TJ admissions now verifying free and reduced price meal status for successful 2026 applicants
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Anonymous
Lacrosse? Ice Hockey? Golf? Tennis? |
Anonymous
I guess you missed my comment that it was a poor attempt. They did not do a good job. But TJ is the crown jewel and apparently most people here think it opens doors or they would not be going gymnastics to get their kids in. Getting URM kids that advantage would be huge and an amazing start to real change. But you have to do it right (which starts much younger, ideally) and you have to prove enough support for the students to succeed or no one will want to go. It’s much more complicated than changing admissions requirements. The reality is that it is a zero sum game so other groups are threatened by the idea, which is understandable. I get that some people have planned for this since their kids entered school. Many families move to Fairfax County with an eye toward TJ. I can only imagine how hostile the environment is for these URM at TJ right now. Personally, I think the answer lies in reining back the out of control AAP program and offering more choices in the non-AAP levels. Accelerate the above average kids in the Gen Ed program and severely limit AAP to the truly “gifted” kids. That levels the playing field a bit more and is actually more appropriate. Then at the TJ level, the truly gifted would get in and some of the above average kids, but every above average kid would hve an equal shot (not just the ones whose parents pushed them into AAP). Another option would be to create several stem focused middle schools in all areas of the county to give equal access to the instruction, contests and stem ECS that folks use to prep for TJ. They have to be in areas where IRM live, though, not in McLean and the like. |
Anonymous
Wow. You're really, truly dumb. Kids at the 99.9th percentile should NOT be skipping multiple grades. It's horrible for socialization, and you would be setting those kids up for not really having any friends. Also, skipping grades is skipping material, playing catch up, getting bored again from learning faster than peers, skipping again, etc. It is not nearly as good as an actual gifted level class moving at an appropriate pace, skipping nothing, and having similar ability peers. Aside from that, FCPS is not willing to skip kids ahead more than a grade level. Your solution is something that FCPS categorically just will not do, probably because they also understand that it's socially a poor fit for almost all kids. FCPS is enormous. It would be quite easy to have a few AAP centers in the western part of the county catering to kids at the 140+ level. It certainly makes 1000x more sense to actually teach the highly gifted than deny them the appropriate gifted programming that they're entitled to by VA law. Can you even math, bro? You suggested filling TJ from an AAP system that only exists in the bottom 2/3 of FCPS, and then backfilling from the higher SES schools only when there's space. TJ has around 350-400 FCPS spots, with the remainder going to LCPS, APS, etc. There are around 14,000 kids per grade level. The bottom 2/3 of schools would serve around 9332 of these kids. The top 5% of that would represent 467 kids, which is larger than the FCPS allotment would even be. If you went with your top 1% idea, you'd have only 93 kids per grade level in the top 1% of the lower 2/3 of FCPS ES. This would be completely insufficient for running an elementary ES program. The CogAT and NNAT ceilings are also not sufficiently high for that level of granularity. And this is putting a ton of weight on somewhat dubious tests taken in 2nd grade. Kids with undiagnosed LDs would be effectively shut out of the process. Regarding the bolded, it's possible to do that without stripping away gifted services from the kids at higher SES schools. Providing gifted services to poor kids at lower SES schools is completely independent from providing gifted programming to higher SES kids. The only thing your proposal does is stick it to the Asian kids, which was almost certainly your point. |
Anonymous
I doubt there are any schools where a 129 IQ URM can't get into AAP. The AAP equity report showed that FCPS went quite far in the other direction, where pretty much every 115 IQ URM got in. I know of 3 different URMs who had the AAP red carpet rolled out for them with sub 120 CogAT scores and okay, but not great, academic performance. Schools are instructed to look out for any URM showing any potential. They are instructed to use teacher referrals if the parents don't refer. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. Letting URMs into AAP who show potential is likely a net positive for everyone. It's just not factually correct to say that in the last 6+ years, high ability URMs are being shut out of AAP. They're actually being admitted with significantly lower test scores than white and Asian kids. Here's the equity report: https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/BPLQKV69B096/$file/FCPS%20final%20report%2005.05.20.pdf |
Anonymous
That is great news! I never know whether to believe these FCPS reports but it’s the only data we have, so I guess I do. It sounds like the identification is decent. So how do those AAP programs compare to somewhere like Longfellow? That is the next issue FCPS would need to tackle is getting the AAP programs in the underrepresented schools up to a decent standard. A program in name only will not help anyone. When my own kid was in AAP, there were huge differences between schools and programs and the savvy parents knew how to get into the good ones. |
Anonymous
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The system should not be revamped to better position low-income kids to apply to TJ. Rather, TJ should be scrapped or turned into an Academy, and the system revamped to improve the quality of education at the ES, MS, and HS levels. That would mean a soup-to-nuts reassessment of AAP at the ES and MS level and getting rid of low-return IB programs at the high schools serving the most low-income kids.
The STEM magnet at TJ was initially about marketing, not education, and keeping TJ at the center of a discussion about educational equity is little more now than a concession that FCPS is unable or unwilling to do more than make cosmetic changes to address larger issues. |
Anonymous
| AAP is moving to setting the pool based on the scores of the top 10% at each school so that the top kids in each school are automatically considered. Parents and Teachers can still refer so kids at the higher SES schools that do not fall into that top 10% can still be considered. It should mean that AAP starts to reflect the schools and Centers population more accurately. |
Anonymous
m How would that solve the issue of having some high income powerhouse centers and low income centers in name only? It almost seems to do the opposite of equity. |
Anonymous
At the ES level, it depends on the specific teachers. My oldest did LIII + Advanced math at a Title I base school. The LIII pull out was quite good, and my kid also got to participate in MOEMS and Science Olympiad through the advanced math program and LIII programs, respectively. My kid did not get much academic attention and was often the buffer for the rowdiest kids or the peer tutor. My child was in the above grade level reading group, which at best met with the teacher for 15 minutes twice per month. The peer group for this reading group was great, and the kid had a lot of valuable collaboration when the teacher wasn't with them. Thankfully, the teacher also did not saddle my kid with a ton of busy work. Instead, my child read for like 2 hours every day at school. By the start of 4th quarter, the teachers had to seek out more books specifically for my child, since they had already read through the appropriate level part of the classroom library. This child has had zero problems in MS AAP classes and also cruised through Algebra I in 7th. My youngest attended a reasonably highly regarded AAP center that is much wealthier as a whole than the Title I base school. The teachers spent the first entire month of the year on really low level review and icebreaker activities. My kid still got only 15 minutes twice per week of math instruction due to the stations model. The rest of the time was for Dreambox, loosely math related card games, and kids ignoring all of that to talk to friends. My kid also got maybe 15 minutes of language arts instruction every week, since the teacher said that she mostly needed to work with the below and on grade level readers. The teachers filled the kids' time with pointless busywork. My kid had homework assignments where they had to write out 10 times every single word on the Wordmasters list, despite the fact that my kid already knew the words and the spelling from the get go. My kid remained a terrible writer because they never got any writing instruction or any real feedback. They made so many slide shows, and pretty much the entire science and social studies curriculum were the kids picking some small facet of the coursework, studying it, making a slideshow in a group, and then presenting that to the class. In 3rd grade, for example, the teacher didn't bother teaching the units on Roman and Greek History. The kids supposedly learned everything by watching everyone's slide shows. This school did not have MOEMS, Science Olympiad, or any other neat ECs. It only offered Mathcounts if a parent stepped up and ran it. In retrospect, kid #1's LIII experience at the Title I school was far superior to kid #2's experience at the higher SES center. |
Anonymous
I don't understand what this buying into AAP means? You mean doing 1 or 2 practice tests ahead of the test is buying AAP? There are books ranging from $15 to $30 on amazon, which can bought for under $10 used and often borrowed from friends and neighbors for free. No one admits it openly, especially on this forum, but majority do have their kids prepare for the test. Both my kids did the practice test(s) from a book, that helped familiarize with the types of questions. They scored well and I am not sure how much the practice tests contributed, but at the end they are doing pretty well in their AAP classes. You know kids talk and pretty much everyone of my kids friends did the same. I wouldn't consider spending the $15 and few days of practice as buying AAP. You might want to disagree and be stubborn about it, all the other parents, most are not in this forum, will not care one bit. There may be few who send to actual prep classes for cogat/nnat. I personally think this is an overkill and might not help at all and definitely not worth the money. All the kids need is some familiarity of the questions and how to answer these types of questions. If they have already done anything similar before, then it might not even matter. |
Anonymous
The reference was to parents paying private psychologists for reports that may not accurately reflect the child’s abilities. I think FCPS may not allow this anymore. You may have to use GMU (which has its own issues). |
Anonymous
It means that the top kids from every school will have an opportunity to learn at a pace that works for them. I would guess that kids are at different places in the various schools. Finding the kids who are ahead in their individual schools helps to move those kids at a pace that gives them a better chance to qualify for Algebra 1 H and Geometry H in MS then the current system does. |
Anonymous
How it affected? At least at my kids center, AAP used to have up to 4 class rooms but only 2 since last year. So, basically, number of AAP students are cut in half and a lot less asians than before. I know a few kids, almost all are asian, who scored both cogat and nnat well above 132 didn't get into AAP. So, I would assume teacher input plays a critical role and fcps is probably doing some racial profiling as well. |
Anonymous
You can't force equity between high SES and low SES centers without specifically sabotaging the kids at high SES centers. The "high income powerhouse centers" are that way because they have a large cohort of high IQ kids. Many of the high SES centers don't have especially strong teachers and aren't doing anything amazing to cultivate the talents of the kids. Some of the worst, laziest teachers are the ones who gravitate toward AAP programs in higher SES schools. They don't have to do much of anything, and the kids will still pass the SOLs with flying colors. The cohort of smart kids are the ones making the teacher and school look good. |
Anonymous
This is the first year they used the model so it won't affect the number of classes until next year. We all know that GBRSs play a large role in who is accepted or not. The 10% change is only to the tests scores used to identify who is in-pool and won't require a referral for the program. Lower SES schools are likely to have a lower in-pool score to catch more of the top kids for that school and not have to rely as much on Teacher recommendations for kids who don't hit that 132 score that had become the norm for in-pool. It does meant that schools that have higher SES kids and a larger number of kids in pool at that 132 bar will have fewer kids in-pool so more parents will have to refer from those schools. |