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TJ Discrimination Case
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Anonymous
True but I like to come up with an alternate definition of merit that suits my preferred outcome. |
Anonymous
A system for a regional school that assigns a minimum percentage of seats to every middle school, including schools that don't have AAP programs and have few LLIV-eligible students, and then relies on more subjective factors might be more geographically diverse but is definitely not going to identify the top students in the region and may not even identify the top students at an individual school. |
Anonymous
1) Equating the activities of frankly any group (and you can add FCAG to that list) with the nonsense that the Coalition has brought to bear over the past three years is evidence of either plain ignorance or malicious ignorance. Only one of those groups has shut down multiple School Board meetings by behaving like petulant three-year-olds who had their toys taken away from them, and it's the Coalition. 2) The TJ building post-renovation is not set up to accommodate any other type of school besides TJ in its current form. It can't house an academy (unless it's tiny), and it certainly can't house a neighborhood school. Over $100M of public and private capital was sunk into that renovation to create a school that, despite all of the whining and moaning in fora like this one, actually does a superior job of serving both its students and the STEM community writ large. Shutting it down because there are arguments about access to it is the literal definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face. |
Anonymous
This is the real challenge facing FCPS moving forward. There isn't really a good argument to stop with the middle school allocation process, and that has created wonderful new diversity in the hallways and in each individual classroom. The culture of TJ remains alive and well in the face of individuals outside of the community who seek to destroy it. But there is a serious question regarding whether or not the current admissions process is actually identifying the students who will contribute the most to the educational community of the school. The previous process certainly did not - it merely identified who was most likely to score well on college entrance exams - but there's not a whole lot of evidence that the new process does either. Given that we've established that standardized exams are occlusive to the process of evaluating students, the best answer seems to be a re-imagined teacher recommendation form that asks teachers to compare students to one another within their respective classrooms and offers them the opportunity to write on behalf of or against a very small group of students. Middle school teachers know who the students are in their building who most belong at TJ through a combination of aptitude for the material and dedication to the collaborative educational process and they should be afforded the opportunity to weigh in on the matter. |
Anonymous
HEAR HEAR!!! #AsiansAgainstAsra |
Anonymous
I see where you're going here but there are two issues, one of which we should all be agreeing on: 1) In previous years, students at non-AAP middle schools had virtually zero representation at TJ and this created a perpetual cycle of not knowing about its existence or believing that they could apply. I'd be in favor of reducing the allocated seat number to 1%, which would open up about 100 unallocated seats for the broader pool. A place like Glasgow would thus have about 8 allocated seats instead of 12, and so forth. The new process is admitting a few too many students from Prince William County, if I'm being honest. 2) We should all agree that FCPS should be working at great speed to provide AAP and LLIV resources at all neighborhood middle schools with the goal of eventually eliminating centers and requiring all students to attend their zoned school. Once we do this, the geographical allotment question shouldn't be an issue at all. |
Anonymous
Non-AAP and PW students admitted under the new process are not doing well academically or socially. Admissions needs to analyze the data and make changes to who they are admitting. Miserable students at TJ does no favor for these groups. Why should they go through four years of pain and then poor college admissions outcomes just so politicians can say they were their savior. |
Anonymous
PP. This phrasing paints with far too broad a brush. Plenty of the students in each of those two categories are absolutely flourishing at TJ. But there are also several who are not, and it's more obvious for them than it was for the incorrect kids admitted by the previous process because they aren't obsessed with hiding their struggles to maintain social status for their parents. The new admissions process is a great start but must be further refined if it's to actually achieve its goals. New leadership is probably needed in the admissions office to carry these goals over the finish line and get TJ to where it needs to be. |
Anonymous
In other words, you've temporarily moved the goalposts to where you want them and expect everyone else to pipe down and accept that result. There's no indication that's going to happen, and every indication that it won't. TJ will just continue to be a punching bag, depending on who appears to have the upper hand in or with FCPS at any particular moment. Also, I'm not persuaded TJ could not house either an expanded Academy program, where students only came to TJ for courses not available at their base schools, or serve as a neighborhood school again. If middle schools can get repurposed as high schools, as was the case with Falls Church HS, then a STEM magnet high school can be repurposed as a neighborhood high school, especially when you consider the overcrowding that persists in multiple high schools, the negative aspects of having high schools with 2700-3000 kids, and the costs associated with finding a suitable campus for a brand-new school. If FCPS really cares about equal opportunities and fairer outcomes, it should not maintain TJ as a STEM magnet. It's turned into a perennial time suck and source of controversy, and could be put to better use in the interests of FCPS students as a whole. |
Anonymous
Odd to push for eliminating middle school centers but retaining TJHSST, which is effectively a mega-center. Once we get rid of TJHSST, the geographical allotment question shouldn't be an issue at all. |
Anonymous
1) I haven't done anything. The goalposts have been moved by someone else to where they wanted them. I'd like to see them in a different place than where they are now, but that's not relevant to this discussion. 2) Again, disagreement about what should happen with TJ - which is FAR louder and more destructive on one side than the other, and failure to acknowledge this is brutally disingenuous or just plain ignorant - is not any sort of argument in favor of elimination of the school. By that logic, we should eliminate the existence of literally any scarce resource that people to which people argue about access. 3) That's fine that you're not persuaded. It's common knowledge. If you converted TJ to an Academy model, at least 2/3 of the building's space would be wasted, and if you converted it to a neighborhood school, you'd have to spend at least eight figures retrofitting it to that purpose. There's a lot bigger difference between TJ and a neighborhood high school than there is between a neighborhood middle school and a neighborhood high school. That's why $100M of public and private money was invested to convert TJ from a building that was designed to house a neighborhood school to a building designed to house a STEM-focused full-service high school. And besides, Falls Church has been inadequate to its task as a high school for decades. 4) You words are eloquent, but you have not made an argument for TJ's closure besides "people are angry about it". A solution which would create a similar outcome in terms of wasted time would be for FCPS to simply assert that they won't spend any more School Board time on the TJ matter, but they won't do that because they know that the trolls will complain of being "silenced". |
Anonymous
TJ provides value to Northern Virginia and the STEM community. The existence of middle school centers largely does not. The two aren't comparable if you understand what they're actually designed for. |
Anonymous
How so? TJ students go to college, not straight to local employers |
Anonymous
Do a bare minimum of research on what TJ kids are doing in their labs and how it has real-life impact. |
Anonymous
Nothing that has come out of TJ (or any high school) has materially impacted any local STEM company |