Waitlisted at TJ - now what?

[Anonymous]

Seems like the mediocre, lazy parents/activitists among the so-called progressives have latched onto TJ now. They won't rest till it is remade in their form. Pull it down and make it a nice little essay spewing place where "well rounded", mediocre white boys and girls can show "leadership" skills and excel - like a nice little prissy private school. while claiming that they did good for black folk with some tokensim. White supremacy in a progressive form.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

hey are leaving out many Asian naturally gifted students in favor of above average students who can check boxes.

[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.

Again - that's a completely false choice. What you're doing is making an argument that somehow TJ is better served by having that Carson kid just because they might have taken a few more intense classes and might score slightly higher on some standardized exams - and you're not taking into account at all the impact of each of those students on the educational environment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Seems like the mediocre, lazy parents/activitists among the so-called progressives have latched onto TJ now. They won't rest till it is remade in their form. Pull it down and make it a nice little essay spewing place where "well rounded", mediocre white boys and girls can show "leadership" skills and excel - like a nice little prissy private school. while claiming that they did good for black folk with some tokensim. White supremacy in a progressive form.

....because obviously it's better for those underrepresented communities to feel as though they have no shot to go to a place like TJ?

This is completely backwards logic that is tortured to serve a deeply pernicious narrative.

Remember, the biggest beneficiaries of the new admissions process were economically disadvantaged Asian students. Why? Because they work extremely hard but didn't have the built-in advantages that the previous process afforded to wealthy families who were motivated to begin the preparation process essentially in the womb.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

hey are leaving out many Asian naturally gifted students in favor of above average students who can check boxes.

No, I don't think they mentioned race, but I can see their point. Of course, the #1 kid from a less wealthy school would be a better fit than the 80th kid from some wealthy school even though they had less prep.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

hey are leaving out many Asian naturally gifted students in favor of above average students who can check boxes.

No, I don't think they mentioned race, but I can see their point. Of course, the #1 kid from a less wealthy school would be a better fit than the 80th kid from some wealthy school even though they had less prep.

Not when the #1 kid from the less wealthy school would be #101 at their own school if FCPS hadn't already siphoned off kids #1-100 and sent them to the neighboring AAP center. Kids #1-10 from Sandburg would be able to contribute more to TJ than kid #80 from Carson. Kid #1 from Whitman is really kid #50 zoned to Whitman and is not remotely up to TJ standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

hey are leaving out many Asian naturally gifted students in favor of above average students who can check boxes.

No, I don't think they mentioned race, but I can see their point. Of course, the #1 kid from a less wealthy school would be a better fit than the 80th kid from some wealthy school even though they had less prep.

Not when the #1 kid from the less wealthy school would be #101 at their own school if FCPS hadn't already siphoned off kids #1-100 and sent them to the neighboring AAP center. Kids #1-10 from Sandburg would be able to contribute more to TJ than kid #80 from Carson. Kid #1 from Whitman is really kid #50 zoned to Whitman and is not remotely up to TJ standards.

That would only be because you're using a flawed metric. They're clearly the 79th or higher...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

hey are leaving out many Asian naturally gifted students in favor of above average students who can check boxes.

No, I don't think they mentioned race, but I can see their point. Of course, the #1 kid from a less wealthy school would be a better fit than the 80th kid from some wealthy school even though they had less prep.

Not when the #1 kid from the less wealthy school would be #101 at their own school if FCPS hadn't already siphoned off kids #1-100 and sent them to the neighboring AAP center. Kids #1-10 from Sandburg would be able to contribute more to TJ than kid #80 from Carson. Kid #1 from Whitman is really kid #50 zoned to Whitman and is not remotely up to TJ standards.

But if the #80 kid hadn't been given the test answers up front they'd be the #102 kid...

[Anonymous]

There are some good points being made on here.

I think we can all agree the sband Fairfax administration doesnt have the intellectual rigor to design the best policy

I would propose a citizen committee to do most of the heavy lifting instead with sb giving an up or down vote at the end

One policy point from me,. Aap continues to be the main pathway to tj. The identification process for aap needs to improve to actually identify gifted kids vs now where it's just smart kids in many cases skewed toward higher income and yes mainly asian and white. All sides agree on these points.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

hey are leaving out many Asian naturally gifted students in favor of above average students who can check boxes.

No, I don't think they mentioned race, but I can see their point. Of course, the #1 kid from a less wealthy school would be a better fit than the 80th kid from some wealthy school even though they had less prep.

Not when the #1 kid from the less wealthy school would be #101 at their own school if FCPS hadn't already siphoned off kids #1-100 and sent them to the neighboring AAP center. Kids #1-10 from Sandburg would be able to contribute more to TJ than kid #80 from Carson. Kid #1 from Whitman is really kid #50 zoned to Whitman and is not remotely up to TJ standards.

AGAIN - and it's annoying to have to keep making this point - you're presuming that the growth and development curves of these students are stagnant with respect to one another as they progress from the time that they are identified for AAP to the time they are evaluated for TJ.

The best analogy here is the literal growth of kids in height. Some kids top out at their full adult height in 6th grade. Others have growth spurts and surpass their peers later on in their development. It is myopic to believe that the #1-80 kid from whatever AAP school in 6th grade are necessarily going to be better fits for TJ than the #1-10 kids from some non-AAP school when they're evaluated in 8th grade.

And AGAIN - it doesn't serve elite educational communities to have a whole mess of kids within their walls come from the same few schools. Even if the 80th best kid from Carson scores somewhat higher on a few objective metrics than the top kid from Whitman, the only way you can genuinely believe that the kid from Carson will contribute more to the community is to have zero experience in elite academic environments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are some good points being made on here.

I think we can all agree the sband Fairfax administration doesnt have the intellectual rigor to design the best policy

I would propose a citizen committee to do most of the heavy lifting instead with sb giving an up or down vote at the end

One policy point from me,. Aap continues to be the main pathway to tj. The identification process for aap needs to improve to actually identify gifted kids vs now where it's just smart kids in many cases skewed toward higher income and yes mainly asian and white. All sides agree on these points.

We can't agree on that. What we should be able to agree on is that they do not have the freedom to design the best policy.

The Admissions Office designs the process based on the priorities given to them by the School Board. They do this because they are trained professionals in admissions work with tons of experience in the field. The School Board then votes up or down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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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.

hey are leaving out many Asian naturally gifted students in favor of above average students who can check boxes.

No, I don't think they mentioned race, but I can see their point. Of course, the #1 kid from a less wealthy school would be a better fit than the 80th kid from some wealthy school even though they had less prep.

Not when the #1 kid from the less wealthy school would be #101 at their own school if FCPS hadn't already siphoned off kids #1-100 and sent them to the neighboring AAP center. Kids #1-10 from Sandburg would be able to contribute more to TJ than kid #80 from Carson. Kid #1 from Whitman is really kid #50 zoned to Whitman and is not remotely up to TJ standards.

AGAIN - and it's annoying to have to keep making this point - you're presuming that the growth and development curves of these students are stagnant with respect to one another as they progress from the time that they are identified for AAP to the time they are evaluated for TJ.

The best analogy here is the literal growth of kids in height. Some kids top out at their full adult height in 6th grade. Others have growth spurts and surpass their peers later on in their development. It is myopic to believe that the #1-80 kid from whatever AAP school in 6th grade are necessarily going to be better fits for TJ than the #1-10 kids from some non-AAP school when they're evaluated in 8th grade.

And AGAIN - it doesn't serve elite educational communities to have a whole mess of kids within their walls come from the same few schools. Even if the 80th best kid from Carson scores somewhat higher on a few objective metrics than the top kid from Whitman, the only way you can genuinely believe that the kid from Carson will contribute more to the community is to have zero experience in elite academic environments.

AGAIN - and it's annoying for me to have to keep making this point - No one is saying that the 80th best kid from Carson should be included. I'm just saying that the Sandburg AAP kids zoned to Whitman should count against Whitman's 1.5% allocation and not Sandburg's. If your entire argument is that some kids are later bloomers, then you're saying that it's appropriate and fair for a gen ed kid from Sandburg to effectively have no chance of getting picked for AAP, since they have to compete against their own zoned AAP kids as well as the Whitman zoned AAP kids, while the Whitman gen ed kid doesn't have to compete against any of those and will be able to get picked for TJ with relatively unimpressive stats. The most equitable solution would be to have the Whitman gen ed kids + Whitman zoned Sandburg AAP kids in the Whitman 1.5% pot and then Sandburg gen ed kids + Sandburg zoned AAP kids in the Sandburg 1.5% plot. There are zero bonuses in the application process for AAP, so there's no reason that a late blooming all Honors gen ed kid wouldn't have a reasonable shot of being picked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are some good points being made on here.

I think we can all agree the sband Fairfax administration doesnt have the intellectual rigor to design the best policy

I would propose a citizen committee to do most of the heavy lifting instead with sb giving an up or down vote at the end

One policy point from me,. Aap continues to be the main pathway to tj. The identification process for aap needs to improve to actually identify gifted kids vs now where it's just smart kids in many cases skewed toward higher income and yes mainly asian and white. All sides agree on these points.

Am I the only person here who read the AAP equity report? They're NOT missing any URM gifted kids. In fact, the process is highly skewed toward admitting any URM who is a pretty good student and has test scores 115+. The URMs are getting in with much lower scores than white and Asian kids.

They certainly are over-identifying affluent/prepped white and Asian kids. They are not under-identifying URMs.

If you want to fix the AAP to TJ pipeline, the best way is to have the 2nd grade admissions only be for 2nd-6th grade, and then have another round of admissions in 6th for middle school AAP. This would let schools more easily add the late bloomers and boot out the kids who don't belong.

[Anonymous]

There are 12 or so middle schools that are not AAP Centers. If you assume 6 dedicated spots per school for TJ, then that's 72 spots allocated exclusively to kids not in AAP. FCPS only has slightly over 300 slots, so that's a huge portion of the FCPS spots to set aside in the hopes that some kid might be a late bloomer.

If FCPS used zoned school rather than attending school, they'd still have the same geographic diversity without making it significantly harder to get accepted to TJ from AAP than it is from gen ed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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.

hey are leaving out many Asian naturally gifted students in favor of above average students who can check boxes.

No, I don't think they mentioned race, but I can see their point. Of course, the #1 kid from a less wealthy school would be a better fit than the 80th kid from some wealthy school even though they had less prep.

Not when the #1 kid from the less wealthy school would be #101 at their own school if FCPS hadn't already siphoned off kids #1-100 and sent them to the neighboring AAP center. Kids #1-10 from Sandburg would be able to contribute more to TJ than kid #80 from Carson. Kid #1 from Whitman is really kid #50 zoned to Whitman and is not remotely up to TJ standards.

AGAIN - and it's annoying to have to keep making this point - you're presuming that the growth and development curves of these students are stagnant with respect to one another as they progress from the time that they are identified for AAP to the time they are evaluated for TJ.

The best analogy here is the literal growth of kids in height. Some kids top out at their full adult height in 6th grade. Others have growth spurts and surpass their peers later on in their development. It is myopic to believe that the #1-80 kid from whatever AAP school in 6th grade are necessarily going to be better fits for TJ than the #1-10 kids from some non-AAP school when they're evaluated in 8th grade.

And AGAIN - it doesn't serve elite educational communities to have a whole mess of kids within their walls come from the same few schools. Even if the 80th best kid from Carson scores somewhat higher on a few objective metrics than the top kid from Whitman, the only way you can genuinely believe that the kid from Carson will contribute more to the community is to have zero experience in elite academic environments.

AGAIN - and it's annoying for me to have to keep making this point - No one is saying that the 80th best kid from Carson should be included. I'm just saying that the Sandburg AAP kids zoned to Whitman should count against Whitman's 1.5% allocation and not Sandburg's. If your entire argument is that some kids are later bloomers, then you're saying that it's appropriate and fair for a gen ed kid from Sandburg to effectively have no chance of getting picked for AAP, since they have to compete against their own zoned AAP kids as well as the Whitman zoned AAP kids, while the Whitman gen ed kid doesn't have to compete against any of those and will be able to get picked for TJ with relatively unimpressive stats. The most equitable solution would be to have the Whitman gen ed kids + Whitman zoned Sandburg AAP kids in the Whitman 1.5% pot and then Sandburg gen ed kids + Sandburg zoned AAP kids in the Sandburg 1.5% plot. There are zero bonuses in the application process for AAP, so there's no reason that a late blooming all Honors gen ed kid wouldn't have a reasonable shot of being picked.

Point-by-point:

1) PLENTY of people are saying that the 80th best kid from Carson should be included. The fact that you're apparently not doesn't eliminate all of those other voices.

2) Your solution - to place the Whitman-zoned kids who are at Sandburg in the Whitman pool - essentially eliminates the possibility that any kids who actually attend Whitman would have a realistic shot to be selected. It would also greatly increase the number of students - probably in your mind, by design - from the large feeder schools like Carson and Longfellow, because they'd end up taking a ton of the slots that would otherwise be offered to kids from Herndon, Franklin, etc. This idea is just another way of trying to create more spaces from Carson at TJ, when the entire point of this exercise is to STOP having an overwhelming percentage of the students who attend TJ coming from such a limited group of schools. It doesn't solve any of TJ's problems with experiential or socioeconomic diversity to simply create a new way to ensure that the vast majority of students come from the AAP program.

3) The historical structural advantages that AAP students enjoy in the TJ admissions process don't have anything to do with the admissions policy. There has NEVER been a point-value bonus in the admissions process for attending an AAP center or for taking a particularly advanced math class. Those advantages come from existing amongst a group of students and parents who have cobbled together years and years of institutional knowledge about the process. They come from being a part of communities where parents have been attending TJ Open Houses since they were pregnant for the first time. They come from belonging to PTSAs where parents share resources for how to best attack the process. And the rewards (not de jure, but de facto) of existing in those spaces needs to be eliminated, or at least mitigated to the extent possible.