Federal judge rules that admissions changes at nation’s top public school discriminate against Asian

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Anonymous wrote:The have hat has not been moved from the ultra wealthy communities to economically disadvantaged ones. The top TJ feeders like Carson and Rocky Run are still getting tons of kids in. Now schools that rarely got any one in, Poe/Glasgow/Whitman/whoever, are also assured a solid chunk of seats.

Which communities lost out? Middle class. Rich never give from themselves to low income. Frost went from something like 25 seats to 9, which is probably only the 1.5% they are required to get.


Not sure exactly how it impacted different schools but Elaine Tholen admitted to the McLean PTSA that the school, already overcrowded, picked up 20-30 additional freshmen from Longfellow last fall due to the TJ admissions changes.



This is the problem with how this TJ reform was done. Mclean has far fewer spots at TJ and the School Board did nothing to address the already existing issue with overcrowding at McLean High School ( which are now further overcrowded)

The good way would have been to effect reform at TJ and concurrently address issues at McLean, Langley, Marshall, Oakton, Chantilly and other schools impacted by the TJ policy change. Throw in some dollars to have advanced math/science classes.

The school board did not do that. Instead they fed the flames of "Asians are preppers and cheats". Reform did not have to be about us vs them. But you don't get political mileage unless you make the issue partisan. And this is what the school board did. Tholen was a deer in headlights when all this was happening.

They are certainly preppers, but not cheats, and the testing requirements were biased. Idk what you guys think, but they aren’t going back to the biased process


You are conflating two issues. Issue 1: The previous process was broken. Issue 2: The new process is fair/equitable. You will find many folks like me in agreement with Issue 1 - that process was broken (Curie exemplifies why it was broken) and we are not going back. Let us only talk about Issue 2. The new process is no good and largely because the School Board was in a hurry to implement. Any solution will likely result in fewer Asians at TJ. Most reasonable Asians would be ok as long as you soften the blow by offering some TJ like courses at their home schools. Instead we have had an approach where Braband and the school board have created a victor/vanquished dynamic and supported canards of "cheating Asians" to rally their idealogical base.


This makes no sense. You are assuming this but it's a strange assumption. What do "most reasonable XXXs" want? They don't want a better CS course for their senior year. They either want the cohort, if that is their goal, or they want the cachet, if that is their goal. Neither of those are achieved by adding DiffEq to Mclean. The first is achieved by -going to Mclean-.


I am not assuming. I would do it. Many that I know would do it. What I feel right now is that the school board has changed the rules of the game on TJ on me (my child's odds are way lower and it does not matter to my child - the impcated individual - that the School Board added yet another social justice badge of honor at his expense). Further, the Board has done nothing to fix overcrowding at Mclean (an issue that predates the TJ reform and the reform has further exacerbated it). To me it feels like the Board is tell me to eff-off and they will do anything they can because they have the power. I felt the same when McConnell reused to consider Merrick Garland for Scalia's seat. It was the tyranny of the majority. We have the power and we will ride roughshod over you.

So yes you can go on with your assumption that Asian parents want nothing less than a test that they can "game". It feeds the stereotype that has been assiduously cultivated on this Board - you cannot allow for the existence of reasonable Asian parents. Hence you advocate for this new broken process as the only alternative to the past one


I don't think you guys understand. I am an immigrant who came to this country 20 years back. I have encountered racism as a brown Asian man. However, this act of intentionally targeting people like me and my kids has been the worst by far. Calling us overrepresented and making policies to weed us out. Very upsetting. FCPS owes us an apology.


Are you going to continue to vote for every progressive during elections? If so, nothing is going to change.


I am very struggling with that - as a staunch politically active democrat who has contributed time and money. Still think the hateful progressives are small in number. I am definitely having second thoughts though. Not because I don't believe in progressive ideas but because I can't get behind the hatefulness and thoughtless destructivess of many progressives. It is a "Let's destroy first and ask questions later" approach.


Your concerns are very valid... but to be honest, if "hateful" is what you're worried about, you have much bigger issues with the red hat folks than with a few people who are trying to expand access for lower-income Asians in addition to other populations.


hence the struggle. however, I have to say I didn't realize the extent of the anti-Asian hate. and the sheer thoughtlessness. I am still not ready to move sides but that's possibly because I am as liberal as they come.

btw adding low-income asian is just specious and you so transparent. don't make it worse. you either don't understand or don't care about low-income asians.


Why? They've been cut out of the process for generations, and the evidence is in the numbers. Now they're present in the school and celebrated.


Because your hypocrisy and lack of knowledge is evident.

1. you are talking about asians only after your intervention was judged as being racist.
2. low-income asians very much believe in meritocracy. you are just making faulty assumptions about them. you have no idea!

I think ignorant, racist folks like you will lead to democrats being a fringe party.


1. Pro-reform groups have been talking about low-income Asians for the entirety of this process.

2. That's fine, they can believe in meritocracy all they way - but the process cut them out because of the prevalence of boutique exam prep programs. Maybe they were spending money on them as well, but they weren't showing up in the admitted student pool until the Class of 2025. Perhaps merit has been defined poorly if low-income Asians were deemed by the TJ process to be unworthy of selection.


+1

“We continue to be committed to expanding educational opportunities for all. The Asian American community is an incredibly diverse group, and the revised admissions process benefits all students, including Asian American students who are low-income or English language learners, a fact that the Coalition for TJ ignores,” said Niyati Shah, Advancing Justice – AAJC’s Director of Litigation. “All students deserve a high quality education where they can also learn and benefit from the diversity of their peers. We support measures that promote equal educational opportunities for all students, and reject attempts to obscure the rich diversity of our communities.”

https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/civil-rights-groups-file-to-submit-amicus-brief-that-supports-admissions-policies-that-address-structural-barriers-to-education/


There is no shortage of misinformed, self hating Asians. The fact is they were supporting a racist process. see title of thread.


Maybe they want to help ALL Asians, not just the rich ones.


How is reducing Asian admissions into TJ helping Asians?


There are more Asian students at TJ today than a few years ago. As an absolute number and as a % of overall Asian students in FCPS.

And there are more Asian communities represented from all over the county, including kids from low-income Asian families and EL students.


We are talking about the impact of the racist policy, under which fewer Asians were admitted for the affected years. Don't be obtuse.


Kinda deflates the whole “stolen seat” thing when there are more Asians at TJ today than just a few years ago.


Did you fail intro stat class in high school? Asian is the only racial group saw a decrease in percentage from about 70% to 50% under the new policy. FCPS designed that policy proxy for racial groups. And it worked as designed.


Because they increased the total number of seats.

There are more Asian kids at TJ than a few years ago - by number and by % of all Asian kids in FCPS. And yet you complain about a small number of kids from low-income MSs filing those new seats?



You do not get the point - they did their absolute best to decrease Asian percentages and laughed out loud in the process.


No “stolen” seats here.

# of Asian students at TJ
21-22: 1,258
20-21: 1,299
19-20: 1,292
18-19: 1,244
17-18: 1,210


NP: you still don’t get it.

Why do you keep refusing to answer to the percentage issue?


What “question”? The % doesn’t matter because they increased the class size. Overall, there is no impact to absolute # of Asian kids. If nothing changed and there were this many Asian kids you wouldn’t think anything of it. You’re only mad because they opened up a little more space to take kids from lower-income MSs. And you think you are entitled to all of the old seats AND all of the new seats.


You're right there is no question if you read the judge's decision. The government isn't allowed to even implement something beneficial if it had a racist intent. Our unprofessional school board sent texts laughing about discriminating against Asians, claiming white people don't understand, and ignoring the public. This progressive thinking that any means necessary is allowed to benefit low-income people is illegal and incompatible with our constitution.


It's funny to see posters on this thread advocate for the poor. They are using those families that sign up for Free and Reduced Meals (FRM) to identify low-income households. Anybody can sign up for that program and they DOES NOT REQUIRE INCOME VERIFICATION, and less than 3% of applicants are even audited.


Racist strategy based on faulty data. And they are still begging for their big law school loans to be forgiven by the taxpayer. You losers are a burden on society.


OMG OMG it's CRAZTY!! You know what else!?! I heard wealthy families were able to buy the admissions test!


That's false. What they were able to do, in many cases, was spend upwards of $5K for a program that taught their kids how to solve specific types of problems on a timed exam meant to evaluate native problem-solving ability. The exam in question was selected not only for its unique approach but also for its secured nature - but TJ students confirmed that by attending this boutique program, they were exposed to practice problems that they later saw on the exam itself. Students who participated in this expensive and time-intensive program received nearly 30% of the offers for the Class of 2024 and nearly 70% of the offers for Loudoun County students, and literally 100% were South Asian - which we know because the company offering the program published the first and last names of all of the successful applicants.


While white parents are paying $130-180 per HOUR to private tutor their snowflakes to raise SAT scores while pretending there is no prepping going on because you can't see -nothing to see while criticizing Asian students paying about $10-20 an hour to sit in a class room to prepare for SAT or TJ or whatever.

You gotta hand it to them - they are sneaky as f*ck.


White people aren't discriminating against Asians. The people doing that are a diverse group of progressives on the school board. Sorry you think Twitter social justice is real life.


Yea, and this group includes Asians who somehow feel that jumping on the equity band wagon and push for racist discrimination against Asians is a good way to earn them a welcoming spot in their social circle.


Or we’ve realized it’s the right thing to do, and the best thing for our school.


How is being racist the right thing to do?


Our view is that a process that systematically shut out Black, Hispanic, and low-income students for over 30 years is significantly more racist than a process that has welcomed significant representation from those groups without fundamentally altering the character of the school.

We have witnessed and enjoyed the benefits of diversity in our experiences in higher education beyond TJ and are thrilled to see that TJ is finally catching up to the institutions where it hopes to send its students.

We believe the anecdotes that our Black and Hispanic TJ Alumni friends have shared with us surrounding the ignorant things that were said to and about them during their time- by students, staff, and parents - and hope that exposure to a broader range of students will result in greater understanding from the TJ population, because "being racist" is never the right thing to do. Part of the reason that we believe those anecdotes is because they are echoed by parents at PTSA meetings, School Board meetings, and on forums like this one. Posters on this forum seem to go out of their way every day to confirm the need for diversity in elite academic spaces through their ignorance and malice, and unintentionally build the case stronger and stronger by doing so.


Disparate outcomes compared against the general population in and of it self is not an indication of racism. Disparate outcomes are only racist if they do not reflect the qualities of the inputs into the system in question.

We do not base policy on anecdotes, because the validity of anecdotes is not generally applicable. If anecdotes were valid, people who disagreed with you can just come up with anecdotes of their own. There is no rational and logical endpoint in an argument of anecdotes.

I'm afraid of referencing a three-letter acronym because it can be sensitive on DCUM, but your post is a text-book example of such viewpoints, containing nebulous claims of past systemic racism simply because of disparate outcome and holding up anecdotes and individual story-telling as truths to mold our policies around. It's a toxic and racist viewpoint and I'm glad that it is appearing to burn when brought into the light of liberal ideals.


"...if they do not reflect the qualities of the inputs into the system in question" is a florid way of saying "we think we're better than you". It also ignores that disparate outcomes can be evidence of racism if they represent a structural barrier to people choosing to input themselves into the system. Witness the fact that Black applications rose by 70% for the Class of 2025.

"We do not base policy on anecdotes" is essentially a license for anyone to abuse anyone else as long as there is no paper trail or witness.

Your goal is very clearly to eliminate any avenue for marginalized people to advocate for themselves.


Not at all. People make different choices. Different isn't automatically better. The existence of structural barriers is also a non-point: everyone faces barriers every day. The fact that we have to work to earn money is because there are barriers to obtaining food, shelter, and transportation. The overcoming of barriers is the substance of living a productive life. Now there are government-erected racist barriers which we must all seek to demolish at every opportunity, that we are in agreement. But most of the so-called barriers that people like you complain about are not put up by the government and are simply the outcomes of different choices.


The old admissions process was developed by the government too.
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Anonymous wrote:The have hat has not been moved from the ultra wealthy communities to economically disadvantaged ones. The top TJ feeders like Carson and Rocky Run are still getting tons of kids in. Now schools that rarely got any one in, Poe/Glasgow/Whitman/whoever, are also assured a solid chunk of seats.

Which communities lost out? Middle class. Rich never give from themselves to low income. Frost went from something like 25 seats to 9, which is probably only the 1.5% they are required to get.


Not sure exactly how it impacted different schools but Elaine Tholen admitted to the McLean PTSA that the school, already overcrowded, picked up 20-30 additional freshmen from Longfellow last fall due to the TJ admissions changes.



This is the problem with how this TJ reform was done. Mclean has far fewer spots at TJ and the School Board did nothing to address the already existing issue with overcrowding at McLean High School ( which are now further overcrowded)

The good way would have been to effect reform at TJ and concurrently address issues at McLean, Langley, Marshall, Oakton, Chantilly and other schools impacted by the TJ policy change. Throw in some dollars to have advanced math/science classes.

The school board did not do that. Instead they fed the flames of "Asians are preppers and cheats". Reform did not have to be about us vs them. But you don't get political mileage unless you make the issue partisan. And this is what the school board did. Tholen was a deer in headlights when all this was happening.

They are certainly preppers, but not cheats, and the testing requirements were biased. Idk what you guys think, but they aren’t going back to the biased process


You are conflating two issues. Issue 1: The previous process was broken. Issue 2: The new process is fair/equitable. You will find many folks like me in agreement with Issue 1 - that process was broken (Curie exemplifies why it was broken) and we are not going back. Let us only talk about Issue 2. The new process is no good and largely because the School Board was in a hurry to implement. Any solution will likely result in fewer Asians at TJ. Most reasonable Asians would be ok as long as you soften the blow by offering some TJ like courses at their home schools. Instead we have had an approach where Braband and the school board have created a victor/vanquished dynamic and supported canards of "cheating Asians" to rally their idealogical base.


This makes no sense. You are assuming this but it's a strange assumption. What do "most reasonable XXXs" want? They don't want a better CS course for their senior year. They either want the cohort, if that is their goal, or they want the cachet, if that is their goal. Neither of those are achieved by adding DiffEq to Mclean. The first is achieved by -going to Mclean-.


I am not assuming. I would do it. Many that I know would do it. What I feel right now is that the school board has changed the rules of the game on TJ on me (my child's odds are way lower and it does not matter to my child - the impcated individual - that the School Board added yet another social justice badge of honor at his expense). Further, the Board has done nothing to fix overcrowding at Mclean (an issue that predates the TJ reform and the reform has further exacerbated it). To me it feels like the Board is tell me to eff-off and they will do anything they can because they have the power. I felt the same when McConnell reused to consider Merrick Garland for Scalia's seat. It was the tyranny of the majority. We have the power and we will ride roughshod over you.

So yes you can go on with your assumption that Asian parents want nothing less than a test that they can "game". It feeds the stereotype that has been assiduously cultivated on this Board - you cannot allow for the existence of reasonable Asian parents. Hence you advocate for this new broken process as the only alternative to the past one


I don't think you guys understand. I am an immigrant who came to this country 20 years back. I have encountered racism as a brown Asian man. However, this act of intentionally targeting people like me and my kids has been the worst by far. Calling us overrepresented and making policies to weed us out. Very upsetting. FCPS owes us an apology.


Are you going to continue to vote for every progressive during elections? If so, nothing is going to change.


I am very struggling with that - as a staunch politically active democrat who has contributed time and money. Still think the hateful progressives are small in number. I am definitely having second thoughts though. Not because I don't believe in progressive ideas but because I can't get behind the hatefulness and thoughtless destructivess of many progressives. It is a "Let's destroy first and ask questions later" approach.


Your concerns are very valid... but to be honest, if "hateful" is what you're worried about, you have much bigger issues with the red hat folks than with a few people who are trying to expand access for lower-income Asians in addition to other populations.


hence the struggle. however, I have to say I didn't realize the extent of the anti-Asian hate. and the sheer thoughtlessness. I am still not ready to move sides but that's possibly because I am as liberal as they come.

btw adding low-income asian is just specious and you so transparent. don't make it worse. you either don't understand or don't care about low-income asians.


Why? They've been cut out of the process for generations, and the evidence is in the numbers. Now they're present in the school and celebrated.


Because your hypocrisy and lack of knowledge is evident.

1. you are talking about asians only after your intervention was judged as being racist.
2. low-income asians very much believe in meritocracy. you are just making faulty assumptions about them. you have no idea!

I think ignorant, racist folks like you will lead to democrats being a fringe party.


1. Pro-reform groups have been talking about low-income Asians for the entirety of this process.

2. That's fine, they can believe in meritocracy all they way - but the process cut them out because of the prevalence of boutique exam prep programs. Maybe they were spending money on them as well, but they weren't showing up in the admitted student pool until the Class of 2025. Perhaps merit has been defined poorly if low-income Asians were deemed by the TJ process to be unworthy of selection.


+1

“We continue to be committed to expanding educational opportunities for all. The Asian American community is an incredibly diverse group, and the revised admissions process benefits all students, including Asian American students who are low-income or English language learners, a fact that the Coalition for TJ ignores,” said Niyati Shah, Advancing Justice – AAJC’s Director of Litigation. “All students deserve a high quality education where they can also learn and benefit from the diversity of their peers. We support measures that promote equal educational opportunities for all students, and reject attempts to obscure the rich diversity of our communities.”

https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/civil-rights-groups-file-to-submit-amicus-brief-that-supports-admissions-policies-that-address-structural-barriers-to-education/


There is no shortage of misinformed, self hating Asians. The fact is they were supporting a racist process. see title of thread.


Maybe they want to help ALL Asians, not just the rich ones.


How is reducing Asian admissions into TJ helping Asians?


There are more Asian students at TJ today than a few years ago. As an absolute number and as a % of overall Asian students in FCPS.

And there are more Asian communities represented from all over the county, including kids from low-income Asian families and EL students.


We are talking about the impact of the racist policy, under which fewer Asians were admitted for the affected years. Don't be obtuse.


Kinda deflates the whole “stolen seat” thing when there are more Asians at TJ today than just a few years ago.


Did you fail intro stat class in high school? Asian is the only racial group saw a decrease in percentage from about 70% to 50% under the new policy. FCPS designed that policy proxy for racial groups. And it worked as designed.


Because they increased the total number of seats.

There are more Asian kids at TJ than a few years ago - by number and by % of all Asian kids in FCPS. And yet you complain about a small number of kids from low-income MSs filing those new seats?



You do not get the point - they did their absolute best to decrease Asian percentages and laughed out loud in the process.


No “stolen” seats here.

# of Asian students at TJ
21-22: 1,258
20-21: 1,299
19-20: 1,292
18-19: 1,244
17-18: 1,210


NP: you still don’t get it.

Why do you keep refusing to answer to the percentage issue?


What “question”? The % doesn’t matter because they increased the class size. Overall, there is no impact to absolute # of Asian kids. If nothing changed and there were this many Asian kids you wouldn’t think anything of it. You’re only mad because they opened up a little more space to take kids from lower-income MSs. And you think you are entitled to all of the old seats AND all of the new seats.


You're right there is no question if you read the judge's decision. The government isn't allowed to even implement something beneficial if it had a racist intent. Our unprofessional school board sent texts laughing about discriminating against Asians, claiming white people don't understand, and ignoring the public. This progressive thinking that any means necessary is allowed to benefit low-income people is illegal and incompatible with our constitution.


It's funny to see posters on this thread advocate for the poor. They are using those families that sign up for Free and Reduced Meals (FRM) to identify low-income households. Anybody can sign up for that program and they DOES NOT REQUIRE INCOME VERIFICATION, and less than 3% of applicants are even audited.


Racist strategy based on faulty data. And they are still begging for their big law school loans to be forgiven by the taxpayer. You losers are a burden on society.


OMG OMG it's CRAZTY!! You know what else!?! I heard wealthy families were able to buy the admissions test!


That's false. What they were able to do, in many cases, was spend upwards of $5K for a program that taught their kids how to solve specific types of problems on a timed exam meant to evaluate native problem-solving ability. The exam in question was selected not only for its unique approach but also for its secured nature - but TJ students confirmed that by attending this boutique program, they were exposed to practice problems that they later saw on the exam itself. Students who participated in this expensive and time-intensive program received nearly 30% of the offers for the Class of 2024 and nearly 70% of the offers for Loudoun County students, and literally 100% were South Asian - which we know because the company offering the program published the first and last names of all of the successful applicants.


While white parents are paying $130-180 per HOUR to private tutor their snowflakes to raise SAT scores while pretending there is no prepping going on because you can't see -nothing to see while criticizing Asian students paying about $10-20 an hour to sit in a class room to prepare for SAT or TJ or whatever.

You gotta hand it to them - they are sneaky as f*ck.


White people aren't discriminating against Asians. The people doing that are a diverse group of progressives on the school board. Sorry you think Twitter social justice is real life.


Yea, and this group includes Asians who somehow feel that jumping on the equity band wagon and push for racist discrimination against Asians is a good way to earn them a welcoming spot in their social circle.


Or we’ve realized it’s the right thing to do, and the best thing for our school.


How is being racist the right thing to do?


Our view is that a process that systematically shut out Black, Hispanic, and low-income students for over 30 years is significantly more racist than a process that has welcomed significant representation from those groups without fundamentally altering the character of the school.

We have witnessed and enjoyed the benefits of diversity in our experiences in higher education beyond TJ and are thrilled to see that TJ is finally catching up to the institutions where it hopes to send its students.

We believe the anecdotes that our Black and Hispanic TJ Alumni friends have shared with us surrounding the ignorant things that were said to and about them during their time- by students, staff, and parents - and hope that exposure to a broader range of students will result in greater understanding from the TJ population, because "being racist" is never the right thing to do. Part of the reason that we believe those anecdotes is because they are echoed by parents at PTSA meetings, School Board meetings, and on forums like this one. Posters on this forum seem to go out of their way every day to confirm the need for diversity in elite academic spaces through their ignorance and malice, and unintentionally build the case stronger and stronger by doing so.


Disparate outcomes compared against the general population in and of it self is not an indication of racism. Disparate outcomes are only racist if they do not reflect the qualities of the inputs into the system in question.

We do not base policy on anecdotes, because the validity of anecdotes is not generally applicable. If anecdotes were valid, people who disagreed with you can just come up with anecdotes of their own. There is no rational and logical endpoint in an argument of anecdotes.

I'm afraid of referencing a three-letter acronym because it can be sensitive on DCUM, but your post is a text-book example of such viewpoints, containing nebulous claims of past systemic racism simply because of disparate outcome and holding up anecdotes and individual story-telling as truths to mold our policies around. It's a toxic and racist viewpoint and I'm glad that it is appearing to burn when brought into the light of liberal ideals.


"...if they do not reflect the qualities of the inputs into the system in question" is a florid way of saying "we think we're better than you". It also ignores that disparate outcomes can be evidence of racism if they represent a structural barrier to people choosing to input themselves into the system. Witness the fact that Black applications rose by 70% for the Class of 2025.

"We do not base policy on anecdotes" is essentially a license for anyone to abuse anyone else as long as there is no paper trail or witness.

Your goal is very clearly to eliminate any avenue for marginalized people to advocate for themselves.


Not at all. People make different choices. Different isn't automatically better. The existence of structural barriers is also a non-point: everyone faces barriers every day. The fact that we have to work to earn money is because there are barriers to obtaining food, shelter, and transportation. The overcoming of barriers is the substance of living a productive life. Now there are government-erected racist barriers which we must all seek to demolish at every opportunity, that we are in agreement. But most of the so-called barriers that people like you complain about are not put up by the government and are simply the outcomes of different choices.


The old admissions process was developed by the government too.


But it wasn't racist. Remember, government action = okay; government racist action = not okay; private racist action = it depends.
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Anonymous wrote:The have hat has not been moved from the ultra wealthy communities to economically disadvantaged ones. The top TJ feeders like Carson and Rocky Run are still getting tons of kids in. Now schools that rarely got any one in, Poe/Glasgow/Whitman/whoever, are also assured a solid chunk of seats.

Which communities lost out? Middle class. Rich never give from themselves to low income. Frost went from something like 25 seats to 9, which is probably only the 1.5% they are required to get.


Not sure exactly how it impacted different schools but Elaine Tholen admitted to the McLean PTSA that the school, already overcrowded, picked up 20-30 additional freshmen from Longfellow last fall due to the TJ admissions changes.



This is the problem with how this TJ reform was done. Mclean has far fewer spots at TJ and the School Board did nothing to address the already existing issue with overcrowding at McLean High School ( which are now further overcrowded)

The good way would have been to effect reform at TJ and concurrently address issues at McLean, Langley, Marshall, Oakton, Chantilly and other schools impacted by the TJ policy change. Throw in some dollars to have advanced math/science classes.

The school board did not do that. Instead they fed the flames of "Asians are preppers and cheats". Reform did not have to be about us vs them. But you don't get political mileage unless you make the issue partisan. And this is what the school board did. Tholen was a deer in headlights when all this was happening.

They are certainly preppers, but not cheats, and the testing requirements were biased. Idk what you guys think, but they aren’t going back to the biased process


You are conflating two issues. Issue 1: The previous process was broken. Issue 2: The new process is fair/equitable. You will find many folks like me in agreement with Issue 1 - that process was broken (Curie exemplifies why it was broken) and we are not going back. Let us only talk about Issue 2. The new process is no good and largely because the School Board was in a hurry to implement. Any solution will likely result in fewer Asians at TJ. Most reasonable Asians would be ok as long as you soften the blow by offering some TJ like courses at their home schools. Instead we have had an approach where Braband and the school board have created a victor/vanquished dynamic and supported canards of "cheating Asians" to rally their idealogical base.


This makes no sense. You are assuming this but it's a strange assumption. What do "most reasonable XXXs" want? They don't want a better CS course for their senior year. They either want the cohort, if that is their goal, or they want the cachet, if that is their goal. Neither of those are achieved by adding DiffEq to Mclean. The first is achieved by -going to Mclean-.


I am not assuming. I would do it. Many that I know would do it. What I feel right now is that the school board has changed the rules of the game on TJ on me (my child's odds are way lower and it does not matter to my child - the impcated individual - that the School Board added yet another social justice badge of honor at his expense). Further, the Board has done nothing to fix overcrowding at Mclean (an issue that predates the TJ reform and the reform has further exacerbated it). To me it feels like the Board is tell me to eff-off and they will do anything they can because they have the power. I felt the same when McConnell reused to consider Merrick Garland for Scalia's seat. It was the tyranny of the majority. We have the power and we will ride roughshod over you.

So yes you can go on with your assumption that Asian parents want nothing less than a test that they can "game". It feeds the stereotype that has been assiduously cultivated on this Board - you cannot allow for the existence of reasonable Asian parents. Hence you advocate for this new broken process as the only alternative to the past one


I don't think you guys understand. I am an immigrant who came to this country 20 years back. I have encountered racism as a brown Asian man. However, this act of intentionally targeting people like me and my kids has been the worst by far. Calling us overrepresented and making policies to weed us out. Very upsetting. FCPS owes us an apology.


Are you going to continue to vote for every progressive during elections? If so, nothing is going to change.


I am very struggling with that - as a staunch politically active democrat who has contributed time and money. Still think the hateful progressives are small in number. I am definitely having second thoughts though. Not because I don't believe in progressive ideas but because I can't get behind the hatefulness and thoughtless destructivess of many progressives. It is a "Let's destroy first and ask questions later" approach.


Your concerns are very valid... but to be honest, if "hateful" is what you're worried about, you have much bigger issues with the red hat folks than with a few people who are trying to expand access for lower-income Asians in addition to other populations.


hence the struggle. however, I have to say I didn't realize the extent of the anti-Asian hate. and the sheer thoughtlessness. I am still not ready to move sides but that's possibly because I am as liberal as they come.

btw adding low-income asian is just specious and you so transparent. don't make it worse. you either don't understand or don't care about low-income asians.


Why? They've been cut out of the process for generations, and the evidence is in the numbers. Now they're present in the school and celebrated.


Because your hypocrisy and lack of knowledge is evident.

1. you are talking about asians only after your intervention was judged as being racist.
2. low-income asians very much believe in meritocracy. you are just making faulty assumptions about them. you have no idea!

I think ignorant, racist folks like you will lead to democrats being a fringe party.


1. Pro-reform groups have been talking about low-income Asians for the entirety of this process.

2. That's fine, they can believe in meritocracy all they way - but the process cut them out because of the prevalence of boutique exam prep programs. Maybe they were spending money on them as well, but they weren't showing up in the admitted student pool until the Class of 2025. Perhaps merit has been defined poorly if low-income Asians were deemed by the TJ process to be unworthy of selection.


+1

“We continue to be committed to expanding educational opportunities for all. The Asian American community is an incredibly diverse group, and the revised admissions process benefits all students, including Asian American students who are low-income or English language learners, a fact that the Coalition for TJ ignores,” said Niyati Shah, Advancing Justice – AAJC’s Director of Litigation. “All students deserve a high quality education where they can also learn and benefit from the diversity of their peers. We support measures that promote equal educational opportunities for all students, and reject attempts to obscure the rich diversity of our communities.”

https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/civil-rights-groups-file-to-submit-amicus-brief-that-supports-admissions-policies-that-address-structural-barriers-to-education/


There is no shortage of misinformed, self hating Asians. The fact is they were supporting a racist process. see title of thread.


Maybe they want to help ALL Asians, not just the rich ones.


How is reducing Asian admissions into TJ helping Asians?


There are more Asian students at TJ today than a few years ago. As an absolute number and as a % of overall Asian students in FCPS.

And there are more Asian communities represented from all over the county, including kids from low-income Asian families and EL students.


We are talking about the impact of the racist policy, under which fewer Asians were admitted for the affected years. Don't be obtuse.


Kinda deflates the whole “stolen seat” thing when there are more Asians at TJ today than just a few years ago.


Did you fail intro stat class in high school? Asian is the only racial group saw a decrease in percentage from about 70% to 50% under the new policy. FCPS designed that policy proxy for racial groups. And it worked as designed.


Because they increased the total number of seats.

There are more Asian kids at TJ than a few years ago - by number and by % of all Asian kids in FCPS. And yet you complain about a small number of kids from low-income MSs filing those new seats?



You do not get the point - they did their absolute best to decrease Asian percentages and laughed out loud in the process.


No “stolen” seats here.

# of Asian students at TJ
21-22: 1,258
20-21: 1,299
19-20: 1,292
18-19: 1,244
17-18: 1,210


NP: you still don’t get it.

Why do you keep refusing to answer to the percentage issue?


What “question”? The % doesn’t matter because they increased the class size. Overall, there is no impact to absolute # of Asian kids. If nothing changed and there were this many Asian kids you wouldn’t think anything of it. You’re only mad because they opened up a little more space to take kids from lower-income MSs. And you think you are entitled to all of the old seats AND all of the new seats.


You're right there is no question if you read the judge's decision. The government isn't allowed to even implement something beneficial if it had a racist intent. Our unprofessional school board sent texts laughing about discriminating against Asians, claiming white people don't understand, and ignoring the public. This progressive thinking that any means necessary is allowed to benefit low-income people is illegal and incompatible with our constitution.


It's funny to see posters on this thread advocate for the poor. They are using those families that sign up for Free and Reduced Meals (FRM) to identify low-income households. Anybody can sign up for that program and they DOES NOT REQUIRE INCOME VERIFICATION, and less than 3% of applicants are even audited.


Racist strategy based on faulty data. And they are still begging for their big law school loans to be forgiven by the taxpayer. You losers are a burden on society.


OMG OMG it's CRAZTY!! You know what else!?! I heard wealthy families were able to buy the admissions test!


That's false. What they were able to do, in many cases, was spend upwards of $5K for a program that taught their kids how to solve specific types of problems on a timed exam meant to evaluate native problem-solving ability. The exam in question was selected not only for its unique approach but also for its secured nature - but TJ students confirmed that by attending this boutique program, they were exposed to practice problems that they later saw on the exam itself. Students who participated in this expensive and time-intensive program received nearly 30% of the offers for the Class of 2024 and nearly 70% of the offers for Loudoun County students, and literally 100% were South Asian - which we know because the company offering the program published the first and last names of all of the successful applicants.


While white parents are paying $130-180 per HOUR to private tutor their snowflakes to raise SAT scores while pretending there is no prepping going on because you can't see -nothing to see while criticizing Asian students paying about $10-20 an hour to sit in a class room to prepare for SAT or TJ or whatever.

You gotta hand it to them - they are sneaky as f*ck.


White people aren't discriminating against Asians. The people doing that are a diverse group of progressives on the school board. Sorry you think Twitter social justice is real life.


Yea, and this group includes Asians who somehow feel that jumping on the equity band wagon and push for racist discrimination against Asians is a good way to earn them a welcoming spot in their social circle.


Or we’ve realized it’s the right thing to do, and the best thing for our school.


How is being racist the right thing to do?


Our view is that a process that systematically shut out Black, Hispanic, and low-income students for over 30 years is significantly more racist than a process that has welcomed significant representation from those groups without fundamentally altering the character of the school.

We have witnessed and enjoyed the benefits of diversity in our experiences in higher education beyond TJ and are thrilled to see that TJ is finally catching up to the institutions where it hopes to send its students.

We believe the anecdotes that our Black and Hispanic TJ Alumni friends have shared with us surrounding the ignorant things that were said to and about them during their time- by students, staff, and parents - and hope that exposure to a broader range of students will result in greater understanding from the TJ population, because "being racist" is never the right thing to do. Part of the reason that we believe those anecdotes is because they are echoed by parents at PTSA meetings, School Board meetings, and on forums like this one. Posters on this forum seem to go out of their way every day to confirm the need for diversity in elite academic spaces through their ignorance and malice, and unintentionally build the case stronger and stronger by doing so.


Disparate outcomes compared against the general population in and of it self is not an indication of racism. Disparate outcomes are only racist if they do not reflect the qualities of the inputs into the system in question.

We do not base policy on anecdotes, because the validity of anecdotes is not generally applicable. If anecdotes were valid, people who disagreed with you can just come up with anecdotes of their own. There is no rational and logical endpoint in an argument of anecdotes.

I'm afraid of referencing a three-letter acronym because it can be sensitive on DCUM, but your post is a text-book example of such viewpoints, containing nebulous claims of past systemic racism simply because of disparate outcome and holding up anecdotes and individual story-telling as truths to mold our policies around. It's a toxic and racist viewpoint and I'm glad that it is appearing to burn when brought into the light of liberal ideals.


Nice speech. Esp about the light of liberal ideals burning other viewpoints and all that. total generalizations and not solution oriented but that's ok. you may mean well. Getting to specifics, a federal judge determined your specific approach with TJ has been racist. and that's the title of the thread and discussion here. So no, the specific racist apprach you followed here is not ok.


Eh? It appears you are confused. My posts argue against those who support the new racist TJ policies.


DP. Right. You prefer the old racist policies to the new racist policies.

Have you figured it out yet? Just saying racist is meaningless. You'll have to communicate better, if you want to actually discuss. Or you can continue to use "racist" and not communicate anything.


No, it's not been established that the prior TJ admissions policies were racist. You need to do the heavy lifting of actually presenting your proof before concluding that it is racist. For the new policy, we have communications records plus a court decision showing that it is indeed racist.
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Anonymous wrote:The have hat has not been moved from the ultra wealthy communities to economically disadvantaged ones. The top TJ feeders like Carson and Rocky Run are still getting tons of kids in. Now schools that rarely got any one in, Poe/Glasgow/Whitman/whoever, are also assured a solid chunk of seats.

Which communities lost out? Middle class. Rich never give from themselves to low income. Frost went from something like 25 seats to 9, which is probably only the 1.5% they are required to get.


Not sure exactly how it impacted different schools but Elaine Tholen admitted to the McLean PTSA that the school, already overcrowded, picked up 20-30 additional freshmen from Longfellow last fall due to the TJ admissions changes.



This is the problem with how this TJ reform was done. Mclean has far fewer spots at TJ and the School Board did nothing to address the already existing issue with overcrowding at McLean High School ( which are now further overcrowded)

The good way would have been to effect reform at TJ and concurrently address issues at McLean, Langley, Marshall, Oakton, Chantilly and other schools impacted by the TJ policy change. Throw in some dollars to have advanced math/science classes.

The school board did not do that. Instead they fed the flames of "Asians are preppers and cheats". Reform did not have to be about us vs them. But you don't get political mileage unless you make the issue partisan. And this is what the school board did. Tholen was a deer in headlights when all this was happening.

They are certainly preppers, but not cheats, and the testing requirements were biased. Idk what you guys think, but they aren’t going back to the biased process


You are conflating two issues. Issue 1: The previous process was broken. Issue 2: The new process is fair/equitable. You will find many folks like me in agreement with Issue 1 - that process was broken (Curie exemplifies why it was broken) and we are not going back. Let us only talk about Issue 2. The new process is no good and largely because the School Board was in a hurry to implement. Any solution will likely result in fewer Asians at TJ. Most reasonable Asians would be ok as long as you soften the blow by offering some TJ like courses at their home schools. Instead we have had an approach where Braband and the school board have created a victor/vanquished dynamic and supported canards of "cheating Asians" to rally their idealogical base.


This makes no sense. You are assuming this but it's a strange assumption. What do "most reasonable XXXs" want? They don't want a better CS course for their senior year. They either want the cohort, if that is their goal, or they want the cachet, if that is their goal. Neither of those are achieved by adding DiffEq to Mclean. The first is achieved by -going to Mclean-.


I am not assuming. I would do it. Many that I know would do it. What I feel right now is that the school board has changed the rules of the game on TJ on me (my child's odds are way lower and it does not matter to my child - the impcated individual - that the School Board added yet another social justice badge of honor at his expense). Further, the Board has done nothing to fix overcrowding at Mclean (an issue that predates the TJ reform and the reform has further exacerbated it). To me it feels like the Board is tell me to eff-off and they will do anything they can because they have the power. I felt the same when McConnell reused to consider Merrick Garland for Scalia's seat. It was the tyranny of the majority. We have the power and we will ride roughshod over you.

So yes you can go on with your assumption that Asian parents want nothing less than a test that they can "game". It feeds the stereotype that has been assiduously cultivated on this Board - you cannot allow for the existence of reasonable Asian parents. Hence you advocate for this new broken process as the only alternative to the past one


I don't think you guys understand. I am an immigrant who came to this country 20 years back. I have encountered racism as a brown Asian man. However, this act of intentionally targeting people like me and my kids has been the worst by far. Calling us overrepresented and making policies to weed us out. Very upsetting. FCPS owes us an apology.


Are you going to continue to vote for every progressive during elections? If so, nothing is going to change.


I am very struggling with that - as a staunch politically active democrat who has contributed time and money. Still think the hateful progressives are small in number. I am definitely having second thoughts though. Not because I don't believe in progressive ideas but because I can't get behind the hatefulness and thoughtless destructivess of many progressives. It is a "Let's destroy first and ask questions later" approach.


Your concerns are very valid... but to be honest, if "hateful" is what you're worried about, you have much bigger issues with the red hat folks than with a few people who are trying to expand access for lower-income Asians in addition to other populations.


hence the struggle. however, I have to say I didn't realize the extent of the anti-Asian hate. and the sheer thoughtlessness. I am still not ready to move sides but that's possibly because I am as liberal as they come.

btw adding low-income asian is just specious and you so transparent. don't make it worse. you either don't understand or don't care about low-income asians.


Why? They've been cut out of the process for generations, and the evidence is in the numbers. Now they're present in the school and celebrated.


Because your hypocrisy and lack of knowledge is evident.

1. you are talking about asians only after your intervention was judged as being racist.
2. low-income asians very much believe in meritocracy. you are just making faulty assumptions about them. you have no idea!

I think ignorant, racist folks like you will lead to democrats being a fringe party.


1. Pro-reform groups have been talking about low-income Asians for the entirety of this process.

2. That's fine, they can believe in meritocracy all they way - but the process cut them out because of the prevalence of boutique exam prep programs. Maybe they were spending money on them as well, but they weren't showing up in the admitted student pool until the Class of 2025. Perhaps merit has been defined poorly if low-income Asians were deemed by the TJ process to be unworthy of selection.


+1

“We continue to be committed to expanding educational opportunities for all. The Asian American community is an incredibly diverse group, and the revised admissions process benefits all students, including Asian American students who are low-income or English language learners, a fact that the Coalition for TJ ignores,” said Niyati Shah, Advancing Justice – AAJC’s Director of Litigation. “All students deserve a high quality education where they can also learn and benefit from the diversity of their peers. We support measures that promote equal educational opportunities for all students, and reject attempts to obscure the rich diversity of our communities.”

https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/civil-rights-groups-file-to-submit-amicus-brief-that-supports-admissions-policies-that-address-structural-barriers-to-education/


There is no shortage of misinformed, self hating Asians. The fact is they were supporting a racist process. see title of thread.


Maybe they want to help ALL Asians, not just the rich ones.


How is reducing Asian admissions into TJ helping Asians?


There are more Asian students at TJ today than a few years ago. As an absolute number and as a % of overall Asian students in FCPS.

And there are more Asian communities represented from all over the county, including kids from low-income Asian families and EL students.


We are talking about the impact of the racist policy, under which fewer Asians were admitted for the affected years. Don't be obtuse.


Kinda deflates the whole “stolen seat” thing when there are more Asians at TJ today than just a few years ago.


Did you fail intro stat class in high school? Asian is the only racial group saw a decrease in percentage from about 70% to 50% under the new policy. FCPS designed that policy proxy for racial groups. And it worked as designed.


Because they increased the total number of seats.

There are more Asian kids at TJ than a few years ago - by number and by % of all Asian kids in FCPS. And yet you complain about a small number of kids from low-income MSs filing those new seats?



You do not get the point - they did their absolute best to decrease Asian percentages and laughed out loud in the process.


No “stolen” seats here.

# of Asian students at TJ
21-22: 1,258
20-21: 1,299
19-20: 1,292
18-19: 1,244
17-18: 1,210


NP: you still don’t get it.

Why do you keep refusing to answer to the percentage issue?


What “question”? The % doesn’t matter because they increased the class size. Overall, there is no impact to absolute # of Asian kids. If nothing changed and there were this many Asian kids you wouldn’t think anything of it. You’re only mad because they opened up a little more space to take kids from lower-income MSs. And you think you are entitled to all of the old seats AND all of the new seats.


You're right there is no question if you read the judge's decision. The government isn't allowed to even implement something beneficial if it had a racist intent. Our unprofessional school board sent texts laughing about discriminating against Asians, claiming white people don't understand, and ignoring the public. This progressive thinking that any means necessary is allowed to benefit low-income people is illegal and incompatible with our constitution.


It's funny to see posters on this thread advocate for the poor. They are using those families that sign up for Free and Reduced Meals (FRM) to identify low-income households. Anybody can sign up for that program and they DOES NOT REQUIRE INCOME VERIFICATION, and less than 3% of applicants are even audited.


Racist strategy based on faulty data. And they are still begging for their big law school loans to be forgiven by the taxpayer. You losers are a burden on society.


OMG OMG it's CRAZTY!! You know what else!?! I heard wealthy families were able to buy the admissions test!


That's false. What they were able to do, in many cases, was spend upwards of $5K for a program that taught their kids how to solve specific types of problems on a timed exam meant to evaluate native problem-solving ability. The exam in question was selected not only for its unique approach but also for its secured nature - but TJ students confirmed that by attending this boutique program, they were exposed to practice problems that they later saw on the exam itself. Students who participated in this expensive and time-intensive program received nearly 30% of the offers for the Class of 2024 and nearly 70% of the offers for Loudoun County students, and literally 100% were South Asian - which we know because the company offering the program published the first and last names of all of the successful applicants.


While white parents are paying $130-180 per HOUR to private tutor their snowflakes to raise SAT scores while pretending there is no prepping going on because you can't see -nothing to see while criticizing Asian students paying about $10-20 an hour to sit in a class room to prepare for SAT or TJ or whatever.

You gotta hand it to them - they are sneaky as f*ck.


White people aren't discriminating against Asians. The people doing that are a diverse group of progressives on the school board. Sorry you think Twitter social justice is real life.


Yea, and this group includes Asians who somehow feel that jumping on the equity band wagon and push for racist discrimination against Asians is a good way to earn them a welcoming spot in their social circle.


Or we’ve realized it’s the right thing to do, and the best thing for our school.


How is being racist the right thing to do?


Our view is that a process that systematically shut out Black, Hispanic, and low-income students for over 30 years is significantly more racist than a process that has welcomed significant representation from those groups without fundamentally altering the character of the school.

We have witnessed and enjoyed the benefits of diversity in our experiences in higher education beyond TJ and are thrilled to see that TJ is finally catching up to the institutions where it hopes to send its students.

We believe the anecdotes that our Black and Hispanic TJ Alumni friends have shared with us surrounding the ignorant things that were said to and about them during their time- by students, staff, and parents - and hope that exposure to a broader range of students will result in greater understanding from the TJ population, because "being racist" is never the right thing to do. Part of the reason that we believe those anecdotes is because they are echoed by parents at PTSA meetings, School Board meetings, and on forums like this one. Posters on this forum seem to go out of their way every day to confirm the need for diversity in elite academic spaces through their ignorance and malice, and unintentionally build the case stronger and stronger by doing so.


Disparate outcomes compared against the general population in and of it self is not an indication of racism. Disparate outcomes are only racist if they do not reflect the qualities of the inputs into the system in question.

We do not base policy on anecdotes, because the validity of anecdotes is not generally applicable. If anecdotes were valid, people who disagreed with you can just come up with anecdotes of their own. There is no rational and logical endpoint in an argument of anecdotes.

I'm afraid of referencing a three-letter acronym because it can be sensitive on DCUM, but your post is a text-book example of such viewpoints, containing nebulous claims of past systemic racism simply because of disparate outcome and holding up anecdotes and individual story-telling as truths to mold our policies around. It's a toxic and racist viewpoint and I'm glad that it is appearing to burn when brought into the light of liberal ideals.


Nice speech. Esp about the light of liberal ideals burning other viewpoints and all that. total generalizations and not solution oriented but that's ok. you may mean well. Getting to specifics, a federal judge determined your specific approach with TJ has been racist. and that's the title of the thread and discussion here. So no, the specific racist apprach you followed here is not ok.


Eh? It appears you are confused. My posts argue against those who support the new racist TJ policies.


DP. Right. You prefer the old racist policies to the new racist policies.

Have you figured it out yet? Just saying racist is meaningless. You'll have to communicate better, if you want to actually discuss. Or you can continue to use "racist" and not communicate anything.


No, it's not been established that the prior TJ admissions policies were racist. You need to do the heavy lifting of actually presenting your proof before concluding that it is racist. For the new policy, we have communications records plus a court decision showing that it is indeed racist.


Black applicants jumped by 70% from 2024 to 2025. They didn't even want to participate in the process prior to the changes.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:https://pacificlegal.org/press-release/federal-judge-rules-that-admissions-changes-at-nations-top-public-school-discriminate-against-asian-american-students/
Next step is to criminally charge Mr. Brabrand and FCPS SB members for their hate crimes against Asian Americans. I'll personally donate at least $10k for this cause.
DC

This case and this statement is just so ridiculous - goes to show how entitled some of our people our

I'm south Asian and my kid did go to TJ - but we thought of it as a privilege that she happened to earn by taking two tests and getting admitted (no Prep classes). We totally realize that DC had the advantage of having two professional parents who were able to expose DC to STEM outside of school and were knowledgeable about TJ and all it had to offer.
Anonymous
Judge Hilton denied FCPS's motion for a stay. FCPS will have to use a merit-based admission system for the class of 2026.
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Anonymous wrote:The have hat has not been moved from the ultra wealthy communities to economically disadvantaged ones. The top TJ feeders like Carson and Rocky Run are still getting tons of kids in. Now schools that rarely got any one in, Poe/Glasgow/Whitman/whoever, are also assured a solid chunk of seats.

Which communities lost out? Middle class. Rich never give from themselves to low income. Frost went from something like 25 seats to 9, which is probably only the 1.5% they are required to get.


Not sure exactly how it impacted different schools but Elaine Tholen admitted to the McLean PTSA that the school, already overcrowded, picked up 20-30 additional freshmen from Longfellow last fall due to the TJ admissions changes.



This is the problem with how this TJ reform was done. Mclean has far fewer spots at TJ and the School Board did nothing to address the already existing issue with overcrowding at McLean High School ( which are now further overcrowded)

The good way would have been to effect reform at TJ and concurrently address issues at McLean, Langley, Marshall, Oakton, Chantilly and other schools impacted by the TJ policy change. Throw in some dollars to have advanced math/science classes.

The school board did not do that. Instead they fed the flames of "Asians are preppers and cheats". Reform did not have to be about us vs them. But you don't get political mileage unless you make the issue partisan. And this is what the school board did. Tholen was a deer in headlights when all this was happening.

They are certainly preppers, but not cheats, and the testing requirements were biased. Idk what you guys think, but they aren’t going back to the biased process


You are conflating two issues. Issue 1: The previous process was broken. Issue 2: The new process is fair/equitable. You will find many folks like me in agreement with Issue 1 - that process was broken (Curie exemplifies why it was broken) and we are not going back. Let us only talk about Issue 2. The new process is no good and largely because the School Board was in a hurry to implement. Any solution will likely result in fewer Asians at TJ. Most reasonable Asians would be ok as long as you soften the blow by offering some TJ like courses at their home schools. Instead we have had an approach where Braband and the school board have created a victor/vanquished dynamic and supported canards of "cheating Asians" to rally their idealogical base.


This makes no sense. You are assuming this but it's a strange assumption. What do "most reasonable XXXs" want? They don't want a better CS course for their senior year. They either want the cohort, if that is their goal, or they want the cachet, if that is their goal. Neither of those are achieved by adding DiffEq to Mclean. The first is achieved by -going to Mclean-.


I am not assuming. I would do it. Many that I know would do it. What I feel right now is that the school board has changed the rules of the game on TJ on me (my child's odds are way lower and it does not matter to my child - the impcated individual - that the School Board added yet another social justice badge of honor at his expense). Further, the Board has done nothing to fix overcrowding at Mclean (an issue that predates the TJ reform and the reform has further exacerbated it). To me it feels like the Board is tell me to eff-off and they will do anything they can because they have the power. I felt the same when McConnell reused to consider Merrick Garland for Scalia's seat. It was the tyranny of the majority. We have the power and we will ride roughshod over you.

So yes you can go on with your assumption that Asian parents want nothing less than a test that they can "game". It feeds the stereotype that has been assiduously cultivated on this Board - you cannot allow for the existence of reasonable Asian parents. Hence you advocate for this new broken process as the only alternative to the past one


I don't think you guys understand. I am an immigrant who came to this country 20 years back. I have encountered racism as a brown Asian man. However, this act of intentionally targeting people like me and my kids has been the worst by far. Calling us overrepresented and making policies to weed us out. Very upsetting. FCPS owes us an apology.


Are you going to continue to vote for every progressive during elections? If so, nothing is going to change.


I am very struggling with that - as a staunch politically active democrat who has contributed time and money. Still think the hateful progressives are small in number. I am definitely having second thoughts though. Not because I don't believe in progressive ideas but because I can't get behind the hatefulness and thoughtless destructivess of many progressives. It is a "Let's destroy first and ask questions later" approach.


Your concerns are very valid... but to be honest, if "hateful" is what you're worried about, you have much bigger issues with the red hat folks than with a few people who are trying to expand access for lower-income Asians in addition to other populations.


hence the struggle. however, I have to say I didn't realize the extent of the anti-Asian hate. and the sheer thoughtlessness. I am still not ready to move sides but that's possibly because I am as liberal as they come.

btw adding low-income asian is just specious and you so transparent. don't make it worse. you either don't understand or don't care about low-income asians.


Why? They've been cut out of the process for generations, and the evidence is in the numbers. Now they're present in the school and celebrated.


Because your hypocrisy and lack of knowledge is evident.

1. you are talking about asians only after your intervention was judged as being racist.
2. low-income asians very much believe in meritocracy. you are just making faulty assumptions about them. you have no idea!

I think ignorant, racist folks like you will lead to democrats being a fringe party.


1. Pro-reform groups have been talking about low-income Asians for the entirety of this process.

2. That's fine, they can believe in meritocracy all they way - but the process cut them out because of the prevalence of boutique exam prep programs. Maybe they were spending money on them as well, but they weren't showing up in the admitted student pool until the Class of 2025. Perhaps merit has been defined poorly if low-income Asians were deemed by the TJ process to be unworthy of selection.


+1

“We continue to be committed to expanding educational opportunities for all. The Asian American community is an incredibly diverse group, and the revised admissions process benefits all students, including Asian American students who are low-income or English language learners, a fact that the Coalition for TJ ignores,” said Niyati Shah, Advancing Justice – AAJC’s Director of Litigation. “All students deserve a high quality education where they can also learn and benefit from the diversity of their peers. We support measures that promote equal educational opportunities for all students, and reject attempts to obscure the rich diversity of our communities.”

https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/civil-rights-groups-file-to-submit-amicus-brief-that-supports-admissions-policies-that-address-structural-barriers-to-education/


There is no shortage of misinformed, self hating Asians. The fact is they were supporting a racist process. see title of thread.


Maybe they want to help ALL Asians, not just the rich ones.


How is reducing Asian admissions into TJ helping Asians?


There are more Asian students at TJ today than a few years ago. As an absolute number and as a % of overall Asian students in FCPS.

And there are more Asian communities represented from all over the county, including kids from low-income Asian families and EL students.


We are talking about the impact of the racist policy, under which fewer Asians were admitted for the affected years. Don't be obtuse.


Kinda deflates the whole “stolen seat” thing when there are more Asians at TJ today than just a few years ago.


Did you fail intro stat class in high school? Asian is the only racial group saw a decrease in percentage from about 70% to 50% under the new policy. FCPS designed that policy proxy for racial groups. And it worked as designed.


Because they increased the total number of seats.

There are more Asian kids at TJ than a few years ago - by number and by % of all Asian kids in FCPS. And yet you complain about a small number of kids from low-income MSs filing those new seats?



You do not get the point - they did their absolute best to decrease Asian percentages and laughed out loud in the process.


No “stolen” seats here.

# of Asian students at TJ
21-22: 1,258
20-21: 1,299
19-20: 1,292
18-19: 1,244
17-18: 1,210


NP: you still don’t get it.

Why do you keep refusing to answer to the percentage issue?


What “question”? The % doesn’t matter because they increased the class size. Overall, there is no impact to absolute # of Asian kids. If nothing changed and there were this many Asian kids you wouldn’t think anything of it. You’re only mad because they opened up a little more space to take kids from lower-income MSs. And you think you are entitled to all of the old seats AND all of the new seats.


You're right there is no question if you read the judge's decision. The government isn't allowed to even implement something beneficial if it had a racist intent. Our unprofessional school board sent texts laughing about discriminating against Asians, claiming white people don't understand, and ignoring the public. This progressive thinking that any means necessary is allowed to benefit low-income people is illegal and incompatible with our constitution.


It's funny to see posters on this thread advocate for the poor. They are using those families that sign up for Free and Reduced Meals (FRM) to identify low-income households. Anybody can sign up for that program and they DOES NOT REQUIRE INCOME VERIFICATION, and less than 3% of applicants are even audited.


Racist strategy based on faulty data. And they are still begging for their big law school loans to be forgiven by the taxpayer. You losers are a burden on society.


OMG OMG it's CRAZTY!! You know what else!?! I heard wealthy families were able to buy the admissions test!


That's false. What they were able to do, in many cases, was spend upwards of $5K for a program that taught their kids how to solve specific types of problems on a timed exam meant to evaluate native problem-solving ability. The exam in question was selected not only for its unique approach but also for its secured nature - but TJ students confirmed that by attending this boutique program, they were exposed to practice problems that they later saw on the exam itself. Students who participated in this expensive and time-intensive program received nearly 30% of the offers for the Class of 2024 and nearly 70% of the offers for Loudoun County students, and literally 100% were South Asian - which we know because the company offering the program published the first and last names of all of the successful applicants.


While white parents are paying $130-180 per HOUR to private tutor their snowflakes to raise SAT scores while pretending there is no prepping going on because you can't see -nothing to see while criticizing Asian students paying about $10-20 an hour to sit in a class room to prepare for SAT or TJ or whatever.

You gotta hand it to them - they are sneaky as f*ck.


White people aren't discriminating against Asians. The people doing that are a diverse group of progressives on the school board. Sorry you think Twitter social justice is real life.


Yea, and this group includes Asians who somehow feel that jumping on the equity band wagon and push for racist discrimination against Asians is a good way to earn them a welcoming spot in their social circle.


Or we’ve realized it’s the right thing to do, and the best thing for our school.


How is being racist the right thing to do?


Our view is that a process that systematically shut out Black, Hispanic, and low-income students for over 30 years is significantly more racist than a process that has welcomed significant representation from those groups without fundamentally altering the character of the school.

We have witnessed and enjoyed the benefits of diversity in our experiences in higher education beyond TJ and are thrilled to see that TJ is finally catching up to the institutions where it hopes to send its students.

We believe the anecdotes that our Black and Hispanic TJ Alumni friends have shared with us surrounding the ignorant things that were said to and about them during their time- by students, staff, and parents - and hope that exposure to a broader range of students will result in greater understanding from the TJ population, because "being racist" is never the right thing to do. Part of the reason that we believe those anecdotes is because they are echoed by parents at PTSA meetings, School Board meetings, and on forums like this one. Posters on this forum seem to go out of their way every day to confirm the need for diversity in elite academic spaces through their ignorance and malice, and unintentionally build the case stronger and stronger by doing so.


Disparate outcomes compared against the general population in and of it self is not an indication of racism. Disparate outcomes are only racist if they do not reflect the qualities of the inputs into the system in question.

We do not base policy on anecdotes, because the validity of anecdotes is not generally applicable. If anecdotes were valid, people who disagreed with you can just come up with anecdotes of their own. There is no rational and logical endpoint in an argument of anecdotes.

I'm afraid of referencing a three-letter acronym because it can be sensitive on DCUM, but your post is a text-book example of such viewpoints, containing nebulous claims of past systemic racism simply because of disparate outcome and holding up anecdotes and individual story-telling as truths to mold our policies around. It's a toxic and racist viewpoint and I'm glad that it is appearing to burn when brought into the light of liberal ideals.


Nice speech. Esp about the light of liberal ideals burning other viewpoints and all that. total generalizations and not solution oriented but that's ok. you may mean well. Getting to specifics, a federal judge determined your specific approach with TJ has been racist. and that's the title of the thread and discussion here. So no, the specific racist apprach you followed here is not ok.


Eh? It appears you are confused. My posts argue against those who support the new racist TJ policies.


DP. Right. You prefer the old racist policies to the new racist policies.

Have you figured it out yet? Just saying racist is meaningless. You'll have to communicate better, if you want to actually discuss. Or you can continue to use "racist" and not communicate anything.


No, it's not been established that the prior TJ admissions policies were racist. You need to do the heavy lifting of actually presenting your proof before concluding that it is racist. For the new policy, we have communications records plus a court decision showing that it is indeed racist.


Black applicants jumped by 70% from 2024 to 2025. They didn't even want to participate in the process prior to the changes.


because they didn't get the "booster" seats.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:Judge Hilton denied FCPS's motion for a stay. FCPS will have to use a merit-based admission system for the class of 2026.


Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. Halleluiah
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:Judge Hilton denied FCPS's motion for a stay. FCPS will have to use a merit-based admission system for the class of 2026.


They'll appeal for a stay to the 4th Circuit as well. This was a procedural move and no one realistically expected that Hilton would essentially reverse himself.

It would be genuinely shocking if the stay were not granted by the 4th Circuit.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Judge Hilton denied FCPS's motion for a stay. FCPS will have to use a merit-based admission system for the class of 2026.


They'll appeal for a stay to the 4th Circuit as well. This was a procedural move and no one realistically expected that Hilton would essentially reverse himself.

It would be genuinely shocking if the stay were not granted by the 4th Circuit.


When will this happen?
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Judge Hilton denied FCPS's motion for a stay. FCPS will have to use a merit-based admission system for the class of 2026.


They'll appeal for a stay to the 4th Circuit as well. This was a procedural move and no one realistically expected that Hilton would essentially reverse himself.

It would be genuinely shocking if the stay were not granted by the 4th Circuit.


When will this happen?


This will happen when PP goes to sleep.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Judge Hilton denied FCPS's motion for a stay. FCPS will have to use a merit-based admission system for the class of 2026.


They'll appeal for a stay to the 4th Circuit as well. This was a procedural move and no one realistically expected that Hilton would essentially reverse himself.

It would be genuinely shocking if the stay were not granted by the 4th Circuit.


When will this happen?


FCPS will move in this direction pretty much immediately.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Judge Hilton denied FCPS's motion for a stay. FCPS will have to use a merit-based admission system for the class of 2026.


They'll appeal for a stay to the 4th Circuit as well. This was a procedural move and no one realistically expected that Hilton would essentially reverse himself.

It would be genuinely shocking if the stay were not granted by the 4th Circuit.


That wouldn’t be essentially reversing himself lmao, it would be an acknowledgment of the uncertainty and potential harm of the school district being forced to jerk around families. This kind of stay is granted all the time.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Judge Hilton denied FCPS's motion for a stay. FCPS will have to use a merit-based admission system for the class of 2026.


They'll appeal for a stay to the 4th Circuit as well. This was a procedural move and no one realistically expected that Hilton would essentially reverse himself.

It would be genuinely shocking if the stay were not granted by the 4th Circuit.


That wouldn’t be essentially reversing himself lmao, it would be an acknowledgment of the uncertainty and potential harm of the school district being forced to jerk around families. This kind of stay is granted all the time.


And all the jerking around has been done by those idiotic officially branded racist board members and Brabrand. Let them jerk themselves out of it.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Judge Hilton denied FCPS's motion for a stay. FCPS will have to use a merit-based admission system for the class of 2026.


They'll appeal for a stay to the 4th Circuit as well. This was a procedural move and no one realistically expected that Hilton would essentially reverse himself.

It would be genuinely shocking if the stay were not granted by the 4th Circuit.


That wouldn’t be essentially reversing himself lmao, it would be an acknowledgment of the uncertainty and potential harm of the school district being forced to jerk around families. This kind of stay is granted all the time.


Given the language that he used in the opinion, it absolutely would be reversing himself. He couldn't grant the stay without seriously doing damage to his core arguments in the opinion.
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