Academic prep vs athletic coaching

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a huge double standard between sports and academics. If you put your kid in one AoPS class (total time commitment of 1.75 hrs + 1 hr homework) per week, people clutch their pearls, act as if you're ruining your kid's childhood, and tell you that you're cheating. If you have your kid in travel sports, no one criticizes you for it.

Also, even if most of us think that putting your kids in cram school is not great parenting, there are people out there who will do exactly that. We have to accept that those kids might be more advanced than ours, because we can't control other people. It is what it is, and whining about it won't change anything.

The thing is, many of those kids are not actually more advanced, they’ve essentially been hothoused to appear to be advanced. Many of the kids who have taken extra math classes ahead of their grade level don’t fundamentally understand the extra math they’ve studied but have simply learned to memorize.

Math teachers at TJ have complained about the number of kids who come in who are “advanced” on paper but don’t have the understanding necessary to do truly advanced math courses.

That wasn't the reason math teachers were complaining. They were complaining because a lot of the kids who were selected in a couple of the years did really badly in math, and needed a lot of extra tutoring to keep up with the cohort.

Turns out, FCPS was trying to increase URM admissions, so they reduced the emphasis on math during the intake, and attempted to "include a wide variety of factors, such as race, ethnicity, gender, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), geography, poverty, prior school and cultural experiences, and other unique skills and experiences.”. As a result of this, TJ rejected over one-quarter of the applicants with scores in the top five percent on the AMC 8, a highly competitive national math exam, and rejected more than 100 of the 376 applicants with scores of 47 or higher on the math portion of the admissions test, which has a maximum score of 50. There was a hue and cry over this, and they then course-corrected back to emphasizing math (less than before though).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a huge double standard between sports and academics. If you put your kid in one AoPS class (total time commitment of 1.75 hrs + 1 hr homework) per week, people clutch their pearls, act as if you're ruining your kid's childhood, and tell you that you're cheating. If you have your kid in travel sports, no one criticizes you for it.

Also, even if most of us think that putting your kids in cram school is not great parenting, there are people out there who will do exactly that. We have to accept that those kids might be more advanced than ours, because we can't control other people. It is what it is, and whining about it won't change anything.

The thing is, many of those kids are not actually more advanced, they’ve essentially been hothoused to appear to be advanced. Many of the kids who have taken extra math classes ahead of their grade level don’t fundamentally understand the extra math they’ve studied but have simply learned to memorize.

Math teachers at TJ have complained about the number of kids who come in who are “advanced” on paper but don’t have the understanding necessary to do truly advanced math courses.

That wasn't the reason math teachers were complaining. They were complaining because a lot of the kids who were selected in a couple of the years did really badly in math, and needed a lot of extra tutoring to keep up with the cohort.

Turns out, FCPS was trying to increase URM admissions, so they reduced the emphasis on math during the intake, and attempted to "include a wide variety of factors, such as race, ethnicity, gender, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), geography, poverty, prior school and cultural experiences, and other unique skills and experiences.”. As a result of this, TJ rejected over one-quarter of the applicants with scores in the top five percent on the AMC 8, a highly competitive national math exam, and rejected more than 100 of the 376 applicants with scores of 47 or higher on the math portion of the admissions test, which has a maximum score of 50. There was a hue and cry over this, and they then course-corrected back to emphasizing math (less than before though).

While I agree with you that watering down the content of the admission math test will likely result in selection issues and lead to remediation for some freshmen at TJ, I don't agree with your bolded statement above. The AMC 8 is not a highly competitive exam, even if it's given out nationally. It is nowhere near as high ceiling as the other national math contests such as the AMC 10, AMC 12, HMMT, ARML, and a bunch of others. It is also nowhere near as difficult as the State and National rounds in Mathcounts, (its closest middle school comparison). Hundreds of kids score perfect on the test and many, many more are close to perfect (off by 1 or 2 questions). That also explains the lack of any kind of prizes or next round for the test, other than being fun for exposure to interesting problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
The thing is, many of those kids are not actually more advanced, they’ve essentially been hothoused to appear to be advanced. Many of the kids who have taken extra math classes ahead of their grade level don’t fundamentally understand the extra math they’ve studied but have simply learned to memorize.

Math teachers at TJ have complained about the number of kids who come in who are “advanced” on paper but don’t have the understanding necessary to do truly advanced math courses.

Then TJ needs to write better math screening exams to differentiate between kids who understand the advanced math and those who don't. It would be much more productive to make the TJ tests more difficult to prep than it would be to complain that people are prepping.

Yes, I've been ranting about this for a while now. The TJ test should have a lot higher ceiling so that admissions can properly differentiate between the kids who are really good in math and the rest. When lots and lots of applicants get perfect or close to it on the admissions test, the admissions committee cannot differentiate them at all in terms of math ability. A high ceiling test is also much much less prepable, no matter how much money people will give the prep schools. Case in point, no prep school will claim they can get a kid to get perfect or close to perfect on a reputable contest such as the AMC 10, AMC 12, etc. A TJ math entrance exam should strive to be closer to these and not do the opposite.

This is actually a problem in the AAP tests as well. The Cogat is laughably easy and does not differentiate kids at all when they apply for AAP. It is so easy that they have to significantly adjust the percentiles for age. (My 2nd grade kid got 1 or 2 questions wrong total in the math portion but got around 133 or 137; (can't exactly recall) because of his age. Not sure how that tells the AAP committee anything about their math ability).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a huge double standard between sports and academics. If you put your kid in one AoPS class (total time commitment of 1.75 hrs + 1 hr homework) per week, people clutch their pearls, act as if you're ruining your kid's childhood, and tell you that you're cheating. If you have your kid in travel sports, no one criticizes you for it.

Also, even if most of us think that putting your kids in cram school is not great parenting, there are people out there who will do exactly that. We have to accept that those kids might be more advanced than ours, because we can't control other people. It is what it is, and whining about it won't change anything.

The thing is, many of those kids are not actually more advanced, they’ve essentially been hothoused to appear to be advanced. Many of the kids who have taken extra math classes ahead of their grade level don’t fundamentally understand the extra math they’ve studied but have simply learned to memorize.

Math teachers at TJ have complained about the number of kids who come in who are “advanced” on paper but don’t have the understanding necessary to do truly advanced math courses.

That wasn't the reason math teachers were complaining. They were complaining because a lot of the kids who were selected in a couple of the years did really badly in math, and needed a lot of extra tutoring to keep up with the cohort.

Turns out, FCPS was trying to increase URM admissions, so they reduced the emphasis on math during the intake, and attempted to "include a wide variety of factors, such as race, ethnicity, gender, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), geography, poverty, prior school and cultural experiences, and other unique skills and experiences.”. As a result of this, TJ rejected over one-quarter of the applicants with scores in the top five percent on the AMC 8, a highly competitive national math exam, and rejected more than 100 of the 376 applicants with scores of 47 or higher on the math portion of the admissions test, which has a maximum score of 50. There was a hue and cry over this, and they then course-corrected back to emphasizing math (less than before though).

While I agree with you that watering down the content of the admission math test will likely result in selection issues and lead to remediation for some freshmen at TJ, I don't agree with your bolded statement above. The AMC 8 is not a highly competitive exam, even if it's given out nationally. It is nowhere near as high ceiling as the other national math contests such as the AMC 10, AMC 12, HMMT, ARML, and a bunch of others. It is also nowhere near as difficult as the State and National rounds in Mathcounts, (its closest middle school comparison). Hundreds of kids score perfect on the test and many, many more are close to perfect (off by 1 or 2 questions). That also explains the lack of any kind of prizes or next round for the test, other than being fun for exposure to interesting problems.

See this - "they rejected more than 100 of the 376 applicants with scores of 47 or higher on the math portion of the admissions test, which has a maximum score of 50. " They rejected students who scored well on their math admissions test because they didn't meet some imaginary diversity criteria - it's obvious that some students in the resultant class would struggle with math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
See this - "they rejected more than 100 of the 376 applicants with scores of 47 or higher on the math portion of the admissions test, which has a maximum score of 50. " They rejected students who scored well on their math admissions test because they didn't meet some imaginary diversity criteria - it's obvious that some students in the resultant class would struggle with math.

There are only about 480 TJ slots, and they care about more than just one math test. If those 100+ rejected kids scored worse on their science reasoning and verbal tests than the kids who scored a mere 45 or 46 on the math test, or if they had poor recommendations or poor essays, it all makes perfect sense. If anything, I'd argue that filling over half of the TJ slots with kids who performed well on a single math test suggests that TJ is highly valuing math ability.

There really isn't some great conspiracy where TJ is overlooking kids who are gifted in math. The kids who get perfect scores on the TJ math test, qualify for AIME in middle school, and place highly at State Mathcounts are getting in. The kids with decently high scores, but nothing too impressive (i.e. AMC 8 honor roll) are sometimes being rejected in favor of kids who are slightly lower in math but shine in other arenas. This seems completely appropriate.