Waitlisted at TJ - now what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Woke retards would never be satisfied. They see racism in every single thing.

Road signs - racist.
Math - racist.
Testing - racist.
Recommendation letters - racist

Road signs, math and testing aren't necessarily racist, and in my experience aren't. I guess I can imagine a racist road sign even though I haven't seen one. I've heard math can be biased but I don't buy it myself. Testing again can be biased. It depends on the test, but I've found tests to be mostly fair and objective. I think the problem with TJ's tests is many gain an unfair advantage through prep and even getting access to the questions up front. All this being said, teacher recs are unreliable and have been shown to be biased.

The issue for many parents isn't whether these are biased but the loss of their privilege. They enjoy being able to gain an unfair advantage over others by one means or another and resent when that's no longer available. They don't want to compete with the unwashed masses.

[Anonymous]

This couldn't be further from the truth.

Here is the logic, criteria are set and then you focus on the criteria to be the best.

Yes it's unfortunate one place got the test

The current push for racial geographic ses diversity makes 0 sense

This should be about who meets the criteria the best.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Woke retards would never be satisfied. They see racism in every single thing.

Road signs - racist.
Math - racist.
Testing - racist.
Recommendation letters - racist

Road signs, math and testing aren't necessarily racist, and in my experience aren't. I guess I can imagine a racist road sign even though I haven't seen one. I've heard math can be biased but I don't buy it myself. Testing again can be biased. It depends on the test, but I've found tests to be mostly fair and objective. I think the problem with TJ's tests is many gain an unfair advantage through prep and even getting access to the questions up front. All this being said, teacher recs are unreliable and have been shown to be biased.

The issue for many parents isn't whether these are biased but the loss of their privilege. They enjoy being able to gain an unfair advantage over others by one means or another and resent when that's no longer available. They don't want to compete with the unwashed masses.

Agree many enjoyed the ease with which they could get their children into these programs simply by spending a few grand on prep classes, but now it's harder because they have to compete against all schools, not just the affluent ones. Also, the prep centers had spent years compiling question banks for the test which gave their clients a huge advantage. That's also moot now. People like rigging admissions and hate having to compete.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

The sensible folks who are advocating for reform and who prefer the current system to the old system do not claim that somehow the new system is better at identifying "natural giftedness". The folks doing so are to be ignored.

What is inarguable is that the old system allowed parents to pose their children as being significantly more gifted than they actually were. It's more that the old system was prone to selecting for artificial giftedness.

We can agree to that.

The old system was broken and in dire need of fixing - including the need to infuse more diversity.

But the new system is broken as well. And there was no need to rush. Everyone seems to agree that doing away with teacher recs was a bad idea. Couldn’t they have sought input from stakeholders? There may have been a year’s delay but there would have been far less drama and less discord in the community. Begs the question- what was the motivation to rush things through.

At some point, good leaders need to make unpopular decisions that are universally "better" even if the usual voter base is against it. Input from stakeholders would overwhelmingly be from parents belonging to the the top 3 feeder middle schools. We'd be stuck in shouting matches at every SB meeting for the next year and nothing would really get accomplished.

Teacher recs are a terrible idea. Almost anyone who works in education knows this.

They're not if you do them right. If you simply leave them as an open recommendation letter, they're skewed in favor of teachers who know how to write a strong recommendation and who have the time to do however many of them are necessary. Some teachers simply aren't good at them or don't have enough time to plow through hundreds of them and give them all the multi-paragraph effort that they deserve.

Rethink your teacher recommendations to allow teachers to evaluate students within the context of their classes on scales, and afford each teacher the opportunity to write positively or negatively on a deeper level about a very limited number of students - in secret - and you'll have a much better evaluative tool to use.

Study after study has shown there's racial bias which disadvantages some kids. Teachers currently evaluate kids when they assign grades.

Grades are inadequate to assess fit for an elite academic community. They are purely objective and usually a simple measure of how well a student does on assessments, and as such they don't do any sort of job in highlighting a student's total contribution to the academic environment.

There are plenty of kids who get As (as many here have mentioned in the context of grade inflation) who would add nothing of value to the TJ community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

The sensible folks who are advocating for reform and who prefer the current system to the old system do not claim that somehow the new system is better at identifying "natural giftedness". The folks doing so are to be ignored.

What is inarguable is that the old system allowed parents to pose their children as being significantly more gifted than they actually were. It's more that the old system was prone to selecting for artificial giftedness.

We can agree to that.

The old system was broken and in dire need of fixing - including the need to infuse more diversity.

But the new system is broken as well. And there was no need to rush. Everyone seems to agree that doing away with teacher recs was a bad idea. Couldn’t they have sought input from stakeholders? There may have been a year’s delay but there would have been far less drama and less discord in the community. Begs the question- what was the motivation to rush things through.

There was a little bit of a need to rush because of the pandemic. There was no option in the winter of 2020 - the absolute depths of the crisis - to hold an in-person exam that looked anything like what existed previously, and on top of that the providers of the previous exams were no longer making those exams at those age levels.

The School Board had to do something with respect to TJ admissions that involved eliminating the exam at least for a year. There were tons of public comment opportunities and town halls, and they all devolved into shouting matches.

The bottom line is that while there are folks in the community who genuinely desire to have real conversations about how to move forward in a positive and productive way, their voices are shouted down and obfuscated by folks like Nomani, Jackson, Miller, and Dutta who are out to use this issue to elevate their profile for political and relevance purposes.

There will be further changes to the process, I think.

I thought they got rid of the test because many were buying the snsewrs.

No, it was eliminated to lower the standard.

The test was eliminated for three reasons:

1) Most urgently, the Fall 2020 admissions process could not have involved any sort of seated exam in person because of the pandemic. The exams that had been used in the previous admissions cycle were also unavailable anyway for various reasons.

2) Eliminating the exam, which was EXTREMELY expensive to both assess and score, allowed the admissions office to eliminate the application fee, which was a significant barrier to families who might not have qualified for FARMS for whatever reason. It also eliminated the need for students to secure travel to a testing site for a three-hour Saturday exam.

3) The standardized exam was disproportionately eliminating students of lower socioeconomic status from the pool of applicants - which is not an enormous problem in and of itself except for the nine-figure prep-industrial complex whose sole purpose is to get kids into TJ. Because companies like Curie and EduAvenues and Optimal TJ Prep so vocally touted their success in the admissions process, it became obvious that expensive prep conferred a significant advantage on those who could afford it - both from a financial perspective and from a time-investment perspective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This couldn't be further from the truth.

Here is the logic, criteria are set and then you focus on the criteria to be the best.

Yes it's unfortunate one place got the test

The current push for racial geographic ses diversity makes 0 sense

This should be about who meets the criteria the best.

Why, exactly, does it make zero sense?

We know from hundreds of peer-reviewed academic studies what the benefits of legitimate racial, socioeconomic, and experiential diversity are to the learning environment, and that didn't exist at TJ prior to the admissions changes. It does now, at least for the Classes of 2025 and 2026.

So what, precisely, is the harm to TJ and its environment from these changes?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This couldn't be further from the truth.

Here is the logic, criteria are set and then you focus on the criteria to be the best.

Yes it's unfortunate one place got the test

The current push for racial geographic ses diversity makes 0 sense

This should be about who meets the criteria the best.

Why, exactly, does it make zero sense?

We know from hundreds of peer-reviewed academic studies what the benefits of legitimate racial, socioeconomic, and experiential diversity are to the learning environment, and that didn't exist at TJ prior to the admissions changes. It does now, at least for the Classes of 2025 and 2026.

So what, precisely, is the harm to TJ and its environment from these changes?

You are correct. It doesn't. The PP is just trying to foist their pro-privilege and anti-diversity agenda on everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

You know every time you type "woke," you out yourself as an imbecile, right?

LOL! Says the woke retard!

Every single woke fan is a retard!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

You know every time you type "woke," you out yourself as an imbecile, right?

LOL! Says the woke retard!

Every single woke fan is a retard!

DP. Am I the only one who thinks that the above is actually a person trying to make Coalition folks look bad?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

The sensible folks who are advocating for reform and who prefer the current system to the old system do not claim that somehow the new system is better at identifying "natural giftedness". The folks doing so are to be ignored.

What is inarguable is that the old system allowed parents to pose their children as being significantly more gifted than they actually were. It's more that the old system was prone to selecting for artificial giftedness.

We can agree to that.

The old system was broken and in dire need of fixing - including the need to infuse more diversity.

But the new system is broken as well. And there was no need to rush. Everyone seems to agree that doing away with teacher recs was a bad idea. Couldn’t they have sought input from stakeholders? There may have been a year’s delay but there would have been far less drama and less discord in the community. Begs the question- what was the motivation to rush things through.

There was a little bit of a need to rush because of the pandemic. There was no option in the winter of 2020 - the absolute depths of the crisis - to hold an in-person exam that looked anything like what existed previously, and on top of that the providers of the previous exams were no longer making those exams at those age levels.

The School Board had to do something with respect to TJ admissions that involved eliminating the exam at least for a year. There were tons of public comment opportunities and town halls, and they all devolved into shouting matches.

The bottom line is that while there are folks in the community who genuinely desire to have real conversations about how to move forward in a positive and productive way, their voices are shouted down and obfuscated by folks like Nomani, Jackson, Miller, and Dutta who are out to use this issue to elevate their profile for political and relevance purposes.

There will be further changes to the process, I think.

I thought they got rid of the test because many were buying the snsewrs.

No, it was eliminated to lower the standard.

The test was eliminated for three reasons:

1) Most urgently, the Fall 2020 admissions process could not have involved any sort of seated exam in person because of the pandemic. The exams that had been used in the previous admissions cycle were also unavailable anyway for various reasons.

2) Eliminating the exam, which was EXTREMELY expensive to both assess and score, allowed the admissions office to eliminate the application fee, which was a significant barrier to families who might not have qualified for FARMS for whatever reason. It also eliminated the need for students to secure travel to a testing site for a three-hour Saturday exam.

3) The standardized exam was disproportionately eliminating students of lower socioeconomic status from the pool of applicants - which is not an enormous problem in and of itself except for the nine-figure prep-industrial complex whose sole purpose is to get kids into TJ. Because companies like Curie and EduAvenues and Optimal TJ Prep so vocally touted their success in the admissions process, it became obvious that expensive prep conferred a significant advantage on those who could afford it - both from a financial perspective and from a time-investment perspective.

I support eliminating the test, but the new admission process eliminated a lot more factors identifying the kids potential, which in fact lowered the standards. By their own leaked papers, 1/3rd weightage is given to entire GPA, while 2/3rd is given to essays which basically tests writing skills than stem interest or knowledge. There is no teacher input, no credit for any STEM electives (offered by the schools, to even compare kids with in the same school), no credit for any school sponsored after school stem activities. Sure, I understand if there is no credit for activities outside the school that costs money, but I am surprised with lack of any other input expect for core gpa and massive weightage to essays. On top, its actually a disadvantage for a kid to be AAP center school and I don't understand why the quotas were not based on base school or school pyramid - is the board so clueless to know that AAP kids actually come from all over the region and its not correct to punish them just because they just went with their default placement?

Just to give an example, my DD who goes to center, got perfect GPA, took 6 STEM electives, participated in several after school activities and even represented school in a couple got rejected while my neighbor kid (lives in SF home in a good area), also AAP, who took Algebra I in 8th and got couple of B+ etc got admitted to TJ. May be this kid has stellar essays, but unless my DD can't put two words together to form a sentence, I am having difficult time explaining this. I know there isn't much we can do and our base HS is well rated and so my kid should be fine and keep bringing up how disappointed she is etc. Apparently, based on who got admitted and who didn't, the kids at their center school no longer thinks getting into TJ is something special and say its just got to be a lottery or just got lucky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

The sensible folks who are advocating for reform and who prefer the current system to the old system do not claim that somehow the new system is better at identifying "natural giftedness". The folks doing so are to be ignored.

What is inarguable is that the old system allowed parents to pose their children as being significantly more gifted than they actually were. It's more that the old system was prone to selecting for artificial giftedness.

We can agree to that.

The old system was broken and in dire need of fixing - including the need to infuse more diversity.

But the new system is broken as well. And there was no need to rush. Everyone seems to agree that doing away with teacher recs was a bad idea. Couldn’t they have sought input from stakeholders? There may have been a year’s delay but there would have been far less drama and less discord in the community. Begs the question- what was the motivation to rush things through.

There was a little bit of a need to rush because of the pandemic. There was no option in the winter of 2020 - the absolute depths of the crisis - to hold an in-person exam that looked anything like what existed previously, and on top of that the providers of the previous exams were no longer making those exams at those age levels.

The School Board had to do something with respect to TJ admissions that involved eliminating the exam at least for a year. There were tons of public comment opportunities and town halls, and they all devolved into shouting matches.

The bottom line is that while there are folks in the community who genuinely desire to have real conversations about how to move forward in a positive and productive way, their voices are shouted down and obfuscated by folks like Nomani, Jackson, Miller, and Dutta who are out to use this issue to elevate their profile for political and relevance purposes.

There will be further changes to the process, I think.

I thought they got rid of the test because many were buying the snsewrs.

No, it was eliminated to lower the standard.

The test was eliminated for three reasons:

1) Most urgently, the Fall 2020 admissions process could not have involved any sort of seated exam in person because of the pandemic. The exams that had been used in the previous admissions cycle were also unavailable anyway for various reasons.

2) Eliminating the exam, which was EXTREMELY expensive to both assess and score, allowed the admissions office to eliminate the application fee, which was a significant barrier to families who might not have qualified for FARMS for whatever reason. It also eliminated the need for students to secure travel to a testing site for a three-hour Saturday exam.

3) The standardized exam was disproportionately eliminating students of lower socioeconomic status from the pool of applicants - which is not an enormous problem in and of itself except for the nine-figure prep-industrial complex whose sole purpose is to get kids into TJ. Because companies like Curie and EduAvenues and Optimal TJ Prep so vocally touted their success in the admissions process, it became obvious that expensive prep conferred a significant advantage on those who could afford it - both from a financial perspective and from a time-investment perspective.

I support eliminating the test, but the new admission process eliminated a lot more factors identifying the kids potential, which in fact lowered the standards. By their own leaked papers, 1/3rd weightage is given to entire GPA, while 2/3rd is given to essays which basically tests writing skills than stem interest or knowledge. There is no teacher input, no credit for any STEM electives (offered by the schools, to even compare kids with in the same school), no credit for any school sponsored after school stem activities. Sure, I understand if there is no credit for activities outside the school that costs money, but I am surprised with lack of any other input expect for core gpa and massive weightage to essays. On top, its actually a disadvantage for a kid to be AAP center school and I don't understand why the quotas were not based on base school or school pyramid - is the board so clueless to know that AAP kids actually come from all over the region and its not correct to punish them just because they just went with their default placement?

Just to give an example, my DD who goes to center, got perfect GPA, took 6 STEM electives, participated in several after school activities and even represented school in a couple got rejected while my neighbor kid (lives in SF home in a good area), also AAP, who took Algebra I in 8th and got couple of B+ etc got admitted to TJ. May be this kid has stellar essays, but unless my DD can't put two words together to form a sentence, I am having difficult time explaining this. I know there isn't much we can do and our base HS is well rated and so my kid should be fine and keep bringing up how disappointed she is etc. Apparently, based on who got admitted and who didn't, the kids at their center school no longer thinks getting into TJ is something special and say its just got to be a lottery or just got lucky.

Yes, my kid says there are several kids from the his center school with perfect or near perfect GPA, who took all the competitive STEM electives school has to offer (including some that teachers choose the only based on their performance in earlier electives), won prizes in after school activities such as TSA, debate etc, took HS level spanish 1 and some kids even completed Algebra 2 (but all did at least Geo HN) couldn't get into TJ while there are quite a few kids from the same school (not economically disadvantaged based on where they live) who got lower GPA and no stem courses/activities (even school sponsored) got admissions. So, its not a surprise that your DD didn't get in and may be my kid goes to the same school as yours

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

The sensible folks who are advocating for reform and who prefer the current system to the old system do not claim that somehow the new system is better at identifying "natural giftedness". The folks doing so are to be ignored.

What is inarguable is that the old system allowed parents to pose their children as being significantly more gifted than they actually were. It's more that the old system was prone to selecting for artificial giftedness.

We can agree to that.

The old system was broken and in dire need of fixing - including the need to infuse more diversity.

But the new system is broken as well. And there was no need to rush. Everyone seems to agree that doing away with teacher recs was a bad idea. Couldn’t they have sought input from stakeholders? There may have been a year’s delay but there would have been far less drama and less discord in the community. Begs the question- what was the motivation to rush things through.

There was a little bit of a need to rush because of the pandemic. There was no option in the winter of 2020 - the absolute depths of the crisis - to hold an in-person exam that looked anything like what existed previously, and on top of that the providers of the previous exams were no longer making those exams at those age levels.

The School Board had to do something with respect to TJ admissions that involved eliminating the exam at least for a year. There were tons of public comment opportunities and town halls, and they all devolved into shouting matches.

The bottom line is that while there are folks in the community who genuinely desire to have real conversations about how to move forward in a positive and productive way, their voices are shouted down and obfuscated by folks like Nomani, Jackson, Miller, and Dutta who are out to use this issue to elevate their profile for political and relevance purposes.

There will be further changes to the process, I think.

I thought they got rid of the test because many were buying the snsewrs.

No, it was eliminated to lower the standard.

The test was eliminated for three reasons:

1) Most urgently, the Fall 2020 admissions process could not have involved any sort of seated exam in person because of the pandemic. The exams that had been used in the previous admissions cycle were also unavailable anyway for various reasons.

2) Eliminating the exam, which was EXTREMELY expensive to both assess and score, allowed the admissions office to eliminate the application fee, which was a significant barrier to families who might not have qualified for FARMS for whatever reason. It also eliminated the need for students to secure travel to a testing site for a three-hour Saturday exam.

3) The standardized exam was disproportionately eliminating students of lower socioeconomic status from the pool of applicants - which is not an enormous problem in and of itself except for the nine-figure prep-industrial complex whose sole purpose is to get kids into TJ. Because companies like Curie and EduAvenues and Optimal TJ Prep so vocally touted their success in the admissions process, it became obvious that expensive prep conferred a significant advantage on those who could afford it - both from a financial perspective and from a time-investment perspective.

I support eliminating the test, but the new admission process eliminated a lot more factors identifying the kids potential, which in fact lowered the standards. By their own leaked papers, 1/3rd weightage is given to entire GPA, while 2/3rd is given to essays which basically tests writing skills than stem interest or knowledge. There is no teacher input, no credit for any STEM electives (offered by the schools, to even compare kids with in the same school), no credit for any school sponsored after school stem activities. Sure, I understand if there is no credit for activities outside the school that costs money, but I am surprised with lack of any other input expect for core gpa and massive weightage to essays. On top, its actually a disadvantage for a kid to be AAP center school and I don't understand why the quotas were not based on base school or school pyramid - is the board so clueless to know that AAP kids actually come from all over the region and its not correct to punish them just because they just went with their default placement?

Just to give an example, my DD who goes to center, got perfect GPA, took 6 STEM electives, participated in several after school activities and even represented school in a couple got rejected while my neighbor kid (lives in SF home in a good area), also AAP, who took Algebra I in 8th and got couple of B+ etc got admitted to TJ. May be this kid has stellar essays, but unless my DD can't put two words together to form a sentence, I am having difficult time explaining this. I know there isn't much we can do and our base HS is well rated and so my kid should be fine and keep bringing up how disappointed she is etc. Apparently, based on who got admitted and who didn't, the kids at their center school no longer thinks getting into TJ is something special and say its just got to be a lottery or just got lucky.

PP here - small correction, DD didn’t get rejected, but got wait listed, but now we can probably consider it as rejection. She participated in several outside school activities as well, but I understand that they shouldn’t be considered. But, at least what ever is sponsored by schools should be considered. I know essays are far far more important than grades for TJ, but for center kids who take harder courses, extra math course, many even take Spanish 1, face stiffer completion at school to stand out. Then, it’s unfortunate that even the kids who actually stood out got lost in this TJ mess. The saving grace from all this is, in the long (or even short) run TJ doesn’t matter much. Sure, it offers some extra courses, but outside of that, there isn’t a lot kids are going miss out. The only difference is TJ used to be full of kids who can handle challenging course work and competitiveness. Now to support the new students, coursework is being dumbed down and eventually it will just settle as slightly better than average HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

+1. We can't win if our position is that doing away with a test and giving extra points for "experience factors" such as poverty and ESL is the trick to getting the best and brightest. We are so much better off sticking to the fact that all of Fairfax pays taxes that support TJ so all middle schools in Fairfax should have the opportunity to send the top 1.5% of their middle school student body to TJ. Why is that so hard to stand behind?

Disagree, admitting the top performers from all schools will result in a stronger cohort than admitting the 3rd tier preppers from the most affluent school. This is just common sense, but some parents dislike this since it makes it harder to game admissions.

Bull. It is not common sense. It's your load of crap opinion. Don't try to assume away the issue by labelling your unsupported and unsubstantiated opinions as common sense. #wokie

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here's the link to the FCAG report I just mentioned:
https://www.fcag.org/documents/TJ_Class_of_2025_analysis.pdf

Yes, we know the students that were admitted weren't as well prepped as in years past but were selected because they were naturally more gifted than the less successful preppers.

Diversity is great and diversity in any cohort enriches the cohort - schools or workplace.

But to claim that by increasing diversity we have somehow admitted more “naturally gifted” students is the kind of asinine wokeness that is leading the progressives to ruin.

You wanted a more diverse class through this reform - understood. But to claim all this BS around natural giftedness, et al demonstrates an absolute absence of logic or a cult-like following of woke ideology.

+1. We can't win if our position is that doing away with a test and giving extra points for "experience factors" such as poverty and ESL is the trick to getting the best and brightest. We are so much better off sticking to the fact that all of Fairfax pays taxes that support TJ so all middle schools in Fairfax should have the opportunity to send the top 1.5% of their middle school student body to TJ. Why is that so hard to stand behind?

Disagree, admitting the top performers from all schools will result in a stronger cohort than admitting the 3rd tier preppers from the most affluent school. This is just common sense, but some parents dislike this since it makes it harder to game admissions.

Bull. It is not common sense. It's your load of crap opinion. Don't try to assume away the issue by labelling your unsupported and unsubstantiated opinions as common sense. #wokie

It's a well known fact that admitting the top performers from all schools results in a stronger cohort than admitting the 3rd tier preppers from the most affluent school. This is just common sense, but some affluent parents dislike this since it makes it harder to game admissions with their $$$.

[Anonymous]

To PP - I tutored students from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds. Kids can not be prepped too far from what they are.