Race and TJ admissions

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

That’s… not how statistical analysis works at all. At most you can claim for certain that 30% of offers went to students with experience factors. Now, the number may be slightly higher than that as you MAY have a few students who do NOT have multiple EFs. But given the history of who has attended TJ and who has not, it is entirely reasonable to assume, for instance, that most students who are Economically Disadvantaged also come from Underrepresented Schools.

A TJ RS1 student who sent in your analysis would flunk and be sent back to their base school.

Do you have any hard number to back your claim that only 30% of students admitted have experience factors? Lack their of, we will take what’s published with some grain salt. Your interpretation is as good as anyone who picks a random number from air. Granted, it’s not 70%, but if say, it would be at least 50% went to these factors, can you prove me wrong with actual published data? Then I will agree. You don’t need to make derogatory statements that pp will flunk stats class - for ref, I have masters in engineering 😀

Lack any concrete data, it would be reasonable take the middle ground of 50% for all experienced factors i.e. 70% ( sum all percentages for each of experience factors) and 31% (min of these factors). I would really glad to be proven wrong here with actual evidence/data. If you do, please feel free to share, otherwise not interested any personal interpretations that don’t have any merit. My kid goes to Longfellow and I am curious now!

[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:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

That’s… not how statistical analysis works at all. At most you can claim for certain that 30% of offers went to students with experience factors. Now, the number may be slightly higher than that as you MAY have a few students who do NOT have multiple EFs. But given the history of who has attended TJ and who has not, it is entirely reasonable to assume, for instance, that most students who are Economically Disadvantaged also come from Underrepresented Schools.

A TJ RS1 student who sent in your analysis would flunk and be sent back to their base school.

Do you have any hard number to back your claim that only 30% of students admitted have experience factors? Lack their of, we will take what’s published with some grain salt. Your interpretation is as good as anyone who picks a random number from air. Granted, it’s not 70%, but if say, it would be at least 50% went to these factors, can you prove me wrong with actual published data? Then I will agree. You don’t need to make derogatory statements that pp will flunk stats class - for ref, I have masters in engineering 😀

My exact words were “at most you can claim for certain”.

But that’s part of why folks think engineers can’t read.

[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:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

That’s… not how statistical analysis works at all. At most you can claim for certain that 30% of offers went to students with experience factors. Now, the number may be slightly higher than that as you MAY have a few students who do NOT have multiple EFs. But given the history of who has attended TJ and who has not, it is entirely reasonable to assume, for instance, that most students who are Economically Disadvantaged also come from Underrepresented Schools.

A TJ RS1 student who sent in your analysis would flunk and be sent back to their base school.

Do you have any hard number to back your claim that only 30% of students admitted have experience factors? Lack their of, we will take what’s published with some grain salt. Your interpretation is as good as anyone who picks a random number from air. Granted, it’s not 70%, but if say, it would be at least 50% went to these factors, can you prove me wrong with actual published data? Then I will agree. You don’t need to make derogatory statements that pp will flunk stats class - for ref, I have masters in engineering 😀

My exact words were “at most you can claim for certain”.

But that’s part of why folks think engineers can’t read.

If your ‘folks think’ comment makes you sleep better, then all the power to you! You are correct that engineers and data scientists can’t read data and they design stuff out of thin air! 😉

[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:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

That’s… not how statistical analysis works at all. At most you can claim for certain that 30% of offers went to students with experience factors. Now, the number may be slightly higher than that as you MAY have a few students who do NOT have multiple EFs. But given the history of who has attended TJ and who has not, it is entirely reasonable to assume, for instance, that most students who are Economically Disadvantaged also come from Underrepresented Schools.

A TJ RS1 student who sent in your analysis would flunk and be sent back to their base school.

Do you have any hard number to back your claim that only 30% of students admitted have experience factors? Lack their of, we will take what’s published with some grain salt. Your interpretation is as good as anyone who picks a random number from air. Granted, it’s not 70%, but if say, it would be at least 50% went to these factors, can you prove me wrong with actual published data? Then I will agree. You don’t need to make derogatory statements that pp will flunk stats class - for ref, I have masters in engineering 😀

My exact words were “at most you can claim for certain”.

But that’s part of why folks think engineers can’t read.

If your ‘folks think’ comment makes you sleep better, then all the power to you! You are correct that engineers and data scientists can’t read data and they design stuff out of thin air! 😉

Pp here, btw, my fair assumption is at least 50-55% went to experience factors. That’s probably why many of the typical feeder school admissions were cut by more than half and it’s fair to assume that about quarter of the admissions from these feeder schools went to experience factors. I have no proof for either of the numbers, so you are free to do your own conclusions as I have nothing solid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

Wow, thanks for sharing the link. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize that how much it’s changed. My kid goes to Carson and we don’t qualify for any of the factors. He thought he did well and has high expectations, but I need to warn him not to keep hopes high as he will only really be competing for remaining 30% of available seats and face competition from everyone in the similar boat. We can’t simply assume it’s still at least half as good compared to previous years as a good percent of acceptance from Carson also likely benefited by experience factors. He is better of at base high school.

That's the thing I find the most bothersome about the new process. At a school like Carson, there will be over 100+ kids who all look the same on paper. There is no way for the super geniuses to distinguish themselves from the above average, good students. The one thing that would push a child above the rest is fraudulently claiming FARMS status or having a SN (in some cases, also quasi-fraudulently so). What fraction of the Carson, Longfellow, or Rocky Run spots were snapped up by people who gamed the experience factors?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

That’s… not how statistical analysis works at all. At most you can claim for certain that 30% of offers went to students with experience factors. Now, the number may be slightly higher than that as you MAY have a few students who do NOT have multiple EFs. But given the history of who has attended TJ and who has not, it is entirely reasonable to assume, for instance, that most students who are Economically Disadvantaged also come from Underrepresented Schools.

A TJ RS1 student who sent in your analysis would flunk and be sent back to their base school.

DP. The problem with your assumption is that FCPS didn't verify that kids who checked the box for receiving free meals were actually economically disadvantaged. Technically, anyone could have checked the box indicating that their children received free meals, since this is true for all FCPS kids. This might not normally be an issue, except that some TJ prep centers told non-FARMS people to check the FARMS boxes.

[Anonymous]

I wish fcps cross check home addresses for home values (or rents) and issue an audit to provide the proof that kids actually qualify for reduced meals. If not, the applicant should be disqualified.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish fcps cross check home addresses for home values (or rents) and issue an audit to provide the proof that kids actually qualify for reduced meals. If not, the applicant should be disqualified.

That would be awesome and also ban them from all future nrichment for cheating.

[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:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

Wow, thanks for sharing the link. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize that how much it’s changed. My kid goes to Carson and we don’t qualify for any of the factors. He thought he did well and has high expectations, but I need to warn him not to keep hopes high as he will only really be competing for remaining 30% of available seats and face competition from everyone in the similar boat. We can’t simply assume it’s still at least half as good compared to previous years as a good percent of acceptance from Carson also likely benefited by experience factors. He is better of at base high school.

That's the thing I find the most bothersome about the new process. At a school like Carson, there will be over 100+ kids who all look the same on paper. There is no way for the super geniuses to distinguish themselves from the above average, good students. The one thing that would push a child above the rest is fraudulently claiming FARMS status or having a SN (in some cases, also quasi-fraudulently so). What fraction of the Carson, Longfellow, or Rocky Run spots were snapped up by people who gamed the experience factors?

What would have separated them was the evaluation of their responses to the Student Portrait Sheet questions and whether they came off as genuine or canned.

You have to remember, what parents pay for in exam prep is the ability to pass off their relatively workaday child as the very "super-genius" that you're referencing. That's a lot of why you had hundreds of students in each class who engaged in relatively few extracurricular activities at TJ but still complained of being up until 2 AM working on their physics problem sets.

[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:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

Wow, thanks for sharing the link. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize that how much it’s changed. My kid goes to Carson and we don’t qualify for any of the factors. He thought he did well and has high expectations, but I need to warn him not to keep hopes high as he will only really be competing for remaining 30% of available seats and face competition from everyone in the similar boat. We can’t simply assume it’s still at least half as good compared to previous years as a good percent of acceptance from Carson also likely benefited by experience factors. He is better of at base high school.

That's the thing I find the most bothersome about the new process. At a school like Carson, there will be over 100+ kids who all look the same on paper. There is no way for the super geniuses to distinguish themselves from the above average, good students. The one thing that would push a child above the rest is fraudulently claiming FARMS status or having a SN (in some cases, also quasi-fraudulently so). What fraction of the Carson, Longfellow, or Rocky Run spots were snapped up by people who gamed the experience factors?

What would have separated them was the evaluation of their responses to the Student Portrait Sheet questions and whether they came off as genuine or canned.

You have to remember, what parents pay for in exam prep is the ability to pass off their relatively workaday child as the very "super-genius" that you're referencing. That's a lot of why you had hundreds of students in each class who engaged in relatively few extracurricular activities at TJ but still complained of being up until 2 AM working on their physics problem sets.

You're making the huge assumption that prepped kids will come across as 'canned' and unprepped ones will come across as 'genuine.' The prep centers also prep the kids for writing a good essay response. It's likely that the prepped kids are crushing the Student Portrait Sheet questions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
What I have learned in many years of experience in Northern Virginia and TJ is this:

If you have a hard and fast selection criteria that you use and apply equally to all students - basically no matter what it is - the system will favor the parents who have the resources and motivation to fit their round kid into the square hole. And you’re going to get a huge number of kids who all have relatively the same profile because the parents figured out that “that’s the profile that works”.

No matter what racial balance that creates, it’s a negative outcome for TJ. Too many similar kids results in mental health issues.

What everyone (mostly everyone) wants is a return to the best years of TJ, to the good old days when gifted students had rigorous but not crushing classes, a peer group of innovative students, and lower pressure. The 80s and 90s, maybe?

So far, no one has any idea how to recreate that. But I think a change is a step in the right direction.

[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:Federal court found with proof that it’s discrimination against Asians. Can anyone on this forum give process that there was No discrimination and that federal court is wrong. Evidence and facts are appreciated here.

No one is arguing about the evidence, the question is whether or not the law was correctly applied. If this case stands, desecration is de facto unconstitutional because it will always have a disproportionate effect on whatever race is dominant in the institution being desegregated.

I don't think most of the complaints are targeted towards boards decision to improve the admission process. It is the specific targeted changes and the manor in which the board pushed the changes. Its inevitable that any improvements will negatively effect the dominant group and thats not an issue here. Contrary to what many are interpreting, this is not what people are angry about.

Just get rid of the other experience factors (a.k.a. free bonus points), remove attending school based quotas and everyone will be fine even if it ends up with lower asians. If the board insists on quotas, keep it a school pyramid level or at least do it based on 'base' middle schools so it won't discriminate against AAP ex: allocate half of the seats equally among each school pyramid and keep the other half in an open pool for all. Very few will complain about it.

Personally, I would like to have a tricky to prep test like olympiads, teacher referrals and gpa combined into a relatively difficult admission process. But apparently, this would lead to even more asians than we currently have, so it was a no go from the start. Oh well

So.... no. The bottom line is that you have two groups that are at odds with one another:

1) FCPS and the School Board, which, for better or for worse, sees a problem with the composition of the school across whatever metrics

2) A "parent group" supported by dark money that is seeking to use TJ as a test case to invalidate the idea of affirmative action in all academic areas.

There are individuals (presumably, like you) who profess to be more worried with how things were done than what was done, but the reality is that the major thrust behind C4TJ are people who want to preserve their ability to use their resources and enthusiasm for TJ to give their children advantages in the admissions process.

They want an admissions process that is completely transparent and objective so that they can mold their children to check the respective boxes - which invariably results in a student body that is very similar to one another, perhaps along racial lines but certainly in terms of goals, ambitions, and interests.

I am also one of those who is worried about the direction TJ is going in order to "punish" prep centers, but they don't realize that they are also punishing the specific kids as well that fall into targeted categories even if they are not being prepped. There are 500 kids in AAP alone in Carson in each grade and more than half of them apply to TJ and even if you assume half (which is high) are prepped, then the other half are facing increased competition by just being there. Even the kids who are prepped, they may be inherently smart and do not deserve the negative treatment.

No matter how you design, it is very difficult to avoid prepping. Even if fully focussed on GPA, there is a lot of after school enrichment, personal tutoring that puts some kids ahead of the curve. Some kids interact better with teachers and some don't which affect referrals. Some kids are have much better writing skills than technical/stem knowledge who have a leg up in the game over shy by real geeky kid. The point here is, it is almost impossible to find true hidden talent unless you closely interact with a person on a regular basis and if you are trying to use the new admission process to find those, then you are out of luck.

So, in the end, I am worried that TJ is being slowly watered down. Sure, it might still be better than other base high schools, but may not be a hyper competitive environment like before. It will not be much different from any AP/Honors class. If the kid maintains relatively good gpa and ability to write good sentences, its all that is needed to get into TJ, especially if the kid is not from Carson, Longfellow or Rocky Run. Even at these 3 schools, new admission criteria may not clearly make smart STEM focussed kids stand out from others who just study for grades. So, over time, the environment at TJ may mellow down, while other base schools start to compete with TJ. If this is the intended goal for TJ, then there is nothing much to argue here.

Here's my question. The bulk of the kids used to come from the 3 center schools. Aren't the high schools that are the natural feeders going to outperform TJ because they will be full of the top applicants now vs TJ with kids from every geographic region.

To put it another way, if I was a parent of a kid at one of the 3 centers why would I want to go to TJ vs the natural HS feeder which will now have more of the center folks as classmates vs TJ

So the counter to this argument SHOULD be that the admissions process will identify the highest performing center students for selection. Remember, it’s not like the centers are only getting 1.5% in. Carson still got 40+ kids and Longfellow still got 30+.

Now - I think that the admissions process probably needs one more input - teacher recs - to feel confident that those top kids are being identified. But kids 50-80 from Carson… those kids, their base school, AND TJ are all better served by those kids going to their base. It’s a no brainer.

This is fine, but why can’t you do this with out quotas and free bonus points? Why is so difficult to come up with a selection criteria that applies to all equally? The current process says to these kids, we know you can’t compete at the same level, so will add 100-300 bonus points to your achievement, so you will be at the same level as other kids.

What makes you think that board didn’t think of this? I am sure they tried, but they couldn’t come up with any process that applies fairly and equally to all the kids and still ‘punish’ the kids/parents with strong focus on education and tend to live in certain neighborhoods. Hence the ‘free’ bonus points 😉

If you need to understand how badly these other experience factors titled the field, just take look at
http://www.fcag.org/TJHSSTClassof2025AdmissionsPressRelease.pdf

Based on the above published doc, around 70% (yes, add up the percentages) of offers went to kids who got bonus points for these factors. Sure some kids who might fall into more than one experience categories, so this prevent may be slightly lower around 60-65%, but you get the point. It’s quite possible that may of the kids who got selected from Carson/Longfellow likely benefited from one of these factors. It’s not fair to all the other kids, but clearly achieved the target of hurting the target population.

Wow, thanks for sharing the link. I knew it was bad, but I didn’t realize that how much it’s changed. My kid goes to Carson and we don’t qualify for any of the factors. He thought he did well and has high expectations, but I need to warn him not to keep hopes high as he will only really be competing for remaining 30% of available seats and face competition from everyone in the similar boat. We can’t simply assume it’s still at least half as good compared to previous years as a good percent of acceptance from Carson also likely benefited by experience factors. He is better of at base high school.

That's the thing I find the most bothersome about the new process. At a school like Carson, there will be over 100+ kids who all look the same on paper. There is no way for the super geniuses to distinguish themselves from the above average, good students. The one thing that would push a child above the rest is fraudulently claiming FARMS status or having a SN (in some cases, also quasi-fraudulently so). What fraction of the Carson, Longfellow, or Rocky Run spots were snapped up by people who gamed the experience factors?

What would have separated them was the evaluation of their responses to the Student Portrait Sheet questions and whether they came off as genuine or canned.

You have to remember, what parents pay for in exam prep is the ability to pass off their relatively workaday child as the very "super-genius" that you're referencing. That's a lot of why you had hundreds of students in each class who engaged in relatively few extracurricular activities at TJ but still complained of being up until 2 AM working on their physics problem sets.

You're making the huge assumption that prepped kids will come across as 'canned' and unprepped ones will come across as 'genuine.' The prep centers also prep the kids for writing a good essay response. It's likely that the prepped kids are crushing the Student Portrait Sheet questions.

I wouldn't be so sure. Admissions officers generally have a good eye for such things. And when they read dozens/hundreds of essays, it becomes relatively easy to see the formula that kids are getting from these prep centers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What I have learned in many years of experience in Northern Virginia and TJ is this:

If you have a hard and fast selection criteria that you use and apply equally to all students - basically no matter what it is - the system will favor the parents who have the resources and motivation to fit their round kid into the square hole. And you’re going to get a huge number of kids who all have relatively the same profile because the parents figured out that “that’s the profile that works”.

No matter what racial balance that creates, it’s a negative outcome for TJ. Too many similar kids results in mental health issues.

What everyone (mostly everyone) wants is a return to the best years of TJ, to the good old days when gifted students had rigorous but not crushing classes, a peer group of innovative students, and lower pressure. The 80s and 90s, maybe?

So far, no one has any idea how to recreate that. But I think a change is a step in the right direction.

Yup this is the core issue

It used to be that AAP was a good metric, now it's more about playing the game and plenty of above average but not actually genius level kids are in the programs

You could make an argument that the bulk of kids should be coming from Carson Longfellow and Rocky but again how many folks are actually genius vs how many kids are just working hard and gaming the system

I made the point earlier about the bulk of the admissions should be from those 3 schools

I think we can all agree we should really be focused on the actual geniuses attending lower performing schools in FPS. In theory that's what AAP should be doing identifying those kids and providing differentiated instruction which is unavailable at the base school. Again most of AAP now is simply wealthy above average kids mixed in with the actual geniuses.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What I have learned in many years of experience in Northern Virginia and TJ is this:

If you have a hard and fast selection criteria that you use and apply equally to all students - basically no matter what it is - the system will favor the parents who have the resources and motivation to fit their round kid into the square hole. And you’re going to get a huge number of kids who all have relatively the same profile because the parents figured out that “that’s the profile that works”.

No matter what racial balance that creates, it’s a negative outcome for TJ. Too many similar kids results in mental health issues.

What everyone (mostly everyone) wants is a return to the best years of TJ, to the good old days when gifted students had rigorous but not crushing classes, a peer group of innovative students, and lower pressure. The 80s and 90s, maybe?

So far, no one has any idea how to recreate that. But I think a change is a step in the right direction.

It shouldn't be that complicated to recreate it. TJ is and has always been at its best when its students have diverse enough profiles and interests that they are able to find their niche without feeling like they're all competing for the same prize.

An opaque process that is openly and purposefully seeking exceptional students with diverse backgrounds, interests, and priorities will get this done fairly easily - and will invite a greater number of strong applicants from those diverse backgrounds to apply.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
What I have learned in many years of experience in Northern Virginia and TJ is this:

If you have a hard and fast selection criteria that you use and apply equally to all students - basically no matter what it is - the system will favor the parents who have the resources and motivation to fit their round kid into the square hole. And you’re going to get a huge number of kids who all have relatively the same profile because the parents figured out that “that’s the profile that works”.

No matter what racial balance that creates, it’s a negative outcome for TJ. Too many similar kids results in mental health issues.

What everyone (mostly everyone) wants is a return to the best years of TJ, to the good old days when gifted students had rigorous but not crushing classes, a peer group of innovative students, and lower pressure. The 80s and 90s, maybe?

So far, no one has any idea how to recreate that. But I think a change is a step in the right direction.

To recreate that, you'd need to return to a time when a good but not great TJ student could count on UVA as a fall back and VT as a safety. Any school comprised of kids all wanting to go to competitive colleges is going to have pressure because those kids know they have to outperform their peers to make it happen