Waitlisted at TJ - now what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

Carson gets 50-60? I think its more along the lines of 25-35. Carson is a center kids with AAP alone consists of 500 (out of 750) kids each grade (representing oakton, chantilly, westfields, south lakes and herndon pyramids) and around 300 kids apply to TJ. While I agree that it gets more TJ admissions in raw numbers (allocated and unused spillovers), but nowhere close to 60 kids. Also, environment at Carson is significantly more competitive and lot tougher to standout and since there expected to be 150 kids with 3.9+ GPA, essays pretty much determine their chances of getting admitted to TJ.

Wrong. Carson got over 50 offers this year according to the FCPS article.

FCPS's June 30th press release says that Carson got 50 offers, not over 50 offers. That's a sizable increase from the Class of 2025, so it appears that either Carson families have figured out how to maximize their kids' chances at admission under the new system or FCPS stopped using some of the factors that might present more litigation risks.

[Anonymous]

How do you know which middle schools got in how many kids? Is there a list?

[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.

+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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

Disagree. The top 50 -100 kids zoned to Whitman are attending Sandburg or Twain for AAP. There are zero kids remaining at Whitman who are even remotely close to being TJ calibre. I would imagine that the 80th best kid at Carson would wipe the floor with the best kid remaining at Whitman after all of the AAP kids left. I generally support geographic diversity, but it should be by zoned school rather than attending school. There's no reason to reserve 1.5% of the spots in a non-AAP center for the kids who weren't good enough or motivated enough for AAP. The exact same geographic diversity is achieved if the Sandburg AAP kids zoned to Whitman counted against the Whitman 1.5% quota and not the Sandburg one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

Disagree. The top 50 -100 kids zoned to Whitman are attending Sandburg or Twain for AAP. There are zero kids remaining at Whitman who are even remotely close to being TJ calibre. I would imagine that the 80th best kid at Carson would wipe the floor with the best kid remaining at Whitman after all of the AAP kids left. I generally support geographic diversity, but it should be by zoned school rather than attending school. There's no reason to reserve 1.5% of the spots in a non-AAP center for the kids who weren't good enough or motivated enough for AAP. The exact same geographic diversity is achieved if the Sandburg AAP kids zoned to Whitman counted against the Whitman 1.5% quota and not the Sandburg one.

11:10 PP here again. I don't think the attending vs. zoned school thing was at all an oversight. The school board crunched the numbers, and using attending school was a way to decrease Asians and push in more URMs. The school board couldn't care less that they were reserving spots for a bunch of under-qualified kids in the process. They just knew that the AAP Centers had a higher percentage of Asians than the non-AAP centers from which they pull, and they saw an opportunity to tweak the TJ demographics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

Disagree. The top 50 -100 kids zoned to Whitman are attending Sandburg or Twain for AAP. There are zero kids remaining at Whitman who are even remotely close to being TJ calibre. I would imagine that the 80th best kid at Carson would wipe the floor with the best kid remaining at Whitman after all of the AAP kids left. I generally support geographic diversity, but it should be by zoned school rather than attending school. There's no reason to reserve 1.5% of the spots in a non-AAP center for the kids who weren't good enough or motivated enough for AAP. The exact same geographic diversity is achieved if the Sandburg AAP kids zoned to Whitman counted against the Whitman 1.5% quota and not the Sandburg one.

Yes, it's a perfect demonstration of how privilege advantages kids at affluent schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

Disagree. The top 50 -100 kids zoned to Whitman are attending Sandburg or Twain for AAP. There are zero kids remaining at Whitman who are even remotely close to being TJ calibre. I would imagine that the 80th best kid at Carson would wipe the floor with the best kid remaining at Whitman after all of the AAP kids left. I generally support geographic diversity, but it should be by zoned school rather than attending school. There's no reason to reserve 1.5% of the spots in a non-AAP center for the kids who weren't good enough or motivated enough for AAP. The exact same geographic diversity is achieved if the Sandburg AAP kids zoned to Whitman counted against the Whitman 1.5% quota and not the Sandburg one.

There are multiple ways a bright student could slip through the cracks all the way to 8th grade at a place like Whitman. You're forgetting that not every child and family has all the resources and prior knowledge that you do. I can easily imagine a child whose parents work multiple retail or food service jobs and completely ignore school communications because they don't know any better. Or a kid moves to Whitman starting in 7th grade from outside FCPS and didn't really have a chance for AAP enrollment. Not everyone was blessed with living inside Carson AAP boundaries since birth. Reserving 1.5% potential spots (which equates to about 6 seats from Whitman) from each MS for edge cases like this is causing you heartburn?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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.

+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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

In other words, the case for TJ now isn’t to take the strongest kids in the region and cultivate their talents, but to rescue some above-average kids from the Mount Vernon pyramid, as they’d otherwise be stuck at an under-performing IB school that FCPS is too lazy to do anything about.

1) It's a false choice - TJ can do both because you're talking about a class of 550 kids. TJ doesn't need the 80th best kid from Carson - that kid doesn't provide any additional value to the environment.

2) The kids coming from that pyramid are significantly better than "above average".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

Disagree. The top 50 -100 kids zoned to Whitman are attending Sandburg or Twain for AAP. There are zero kids remaining at Whitman who are even remotely close to being TJ calibre. I would imagine that the 80th best kid at Carson would wipe the floor with the best kid remaining at Whitman after all of the AAP kids left. I generally support geographic diversity, but it should be by zoned school rather than attending school. There's no reason to reserve 1.5% of the spots in a non-AAP center for the kids who weren't good enough or motivated enough for AAP. The exact same geographic diversity is achieved if the Sandburg AAP kids zoned to Whitman counted against the Whitman 1.5% quota and not the Sandburg one.

There are multiple ways a bright student could slip through the cracks all the way to 8th grade at a place like Whitman. You're forgetting that not every child and family has all the resources and prior knowledge that you do. I can easily imagine a child whose parents work multiple retail or food service jobs and completely ignore school communications because they don't know any better. Or a kid moves to Whitman starting in 7th grade from outside FCPS and didn't really have a chance for AAP enrollment. Not everyone was blessed with living inside Carson AAP boundaries since birth. Reserving 1.5% potential spots (which equates to about 6 seats from Whitman) from each MS for edge cases like this is causing you heartburn?

If so, the zoned ES is doing something very, very wrong. My kids attended a Title I ES. Lower income kids and URMs who are even up to upper middle class were all included in Young Scholars, which granted them pull outs with the AART, free summer programs, and a lot of extra resources. Kids in Young Scholars who showed any potential were referred by the school/teachers for AAP if the parents weren't likely to apply. A bright student could only fall through the cracks if that student got poor test scores, failed to impress the AART or any of the teachers from any grade, failed to get high scores on any SOLs, and so on. FCPS generally does an excellent job of identifying any and all low income or URMs who are above average. That was pretty clearly indicated in the AAP equity report.

In the prior example, it's not like the brilliant Whitman kid who was theoretically excluded from AAP would be shut out of TJ if they allocated seats by zoned school rather than attending. The kid would still be able to compete for one of those 6 designated spots against the AAP kids zoned to Whitman but attending Sandburg. Since the TJ selection doesn't give any extra weight to AAP classes or more advanced coursework, why wouldn't the Whitman kid have just as much likelihood of getting picked as any of the AAP kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

In other words, the case for TJ now isn’t to take the strongest kids in the region and cultivate their talents, but to rescue some above-average kids from the Mount Vernon pyramid, as they’d otherwise be stuck at an under-performing IB school that FCPS is too lazy to do anything about.

1) It's a false choice - TJ can do both because you're talking about a class of 550 kids. TJ doesn't need the 80th best kid from Carson - that kid doesn't provide any additional value to the environment.

2) The kids coming from that pyramid are significantly better than "above average".

Honestly, even thought I'm one of the most vocal anti-reformers here, I don't disagree with you on point 1. My problem is and always has been that they're not picking the top 40 kids from Carson. They're randomly picking 40 kids from the top 200 kids from Carson, meaning they're still getting a lot of 3rd rate preppers, but they're excluding some of the top shelf talent. The application is too sparse to differentiate between an outlier who needs TJ and an above average kid with good grades who has been prepped to write a nice essay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

In other words, the case for TJ now isn’t to take the strongest kids in the region and cultivate their talents, but to rescue some above-average kids from the Mount Vernon pyramid, as they’d otherwise be stuck at an under-performing IB school that FCPS is too lazy to do anything about.

1) It's a false choice - TJ can do both because you're talking about a class of 550 kids. TJ doesn't need the 80th best kid from Carson - that kid doesn't provide any additional value to the environment.

2) The kids coming from that pyramid are significantly better than "above average".

Honestly, even thought I'm one of the most vocal anti-reformers here, I don't disagree with you on point 1. My problem is and always has been that they're not picking the top 40 kids from Carson. They're randomly picking 40 kids from the top 200 kids from Carson, meaning they're still getting a lot of 3rd rate preppers, but they're excluding some of the top shelf talent. The application is too sparse to differentiate between an outlier who needs TJ and an above average kid with good grades who has been prepped to write a nice essay.

PP. We can agree on the need for more layers to the application, for certain. Hooray for consensus!

I would love to see a reimagined teacher recommendation process with two parts:

1) A largely standard and easily fillable form that evaluates students across a variety of metrics designed to include both their aptitude and their ability to contribute to the overall classroom dynamic - but that importantly requires the teacher to evaluate students against the rest of the students in their cohort for the year. For example, Mr. X at Carson might receive 80 of these forms, but he is required to indicate which students are "among the best this year" or "among the best I've ever taught" in these different areas. Naturally, if he gives superlative evaluations to all 80 students, his forms probably won't be taken very seriously by the admissions committee member who reads his group of forms. Each of these forms should take no more than 3-5 minutes to fill out.

2) The opportunity for each teacher to write more deeply about a limited number of students - say 3-5 - either positively or negatively to shed more light on their candidacy. Teachers could use this opportunity to expand on either the suitability of a student or perhaps the need for TJ to stay away from them. Importantly, a safeguard would have to be in place to ensure that only the Admissions Office knew which students each teacher wrote more deeply about.

This is one layer that could be very easily added to the process that would radically alter the chances of picking up the top students at each school and would make a wonderful complement to the 1.5% rule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

Disagree. The top 50 -100 kids zoned to Whitman are attending Sandburg or Twain for AAP. There are zero kids remaining at Whitman who are even remotely close to being TJ calibre. I would imagine that the 80th best kid at Carson would wipe the floor with the best kid remaining at Whitman after all of the AAP kids left. I generally support geographic diversity, but it should be by zoned school rather than attending school. There's no reason to reserve 1.5% of the spots in a non-AAP center for the kids who weren't good enough or motivated enough for AAP. The exact same geographic diversity is achieved if the Sandburg AAP kids zoned to Whitman counted against the Whitman 1.5% quota and not the Sandburg one.

There are multiple ways a bright student could slip through the cracks all the way to 8th grade at a place like Whitman. You're forgetting that not every child and family has all the resources and prior knowledge that you do. I can easily imagine a child whose parents work multiple retail or food service jobs and completely ignore school communications because they don't know any better. Or a kid moves to Whitman starting in 7th grade from outside FCPS and didn't really have a chance for AAP enrollment. Not everyone was blessed with living inside Carson AAP boundaries since birth. Reserving 1.5% potential spots (which equates to about 6 seats from Whitman) from each MS for edge cases like this is causing you heartburn?

If so, the zoned ES is doing something very, very wrong. My kids attended a Title I ES. Lower income kids and URMs who are even up to upper middle class were all included in Young Scholars, which granted them pull outs with the AART, free summer programs, and a lot of extra resources. Kids in Young Scholars who showed any potential were referred by the school/teachers for AAP if the parents weren't likely to apply. A bright student could only fall through the cracks if that student got poor test scores, failed to impress the AART or any of the teachers from any grade, failed to get high scores on any SOLs, and so on. FCPS generally does an excellent job of identifying any and all low income or URMs who are above average. That was pretty clearly indicated in the AAP equity report.

In the prior example, it's not like the brilliant Whitman kid who was theoretically excluded from AAP would be shut out of TJ if they allocated seats by zoned school rather than attending. The kid would still be able to compete for one of those 6 designated spots against the AAP kids zoned to Whitman but attending Sandburg. Since the TJ selection doesn't give any extra weight to AAP classes or more advanced coursework, why wouldn't the Whitman kid have just as much likelihood of getting picked as any of the AAP kids?

Two things:

1) It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for an elementary school to be doing something very, very wrong.

2) The kid who ends up at Whitman doesn't have the built-in advantages of receiving AAP services in the admissions process - most of which would likely have to do with writing preparation and access to a more diverse set of STEM opportunities to write about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

Disagree. The top 50 -100 kids zoned to Whitman are attending Sandburg or Twain for AAP. There are zero kids remaining at Whitman who are even remotely close to being TJ calibre. I would imagine that the 80th best kid at Carson would wipe the floor with the best kid remaining at Whitman after all of the AAP kids left. I generally support geographic diversity, but it should be by zoned school rather than attending school. There's no reason to reserve 1.5% of the spots in a non-AAP center for the kids who weren't good enough or motivated enough for AAP. The exact same geographic diversity is achieved if the Sandburg AAP kids zoned to Whitman counted against the Whitman 1.5% quota and not the Sandburg one.

There are multiple ways a bright student could slip through the cracks all the way to 8th grade at a place like Whitman. You're forgetting that not every child and family has all the resources and prior knowledge that you do. I can easily imagine a child whose parents work multiple retail or food service jobs and completely ignore school communications because they don't know any better. Or a kid moves to Whitman starting in 7th grade from outside FCPS and didn't really have a chance for AAP enrollment. Not everyone was blessed with living inside Carson AAP boundaries since birth. Reserving 1.5% potential spots (which equates to about 6 seats from Whitman) from each MS for edge cases like this is causing you heartburn?

If so, the zoned ES is doing something very, very wrong. My kids attended a Title I ES. Lower income kids and URMs who are even up to upper middle class were all included in Young Scholars, which granted them pull outs with the AART, free summer programs, and a lot of extra resources. Kids in Young Scholars who showed any potential were referred by the school/teachers for AAP if the parents weren't likely to apply. A bright student could only fall through the cracks if that student got poor test scores, failed to impress the AART or any of the teachers from any grade, failed to get high scores on any SOLs, and so on. FCPS generally does an excellent job of identifying any and all low income or URMs who are above average. That was pretty clearly indicated in the AAP equity report.

In the prior example, it's not like the brilliant Whitman kid who was theoretically excluded from AAP would be shut out of TJ if they allocated seats by zoned school rather than attending. The kid would still be able to compete for one of those 6 designated spots against the AAP kids zoned to Whitman but attending Sandburg. Since the TJ selection doesn't give any extra weight to AAP classes or more advanced coursework, why wouldn't the Whitman kid have just as much likelihood of getting picked as any of the AAP kids?

Two things:

1) It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for an elementary school to be doing something very, very wrong.

2) The kid who ends up at Whitman doesn't have the built-in advantages of receiving AAP services in the admissions process - most of which would likely have to do with writing preparation and access to a more diverse set of STEM opportunities to write about.

DP - another point that's really important is that children develop at different speeds and within their own timeframes. If you've spent any time at all in middle school education - which I have - you know that it's not abnormal to see a kid walk into 6th or 7th grade as a fairly mediocre, run-of-the-mill student and become inspired during their time to reach for greater heights than they could have thought possible. Just as some kids walk in having already grown to their full adult height when we first see them while others shoot up a foot while they're here.

What I see in this conversation is parents who are desperate to feel as though they have some control over this process - and they need to get out of that mindset because it's unhealthy for their children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

In other words, the case for TJ now isn’t to take the strongest kids in the region and cultivate their talents, but to rescue some above-average kids from the Mount Vernon pyramid, as they’d otherwise be stuck at an under-performing IB school that FCPS is too lazy to do anything about.

1) It's a false choice - TJ can do both because you're talking about a class of 550 kids. TJ doesn't need the 80th best kid from Carson - that kid doesn't provide any additional value to the environment.

2) The kids coming from that pyramid are significantly better than "above average".

What a ridiculous response. If the 80th best kid from Carson is a stronger applicant than the 2nd best applicant from Whitman, the Carson kid should get the nod, unless you’re simply committed to arbitrary, residential tokenism.

And if there were a large cohort of well above-average kids from Whitman, they wouldn’t have needed Brabrand and the School Board coming to their rescue to re-engineer the entire process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

In other words, the case for TJ now isn’t to take the strongest kids in the region and cultivate their talents, but to rescue some above-average kids from the Mount Vernon pyramid, as they’d otherwise be stuck at an under-performing IB school that FCPS is too lazy to do anything about.

1) It's a false choice - TJ can do both because you're talking about a class of 550 kids. TJ doesn't need the 80th best kid from Carson - that kid doesn't provide any additional value to the environment.

2) The kids coming from that pyramid are significantly better than "above average".

What a ridiculous response. If the 80th best kid from Carson is a stronger applicant than the 2nd best applicant from Whitman, the Carson kid should get the nod, unless you’re simply committed to arbitrary, residential tokenism.

And if there were a large cohort of well above-average kids from Whitman, they wouldn’t have needed Brabrand and the School Board coming to their rescue to re-engineer the entire process.

Please educate yourself before spewing your personal opinions on educational policy driven by your self-serving desires. Are you going to argue against real academic researchers from Johns Hopkins and Duke? What makes you so qualified to tell FCPS what's best for the kids?
Effect of Local Norms on Racial and Ethnic Representation in Gifted Education
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858419848446

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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 $$$.

You nailed it!

It's not hard to see that some pyramids have far more higher-achieving kids than others. You can ignore these differences, which are apparent in both middle schools and high schools other than TJ, but pretending that there isn't a far deeper bench in some pyramids than others is willful blindness. It's obvious that you try to mask it by suggesting that disparities that are the result of differences in resources, intelligence, and parental commitment to their children's education is all somehow due to test prepping.

You aren't fooling anyone.

There certainly is a far deeper bench at Carson than there is at, say, Whitman. That’s why Carson STILL gets in 50-60 kids compared to 5-6 at Whitman.

This is a better situation than 80-90 kids from Carson and 0 kids from Whitman, and if you can’t understand that on its face you don’t understand the classroom environment. And that’s fine - but don’t pretend that you do.

In other words, the case for TJ now isn’t to take the strongest kids in the region and cultivate their talents, but to rescue some above-average kids from the Mount Vernon pyramid, as they’d otherwise be stuck at an under-performing IB school that FCPS is too lazy to do anything about.

1) It's a false choice - TJ can do both because you're talking about a class of 550 kids. TJ doesn't need the 80th best kid from Carson - that kid doesn't provide any additional value to the environment.

2) The kids coming from that pyramid are significantly better than "above average".

What a ridiculous response. If the 80th best kid from Carson is a stronger applicant than the 2nd best applicant from Whitman, the Carson kid should get the nod, unless you’re simply committed to arbitrary, residential tokenism.

And if there were a large cohort of well above-average kids from Whitman, they wouldn’t have needed Brabrand and the School Board coming to their rescue to re-engineer the entire process.

Please educate yourself before spewing your personal opinions on educational policy driven by your self-serving desires. Are you going to argue against real academic researchers from Johns Hopkins and Duke? What makes you so qualified to tell FCPS what's best for the kids?
Effect of Local Norms on Racial and Ethnic Representation in Gifted Education
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2332858419848446

Agree, but it's also just common sense that policies that favor the naturally gifted over the least successful prepper from a rich school will result in a stronger, more diverse cohort.