TJHSST Director of Admissions leaves FCPS after 25 years

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

"Undervalued communities" is just a doushebag of bullsheet. Nobody can undervalue you except yourself. Don't blame others when you haven't worked hard enough.

Presuming that folks haven't worked hard enough just because they're poor, Black, or Hispanic isn't really a good look. It's also not a good look when the "work" they've had access to isn't narrowly tailored to success on a specific exam or in a specific admissions process.

You want to protect the advantages of groups that already have advantages. Just own up to that and be fine with it - it is a legitimate political position that I happen to disagree with.

When people start questioning DEI, you immediately think of Black and Hispanic. Do you see the problem with this kneejerk? You choose to stay in your pit and never get out. Or you see it as a privilege or entitlement that you don't want to lose.

Those are the communities that have been undervalued. Until that is no longer the case, it's good policy to create an atmosphere where everyone has a chance to compete and have input. Full stop.

They have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. Full stop.

You can't possibly believe this. Opportunity includes access to resources. Freedom of time. Food security. A heightened sense of safety in and around the home. Supports, academic and otherwise, as needed, often from a parent who is not overworked and/or commuting extensively and/or who can afford to hire help. Early childhood exposure to language. Kids have absolutely no control over these things for the vast majority of their lives prior to 8th grade when they apply to TJ. Are there other aspects of effort and achievement and hard work they CAN control? Absolutely! But that doesn't negate that there are other opportunity factors with gross imbalances.

Putting kids at different starting points on the track before you yell "go" and claiming they all have equal opportunity to run as fast as they can within their lanes to the finish line is willfully ignoring some realities to focus only on others, usually the ones that benefit you and whatever you perceive your in-group to be.

If equal resources are necessary for equal opportunity then equal opportunity is not possible.

Everyone does not have equal ability to compete, but everyone has the same opportunity to compete.

Everyone in this country has the ability to improve their circumstances to the point where their children will be able to do better than them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

What's more correct is that we have a political environment right now where if you're not solidly in one of two camps:

1) All DEI all the time! or
2) All efforts to support marginalized populations are garbage!

... then you don't have a home. If you want to belong to ANYTHING, you have to pick one or the other. There's no room for a commonsense middle path anymore.

The real answer in this situation is that defining acceptance to TJ as an "outcome" is problematic. Framing it as a contest or a prize to be won rather than as an opportunity to be properly distributed for maximum effect is awful.

TJ's job is to serve the STEM community writ large, not to serve parents who are trying to maximize their child's life outcomes. So a proper admissions policy for such a school would necessarily balance the need to identify top talent with the need to include populations that are underrepresented in STEM fields so as to grow the base of talent for the future and to address the needs of communities that are being harmed by the profit motive.

The new admissions process took a step in a positive direction by including students from those undervalued communities, but did so partly at the expense of identifying top talent (this is at once both inarguable AND overblown - it's a problem but by no means a crisis).

The next step will be to figure out a way to more concretely identify a strong group of talent from all of those communities - which will probably require different methods and priorities of evaluation for each of those groups. But one thing that will not succeed at all is to evaluate all of them along the same metric out of a misplaced loyalty to "objectivity". That way lies madness and a return to the dark years of the mid-2010s where TJ produced high rankings (thanks to a retrograde system that relied on exam performance) - but very, very little else thanks to a staggering homogeneity of the student population.

Why is there a "need" to include underrepresented populations? Why can't we stop at identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color?

Academics undervalued communities that undervalue academics.

We should absolutely be identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color. But you can't possibly believe that we were doing that in the before times unless you think it was correct to admit a larger number of Asian students in the Class of 2024 than they'd admitted Black students in TJ's entire history in total to that point.

I am not here to argue that STEM talent is evenly distributed - it's not because the Asian immigrants who came to this area did so in order to leverage their STEM skills in America's second most significant tech market (after Silicon Valley). But the distribution is not so overwhelming as to produce that outcome, and to believe it is is to have a deeply disturbing view of Black people in this country.

The overwhelming majority of applications are from Asian students, of course they will have a greater number of students when other races do not apply at anywhere near the same rates. How is it deeply disturbing to any other race to realize that if one race applies at a rate significantly higher than any other race, that particular race (Asian) would also have significantly more students accepted???

Also, when 74% of the applicants are Asian American, how is it that their admitted percent is disproportionately restricted to 57% of the class?

DP.

I don't think your numbers are correct. The current admissions process sort of takes a cross section of the applicant pool so the percentage of asian applicants is pretty close to the percentage of asian admits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

"Undervalued communities" is just a doushebag of bullsheet. Nobody can undervalue you except yourself. Don't blame others when you haven't worked hard enough.

Presuming that folks haven't worked hard enough just because they're poor, Black, or Hispanic isn't really a good look. It's also not a good look when the "work" they've had access to isn't narrowly tailored to success on a specific exam or in a specific admissions process.

You want to protect the advantages of groups that already have advantages. Just own up to that and be fine with it - it is a legitimate political position that I happen to disagree with.

When people start questioning DEI, you immediately think of Black and Hispanic. Do you see the problem with this kneejerk? You choose to stay in your pit and never get out. Or you see it as a privilege or entitlement that you don't want to lose.

Those are the communities that have been undervalued. Until that is no longer the case, it's good policy to create an atmosphere where everyone has a chance to compete and have input. Full stop.

They have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. Full stop.

This is the poster who want everybody to believe that 1:1 tutor at $180 per hour rate in the comfort of fancy home, is the same with self study (while also babysitting 3 little sibling) from $20 prep books from amazon.

The idea was not to take a way the first, but, only hope to at least give a chance to the latter.

That’s a fair point, but the real solution is to provide early support rather than guaranteeing outcomes in high school, especially at a place like TJ. I’m even okay with tax-funded tutoring and mentoring at the elementary level, but forcing guaranteed outcomes through DEI at high schools or TJ is not the answer. And smearing hardworking middle-class parents for investing in their children's education is utter nonsense.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

"Undervalued communities" is just a doushebag of bullsheet. Nobody can undervalue you except yourself. Don't blame others when you haven't worked hard enough.

Presuming that folks haven't worked hard enough just because they're poor, Black, or Hispanic isn't really a good look. It's also not a good look when the "work" they've had access to isn't narrowly tailored to success on a specific exam or in a specific admissions process.

You want to protect the advantages of groups that already have advantages. Just own up to that and be fine with it - it is a legitimate political position that I happen to disagree with.

When people start questioning DEI, you immediately think of Black and Hispanic. Do you see the problem with this kneejerk? You choose to stay in your pit and never get out. Or you see it as a privilege or entitlement that you don't want to lose.

Those are the communities that have been undervalued. Until that is no longer the case, it's good policy to create an atmosphere where everyone has a chance to compete and have input. Full stop.

They have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. Full stop.

This is the poster who want everybody to believe that 1:1 tutor at $180 per hour rate in the comfort of fancy home, is the same with self study (while also babysitting 3 little sibling) from $20 prep books from amazon.

The idea was not to take a way the first, but, only hope to at least give a chance to the latter.

That’s a fair point, but the real solution is to provide early support rather than guaranteeing outcomes in high school, especially at a place like TJ. I’m even okay with tax-funded tutoring and mentoring at the elementary level, but forcing guaranteed outcomes through DEI at high schools or TJ is not the answer. And smearing hardworking middle-class parents for investing in their children's education is utter nonsense.

While you are fine with tax funded tutor, there will be outrage from the rest, because they won’t even let their kids sit next to the poor in AAP.

And nobody smearing middle class for investing in their children’s education. TJ was added 10% seat. The Farms rate was 1% and went up to 11%, just about it, none of MC seats taken.

And I think there is never a “guarantee outcomes” as you said. Remember that this kid is also very likely have the same 4.0 gpa with your kid, and they are 1.5% highest at their MS, and they are also able to produce decent essay writing.
The difference is that they might not enrolled in Algebra2 nor even Geometry in MS, and that will cause decline in the TJ rank. That will seen as the greatest lost for some, losing the bragging rights that their kids attend the greatest HS in the world. Thats about it.

Of course your smearing middle class people for investing in their children. That's what all the fkn test prep rhetoric is about.

I don't think guarantee outcomes is the right word. You're trying to equalize outcomes despite differences in ability or effort.

BTW, I am not the person you were responding to. I was a DP. same with

12:11
12:13
12:16 (edit: "pay discrimination" should read "past discrimination")

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

Wow. Stop spreading fake news. The data show that TJ is not selecting the top students. Don't know if past process was rigged, but current process is off too.

TJ now selects the very top students from each school, unlike the past, where it selected students from a few wealthy students, where many bought early access to the test questions.

It doesn't even do that. It randomly selects from the self selected applicants from each school.

In the past it was selecting a bit more on merit and merit can be increased through investment in human capital. Affluent schools tend to have more of that.
The best way to identify gifted poor kids is with a test.
Harvard thinks so
MIT thinks so
Brown thinks so

Stuyvesant high school proves it
Bronx science proves it
Brooklyn tech proves it

Bring back the test and bring back merit.
it really is that simple.

MIT alum - they take a lot of kids with potential that aren't prepared for MIT. Hence the MITES program to prepare minorities and kids from rural areas.

The lesson is that you have to prepare the kids that need it with extra summer school programming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

What's more correct is that we have a political environment right now where if you're not solidly in one of two camps:

1) All DEI all the time! or
2) All efforts to support marginalized populations are garbage!

... then you don't have a home. If you want to belong to ANYTHING, you have to pick one or the other. There's no room for a commonsense middle path anymore.

The real answer in this situation is that defining acceptance to TJ as an "outcome" is problematic. Framing it as a contest or a prize to be won rather than as an opportunity to be properly distributed for maximum effect is awful.

TJ's job is to serve the STEM community writ large, not to serve parents who are trying to maximize their child's life outcomes. So a proper admissions policy for such a school would necessarily balance the need to identify top talent with the need to include populations that are underrepresented in STEM fields so as to grow the base of talent for the future and to address the needs of communities that are being harmed by the profit motive.

The new admissions process took a step in a positive direction by including students from those undervalued communities, but did so partly at the expense of identifying top talent (this is at once both inarguable AND overblown - it's a problem but by no means a crisis).

The next step will be to figure out a way to more concretely identify a strong group of talent from all of those communities - which will probably require different methods and priorities of evaluation for each of those groups. But one thing that will not succeed at all is to evaluate all of them along the same metric out of a misplaced loyalty to "objectivity". That way lies madness and a return to the dark years of the mid-2010s where TJ produced high rankings (thanks to a retrograde system that relied on exam performance) - but very, very little else thanks to a staggering homogeneity of the student population.

Why is there a "need" to include underrepresented populations? Why can't we stop at identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color?

Academics undervalued communities that undervalue academics.

We should absolutely be identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color. But you can't possibly believe that we were doing that in the before times unless you think it was correct to admit a larger number of Asian students in the Class of 2024 than they'd admitted Black students in TJ's entire history in total to that point.

I am not here to argue that STEM talent is evenly distributed - it's not because the Asian immigrants who came to this area did so in order to leverage their STEM skills in America's second most significant tech market (after Silicon Valley). But the distribution is not so overwhelming as to produce that outcome, and to believe it is is to have a deeply disturbing view of Black people in this country.

The overwhelming majority of applications are from Asian students, of course they will have a greater number of students when other races do not apply at anywhere near the same rates. How is it deeply disturbing to any other race to realize that if one race applies at a rate significantly higher than any other race, that particular race (Asian) would also have significantly more students accepted???

Also, when 74% of the applicants are Asian American, how is it that their admitted percent is disproportionately restricted to 57% of the class?

FAKE NEWS


Class of 2025
50.6% of applicants were Asian
54.4% of students admitted were Asian

Asians are admitted at a higher rate than average. 19.5% acceptance rate vs. 13-14% for black/multi kids.


There are no race restrictions or quotas. It's a race-blind process.


Why do Republicans make such blatant lies?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

+1,000,000

Everything that is happening now is precisely because of people like above, 100% DEI, 100% of the time, in every possible situation.

1000%

No, it’s a bunch of greedy MFers, primarily rich white men, trying to hoard resources.

In this thread context, I believe is rich Asian (mainly south).

Most South Asian people I know voted for Harris, but I’m sure there were some who bought into the rich white man entitlement mentality.

They went for Youngkin back in 2021, though. May have had a hand in tipping that election.

Not the people I know. They were fervently anti-Youngkin. They weren't fooled by his promises around nonexistent issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

Wow. Stop spreading fake news. The data show that TJ is not selecting the top students. Don't know if past process was rigged, but current process is off too.

TJ now selects the very top students from each school, unlike the past, where it selected students from a few wealthy students, where many bought early access to the test questions.

It doesn't even do that. It randomly selects from the self selected applicants from each school.

In the past it was selecting a bit more on merit and merit can be increased through investment in human capital. Affluent schools tend to have more of that.
The best way to identify gifted poor kids is with a test.
Harvard thinks so
MIT thinks so
Brown thinks so

Stuyvesant high school proves it
Bronx science proves it
Brooklyn tech proves it

Bring back the test and bring back merit.
it really is that simple.

MIT alum - they take a lot of kids with potential that aren't prepared for MIT. Hence the MITES program to prepare minorities and kids from rural areas.

The lesson is that you have to prepare the kids that need it with extra summer school programming.

I didn't think Mites is a remedial program for kids that got into MIT. I think it's open to anyone with a preference for underrepresented groups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

+1,000,000

Everything that is happening now is precisely because of people like above, 100% DEI, 100% of the time, in every possible situation.

1000%

No, it’s a bunch of greedy MFers, primarily rich white men, trying to hoard resources.

In this thread context, I believe is rich Asian (mainly south).

Most South Asian people I know voted for Harris, but I’m sure there were some who bought into the rich white man entitlement mentality.

They went for Youngkin back in 2021, though. May have had a hand in tipping that election.

Not the people I know. They were fervently anti-Youngkin. They weren't fooled by his promises around nonexistent issues.

Most (not all) the Asians I know, South Asian or otherwise, voted for Youngkin. The TJ things was a factor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

Wow. Stop spreading fake news. The data show that TJ is not selecting the top students. Don't know if past process was rigged, but current process is off too.

TJ now selects the very top students from each school, unlike the past, where it selected students from a few wealthy students, where many bought early access to the test questions.

It doesn't even do that. It randomly selects from the self selected applicants from each school.

In the past it was selecting a bit more on merit and merit can be increased through investment in human capital. Affluent schools tend to have more of that.
The best way to identify gifted poor kids is with a test.
Harvard thinks so
MIT thinks so
Brown thinks so

Stuyvesant high school proves it
Bronx science proves it
Brooklyn tech proves it

Bring back the test and bring back merit.
it really is that simple.

MIT alum - they take a lot of kids with potential that aren't prepared for MIT. Hence the MITES program to prepare minorities and kids from rural areas.

The lesson is that you have to prepare the kids that need it with extra summer school programming.

I didn't think Mites is a remedial program for kids that got into MIT. I think it's open to anyone with a preference for underrepresented groups.

I never said it's remedial. It's a prep course for sure, though. It gets kids ready for freshman year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

+1,000,000

Everything that is happening now is precisely because of people like above, 100% DEI, 100% of the time, in every possible situation.

1000%

No, it’s a bunch of greedy MFers, primarily rich white men, trying to hoard resources.

In this thread context, I believe is rich Asian (mainly south).

Most South Asian people I know voted for Harris, but I’m sure there were some who bought into the rich white man entitlement mentality.

They went for Youngkin back in 2021, though. May have had a hand in tipping that election.

It was hard to see the TJ changes as anything other than a signal from FCPS that they thought there were too many Indians at TJ. Even if you have no interest in TJ, it leave a bag taste in your mouth if you're Indian.

Why?

Why couldn’t it have been a signal that it was damn near impossible to get into TJ if you weren’t at least from a middle-class family?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

What's more correct is that we have a political environment right now where if you're not solidly in one of two camps:

1) All DEI all the time! or
2) All efforts to support marginalized populations are garbage!

... then you don't have a home. If you want to belong to ANYTHING, you have to pick one or the other. There's no room for a commonsense middle path anymore.

The real answer in this situation is that defining acceptance to TJ as an "outcome" is problematic. Framing it as a contest or a prize to be won rather than as an opportunity to be properly distributed for maximum effect is awful.

TJ's job is to serve the STEM community writ large, not to serve parents who are trying to maximize their child's life outcomes. So a proper admissions policy for such a school would necessarily balance the need to identify top talent with the need to include populations that are underrepresented in STEM fields so as to grow the base of talent for the future and to address the needs of communities that are being harmed by the profit motive.

The new admissions process took a step in a positive direction by including students from those undervalued communities, but did so partly at the expense of identifying top talent (this is at once both inarguable AND overblown - it's a problem but by no means a crisis).

The next step will be to figure out a way to more concretely identify a strong group of talent from all of those communities - which will probably require different methods and priorities of evaluation for each of those groups. But one thing that will not succeed at all is to evaluate all of them along the same metric out of a misplaced loyalty to "objectivity". That way lies madness and a return to the dark years of the mid-2010s where TJ produced high rankings (thanks to a retrograde system that relied on exam performance) - but very, very little else thanks to a staggering homogeneity of the student population.

Why is there a "need" to include underrepresented populations? Why can't we stop at identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color?

Academics undervalued communities that undervalue academics.

We should absolutely be identifying the top talent regardless of their skin color. But you can't possibly believe that we were doing that in the before times unless you think it was correct to admit a larger number of Asian students in the Class of 2024 than they'd admitted Black students in TJ's entire history in total to that point.

I am not here to argue that STEM talent is evenly distributed - it's not because the Asian immigrants who came to this area did so in order to leverage their STEM skills in America's second most significant tech market (after Silicon Valley). But the distribution is not so overwhelming as to produce that outcome, and to believe it is is to have a deeply disturbing view of Black people in this country.

Truth can sometimes be disturbing.

At the far right end tail of the curve, black students are rare.

https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/sat-percentile-ranks-gender-race-ethnicity.pdf

9% of asians get a 1500+ on the sat
<1% of blacks get a score of 1500+ on the SAT

23% of asians get a 1400+ on the SAT
1% of blacks get a 1400+ on the SAT

40% of asians get a 1300+ on the SAT
3% of blacks get a 1300+ on the SAT

56% of asians get a 1200+ on the SAT
8% of blacks get a 1200+ on the SAT

This is not close.

Do you have the ability to make a coherent argument that doesn’t include exam scores?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You don’t think sound middle path at all, PP. you sound wholly in the camp of those who wanted to select certain people for TJ based on factors other than STEM interest and aptitude.

That is literally the definition of a middle path. It's balancing STEM interest and aptitude (which are critical!) and the essential need for STEM to be an aspirational field for students from all walks of life.

It is true that academic aptitude is not evenly balanced across demographics, but it is also true that no racial or socioeconomic demo has a monopoly on it. But when it comes to TJ admissions, there have been populations that had been almost entirely excluded prior to the updates to the process, and that needed to change.

I don't want to select people for TJ based on factors *other than* STEM interest and aptitude. I want to select them based on factors *in addition to* STEM interest and aptitude. And there's more work to be done to get there.

"Undervalued communities" is just a doushebag of bullsheet. Nobody can undervalue you except yourself. Don't blame others when you haven't worked hard enough.

Presuming that folks haven't worked hard enough just because they're poor, Black, or Hispanic isn't really a good look. It's also not a good look when the "work" they've had access to isn't narrowly tailored to success on a specific exam or in a specific admissions process.

You want to protect the advantages of groups that already have advantages. Just own up to that and be fine with it - it is a legitimate political position that I happen to disagree with.

When people start questioning DEI, you immediately think of Black and Hispanic. Do you see the problem with this kneejerk? You choose to stay in your pit and never get out. Or you see it as a privilege or entitlement that you don't want to lose.

Those are the communities that have been undervalued. Until that is no longer the case, it's good policy to create an atmosphere where everyone has a chance to compete and have input. Full stop.

They have the same opportunity to compete as anyone else. Full stop.

This is the poster who want everybody to believe that 1:1 tutor at $180 per hour rate in the comfort of fancy home, is the same with self study (while also babysitting 3 little sibling) from $20 prep books from amazon.

The idea was not to take a way the first, but, only hope to at least give a chance to the latter.

That’s a fair point, but the real solution is to provide early support rather than guaranteeing outcomes in high school, especially at a place like TJ. I’m even okay with tax-funded tutoring and mentoring at the elementary level, but forcing guaranteed outcomes through DEI at high schools or TJ is not the answer. And smearing hardworking middle-class parents for investing in their children's education is utter nonsense.

DP

1) That's a false choice for multiple reasons, first because no one is guaranteeing outcomes at all, and second because there's no reason for us to choose between providing additional support AND evaluating students' merit based on the context of their circumstances. We can and should be doing both.

2) No one is smearing hard-working middle class parents for investing in their children's education. What we're smearing about you is your insistence that admissions processes should be tailored to incentivize an imbalanced childhood. By all means, raise your kid however you want to and streamline their educational process to be STEM-focused for their own sake - just stop expecting that elite schools are going to reward you for doing so. And by the way, they shouldn't punish you for it either - and they're not.

DP

Life does not grade on a curve.

What you consider an imbalanced childhood is the typical childhood of 90% of the rest of the world outside of the USA.

No elite school is punishing any individual asian kid for studying too hard but they are punishing asian kids in general for being a member of a race that is disproportionately hardworking and academically successful. We live in a world where our country really can't afford to elevate mediocrity in an effort to equalize outcomes based or race. We have to become more merit based. There's a place for everyone but those places should not be allocated based on race in an effort to equalize racial outcomes.

There’s no sense in which Asian kids are being “punished”. They’re just not being rewarded to the same extent for their parents’ emphasis on testing.

It’s easy to confuse removal of an advantage with introduction of discrimination, but that doesn’t make you right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

+1,000,000

Everything that is happening now is precisely because of people like above, 100% DEI, 100% of the time, in every possible situation.

1000%

No, it’s a bunch of greedy MFers, primarily rich white men, trying to hoard resources.

In this thread context, I believe is rich Asian (mainly south).

Most South Asian people I know voted for Harris, but I’m sure there were some who bought into the rich white man entitlement mentality.

They went for Youngkin back in 2021, though. May have had a hand in tipping that election.

Not the people I know. They were fervently anti-Youngkin. They weren't fooled by his promises around nonexistent issues.

Most (not all) the Asians I know, South Asian or otherwise, voted for Youngkin. The TJ things was a factor.

This was my experience as well. And for all of his promises, Youngkin hasn’t done one single solitary damn thing for them on TJ. Not one.

[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:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

+1,000,000

Everything that is happening now is precisely because of people like above, 100% DEI, 100% of the time, in every possible situation.

1000%

No, it’s a bunch of greedy MFers, primarily rich white men, trying to hoard resources.

In this thread context, I believe is rich Asian (mainly south).

Most South Asian people I know voted for Harris, but I’m sure there were some who bought into the rich white man entitlement mentality.

They went for Youngkin back in 2021, though. May have had a hand in tipping that election.

Not the people I know. They were fervently anti-Youngkin. They weren't fooled by his promises around nonexistent issues.

Most (not all) the Asians I know, South Asian or otherwise, voted for Youngkin. The TJ things was a factor.

This was my experience as well. And for all of his promises, Youngkin hasn’t done one single solitary damn thing for them on TJ. Not one.

Indirectly, got the incompetent principal replaced by a better one.

[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:Smart move.
He’s clearly seen the writing on the wall and is going where his talents for sifting through applications and selecting the best and brightest strictly based on academic merit and demonstrated talent will be utilized again.

Equity admissions is “Equality of outcome” and by definition it will devalue TJ as a top school…..by design. May take a few years to see in reality, but that’s the entire purpose of equity re-engineering of that school.

OH I know! TJ is now selecting the top students instead of the rigged process where parents could buy their way in. It's time to find a new scam.

People pushing DEI like you are the direct reason for the blowback we are seeing today.
Trump won because of people like you pushing things too fckn far.

+1,000,000

Everything that is happening now is precisely because of people like above, 100% DEI, 100% of the time, in every possible situation.

1000%

No, it’s a bunch of greedy MFers, primarily rich white men, trying to hoard resources.

In this thread context, I believe is rich Asian (mainly south).

Most South Asian people I know voted for Harris, but I’m sure there were some who bought into the rich white man entitlement mentality.

They went for Youngkin back in 2021, though. May have had a hand in tipping that election.

Not the people I know. They were fervently anti-Youngkin. They weren't fooled by his promises around nonexistent issues.

Most (not all) the Asians I know, South Asian or otherwise, voted for Youngkin. The TJ things was a factor.

This was my experience as well. And for all of his promises, Youngkin hasn’t done one single solitary damn thing for them on TJ. Not one.

Maybe it’s time to make some new headlines about how Youngkin is going against Trump and supports DEI admissions in his governor’s schools. He hasn’t done anything to change these policies. They are literally named Governor’s Schools…..