward actual intelligence

Putting in the work/wrote memorization does not indicate aptitude at all it indicate a requirements to work hard

I've often wondered some of these TJ stories of students working late into the night on HW they don't belong there they don't have the aptitude/intelligence

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:" Prepping for an aptitude test is an oxymoron. "

Worst than that, aptitude-test-prepping is a character flaw. It reveals an inferiority complex.

Quite the opposite actually. It reveals the superiority complex the anti-preppers seem to have, in that they think they can do well in anything without putting any work. But let's be real here, this is not what many of them actually believe, they are not that dense. Most anti-preppers also have an inferiority complex that they're not good enough, just like the preppers. But instead of perhaps trying to improve, they opt for the easiest claim, which is to reduce the amount of prepping. We know they're just saying it because they don't really want to do any work and think that making a claim that prepping is useless will actually dissuade others from prepping and thus lower the bar for everyone.

No I want to reward actual intelligence

Putting in the work/wrote memorization does not indicate aptitude at all it indicate a requirements to work hard

I've often wondered some of these TJ stories of students working late into the night on HW they don't belong there they don't have the aptitude/intelligence

You have no fu***Ng idea about TJ.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:" Prepping for an aptitude test is an oxymoron. "

Worst than that, aptitude-test-prepping is a character flaw. It reveals an inferiority complex.

Quite the opposite actually. It reveals the superiority complex the anti-preppers seem to have, in that they think they can do well in anything without putting any work. But let's be real here, this is not what many of them actually believe, they are not that dense. Most anti-preppers also have an inferiority complex that they're not good enough, just like the preppers. But instead of perhaps trying to improve, they opt for the easiest claim, which is to reduce the amount of prepping. We know they're just saying it because they don't really want to do any work and think that making a claim that prepping is useless will actually dissuade others from prepping and thus lower the bar for everyone.

No I want to reward actual intelligence

Putting in the work/wrote memorization does not indicate aptitude at all it indicate a requirements to work hard

I've often wondered some of these TJ stories of students working late into the night on HW they don't belong there they don't have the aptitude/intelligence

Are you one of those IQ peddlers who loves to talk about the Mensa society all day? Define "actual intelligence". Do you think the top 25% of kids at TJ are getting by mainly on intelligence? You do realize that most of life is hard work, not innate talent (I do apologize if this is new and bursts any bubble). Anyway, TJ encapsulates hard work. If you let kids in who think they don't need to work, they likely do not belong at TJ and they likely would do poorly there, unless they change their habits. You may want to consider that the top kids at TJ are working harder than most of the other kids, that's why they are doing great things. It's not because they were born "actually intelligent".

It really irksome how often this comes up: Americans think they're somehow a more intelligent species and don't have to rely on hard work, when the attitude should be the exact opposite, this country was built on hard work and it seems like we're forgetting that year after year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:" Prepping for an aptitude test is an oxymoron. "

Worst than that, aptitude-test-prepping is a character flaw. It reveals an inferiority complex.

Quite the opposite actually. It reveals the superiority complex the anti-preppers seem to have, in that they think they can do well in anything without putting any work. But let's be real here, this is not what many of them actually believe, they are not that dense. Most anti-preppers also have an inferiority complex that they're not good enough, just like the preppers. But instead of perhaps trying to improve, they opt for the easiest claim, which is to reduce the amount of prepping. We know they're just saying it because they don't really want to do any work and think that making a claim that prepping is useless will actually dissuade others from prepping and thus lower the bar for everyone.

No I want to reward actual intelligence

Putting in the work/wrote memorization does not indicate aptitude at all it indicate a requirements to work hard

I've often wondered some of these TJ stories of students working late into the night on HW they don't belong there they don't have the aptitude/intelligence

Wrong on all counts. BTW, it's "rote", not "wrote". That's what happens when you wrote memorize

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:" Prepping for an aptitude test is an oxymoron. "

Worst than that, aptitude-test-prepping is a character flaw. It reveals an inferiority complex.

Quite the opposite actually. It reveals the superiority complex the anti-preppers seem to have, in that they think they can do well in anything without putting any work. But let's be real here, this is not what many of them actually believe, they are not that dense. Most anti-preppers also have an inferiority complex that they're not good enough, just like the preppers. But instead of perhaps trying to improve, they opt for the easiest claim, which is to reduce the amount of prepping. We know they're just saying it because they don't really want to do any work and think that making a claim that prepping is useless will actually dissuade others from prepping and thus lower the bar for everyone.

No I want to reward actual intelligence

Putting in the work/wrote memorization does not indicate aptitude at all it indicate a requirements to work hard

I've often wondered some of these TJ stories of students working late into the night on HW they don't belong there they don't have the aptitude/intelligence

Are you one of those IQ peddlers who loves to talk about the Mensa society all day? Define "actual intelligence". Do you think the top 25% of kids at TJ are getting by mainly on intelligence? You do realize that most of life is hard work, not innate talent (I do apologize if this is new and bursts any bubble). Anyway, TJ encapsulates hard work. If you let kids in who think they don't need to work, they likely do not belong at TJ and they likely would do poorly there, unless they change their habits. You may want to consider that the top kids at TJ are working harder than most of the other kids, that's why they are doing great things. It's not because they were born "actually intelligent".

It really irksome how often this comes up: Americans think they're somehow a more intelligent species and don't have to rely on hard work, when the attitude should be the exact opposite, this country was built on hard work and it seems like we're forgetting that year after year.

Correct. My kid’s iq is off the charts and graduated in the top 1% of his TJ graduating class but he had to put in lot of hard work to take the most rigorous post ap courses, conduct research, volunteer and do ECs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:" Prepping for an aptitude test is an oxymoron. "

Worst than that, aptitude-test-prepping is a character flaw. It reveals an inferiority complex.

How does one show an aptitude for math, then, if we can't test people for it because someone might prep for it? Do we just throw our arms up and say aptitude for math doesn't matter in and advanced stem school?

Aptitude tests should consist of material taught by the ES/MS school teacher. The student can study independently or with other students.

That is the crux of the problem right there. The kids that master the content taught in school are being outgunned by the kids taking additional content or seeing the content before it is taught in school outside of school in all these prep and in some cases self enrichment centers.

I don't support the reforms but they did get one thing right. The test should measure through Algebra 1 only because that is what is taught in school and no further.

That would go along way. If the test is limited to the curriculum that is available in any county public middle school, I think a lot of the argument around prepping falls away

LMFAO! Yep, that's it let's make it test what we learn in class! Oh wait... what problem solving skills were learned in middle school again? That's right, nothing.

Dude/dudette, I recommend you learn a bit more about TJ, its academics, and culture before you suggest having the bar to get in come from what was learned in public school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:" Prepping for an aptitude test is an oxymoron. "

Worst than that, aptitude-test-prepping is a character flaw. It reveals an inferiority complex.

Exactly, it’s okay to fail once in a while, it’s character building and human.

Aaw, what a lovely blanket statement of sweetness! "Don't worry about prepping; you can fail dear, it's ok". You can just try again next year. (Oh wait, it's the TJ test failure... oops).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:" Prepping for an aptitude test is an oxymoron. "

Worst than that, aptitude-test-prepping is a character flaw. It reveals an inferiority complex.

How does one show an aptitude for math, then, if we can't test people for it because someone might prep for it? Do we just throw our arms up and say aptitude for math doesn't matter in and advanced stem school?

Aptitude tests should consist of material taught by the ES/MS school teacher. The student can study independently or with other students.

That is the crux of the problem right there. The kids that master the content taught in school are being outgunned by the kids taking additional content or seeing the content before it is taught in school outside of school in all these prep and in some cases self enrichment centers.

I don't support the reforms but they did get one thing right. The test should measure through Algebra 1 only because that is what is taught in school and no further.

Are you Brabrand's mouthpiece, or just being dense? The kids don't "master content" in school. Very...far...from it. Your idea would be the ultimate dumbing down of the process for applying to TJ. The test would be completely useless, because everyone taking would get 100% LOL. Clearly that's a terrible outcome, unless you are part of the FCPS machine. If that were to happen, we may as well save all the money and disband TJ.

[Anonymous]

" Dude/dudette, I recommend you learn a bit more about TJ, its academics, and culture before you suggest having the bar to get in come from what was learned in public school. "

You sound sincere and I trust you mean well, but won't you agree that the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Google, Facebook and Amazon ought to footing the bill for educating the next generation of tech employees? There is no shortage in the world of the likes of TJ graduates. India turns them out like Dunkin' Donuts. Special isn't special anymore. I can buy specials more cheaper by the dozen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:" Dude/dudette, I recommend you learn a bit more about TJ, its academics, and culture before you suggest having the bar to get in come from what was learned in public school. "

You sound sincere and I trust you mean well, but won't you agree that the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Google, Facebook and Amazon ought to footing the bill for educating the next generation of tech employees? There is no shortage in the world of the likes of TJ graduates. India turns them out like Dunkin' Donuts. Special isn't special anymore. I can buy specials more cheaper by the dozen.

You sound unhinged.

[Anonymous]

Just chill....in 10-20 years from now the most successful, well known innovators will be some obscure weirdos who didn’t attend, nor ever hear of, TJ high school. We need to go with the flow, this is so ridiculous over a high school.