Nah. In fact, STAE LAW requires TJ to be operated by a "Regional Governing Board" and I hear the governor is looking into having FCPS comply with the law and having all the participating jurisdictions jointly create the governing board and share policy making and implementation aspect including admissions process.
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We should do a lottery by middle school. Just like HB Woodlawn. |
I thought the criteria was 40-50k? |
| 47,637.50 |
Wasn't that the whole point? I mean do we want our children going to school with the poor? |
That’s a sunk cost. TJ needs to be closed so that FCPS can focus on the other 99% of students. If the new superintendent does nothing else, she should close TJ. It will be a politically risky move, but it needs to be done. |
That’s why so many parents push for their kids to get into AAP. |
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That is the function of public schools!
No wonder those dumb spoilt brats at Wharton though that the average American wage was in the 6 figures. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/01/20/wharton-students-wages-salary-twitter-strohminger/ They obviously had zero exposure to even average middle class people their whole lives, let alone the poor. |
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^^ this is 185% of poverty level (25,750) which qualifies for reduced lunch. |
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If you look at TJ 2025 admission stats,
30.7% under represented schools 25.1% economically disadvantaged 7.1% language learners 5.5% ELL 2.4% Special Ed I am sure there will be overlaps, and we can not simply take above numbers at face value and add then and say 71% of all TJ seats went to other experience factors. But, due to lack of missing cumulative data (deliberate??), even if take some sort of middle ground (about half overlaps in numbers) and say 50% went to other experience factors, that’s quite a lot and I would say other factors are significantly over subscribed and totally unfair to general population. You can’t simple take away or pre allocate ‘half’ or even the ‘best case’ scenario of 40-45% of seats. Though I am somewhat partial to admission changes, I fully understand the frustration some parents and kids are expressing. This is bad! Also, outside of ‘experience factors’, the new process gives same score to 7&8th grade GPA as single 30min science essay or portrait sheet (300 points each). And since GPA is unweighted, it’s clearly a disadvantage to take harder courses even available to them. Since there is no teacher input, it’s really hard to distinguish the talent, especially at AAP center schools and the whole process is essentially a lottery among 200 or so similar on paper students apply from center schools and only about 20-30 get in. So stupid and I am not sure if this is a conscious decision or FCPS didn’t actually think through the implications. |
| If the point of schools like Thomas Jefferson is to educate our best and brightest to compete on the world stage, then it’s not likely they will represent perfectly the socioeconomic make up of the county. We are going to have to decide as a society whether equality across all socioeconomic and racial backgrounds supersedes our need to educate top performers to compete at the highest levels in the world. It can’t be both. It’s nice to think it can be both and maybe someday in the future it will be, but that’s not realistic right now. Students at the higher socioeconomic levels simply have too many advantages in the first 14 years of their lives: parents who speak to them all the time, enrichment classes, tutors, extracurricular activities. You simply can’t make all of that up after age 14. |
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The current and most recent former POTUS are in their 70s. The non traditional age student population are graduating colleges in increasing numbers.
It’s ridiculous to tell kids in their early teens that elite education isn’t for them. |
Darn right. TJ ain't for plebs. |
| Unless they study or take the test cold, and pass! These “unicorns” (barf, DCUM) do indeed exist. Witness the NYC magnets, e.g. Stuyvesant and Bronx Sci, both with 40% low-income students. |