TJ Discrimination Case

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Anonymous wrote:Anecdotally, TJ has not been selecting the top students within a school, who would make the most use of the advanced classes.
I should say FCPS is not selecting the top students, as my understanding is TJ doesn't handle the admissions.

That is incorrect only the top 1.5% of students are selected from each school.

The top according to their scoring, which unfortunately doesn't do a good job of identifying the top students.

It absolutely does identify the top students. The old system just identified those who could afford to buy the test. This is vastly better.

True but I like to come up with an alternate definition of merit that suits my preferred outcome.

A system for a regional school that assigns a minimum percentage of seats to every middle school, including schools that don't have AAP programs and have few LLIV-eligible students, and then relies on more subjective factors might be more geographically diverse but is definitely not going to identify the top students in the region and may not even identify the top students at an individual school.

This is the real challenge facing FCPS moving forward.

There isn't really a good argument to stop with the middle school allocation process, and that has created wonderful new diversity in the hallways and in each individual classroom. The culture of TJ remains alive and well in the face of individuals outside of the community who seek to destroy it.

But there is a serious question regarding whether or not the current admissions process is actually identifying the students who will contribute the most to the educational community of the school. The previous process certainly did not - it merely identified who was most likely to score well on college entrance exams - but there's not a whole lot of evidence that the new process does either.

Given that we've established that standardized exams are occlusive to the process of evaluating students, the best answer seems to be a re-imagined teacher recommendation form that asks teachers to compare students to one another within their respective classrooms and offers them the opportunity to write on behalf of or against a very small group of students.

Middle school teachers know who the students are in their building who most belong at TJ through a combination of aptitude for the material and dedication to the collaborative educational process and they should be afforded the opportunity to weigh in on the matter.

I would strongly suggest you education yourself on bias in the identification of gifted students.

Sure. Only been around them for my entire life.

But again, we’re not just talking about gifted students here - we’re talking about students who would make the strongest and most positive total impacts to the TJ community as a group, rather than as individuals.

It is has been empirically established that Asians are rated relatively lower on “group contribution” at Harvard and other places. The Supreme Court will decide whether these proxies for discrimination will pass muster.

Of course, but fortunately race isn't a factor for TJ admissions since it's a race blind process so the SCOTUS decision is irrelevant.

It was designed and implemented to reduce Asian students at TJ. We won't have to wait long for SCOTUs to tell us.

I wouldn’t hold your breath since the case isn’t even before SCOTUS.

The legality of use of 'race' for public and private school is before the SCOTUS! SCOTUS' decision will be binding on all private and public schools in the US.

It won’t necessarily be clear how these decisions apply, if at all, to an admissions policy like the new TJ admissions policy that on its face is race-neutral.

We have a US District Court's factual finding that there was a racial discrimination that was unconstitutional and no Court has reversed that ruling. Pretty clear.

No court has reversed it, but a higher court quickly invalidated its order and the activist Supreme Court declined to intervene. Pretty strong statements and part of the reason that the District Court judge hasn’t been promoted in 40 years on the bench.

Actually, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has NOT ruled on the appeal and they merely stayed the implementation of the District Court's Order and the SCOTUS has decided not to intervene in the case yet and we will have to see what happens at the Circuit Court of Appeals. The Harvard case will impact the eventual ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals since they are legally bound by the SCOTUS' decisions! The US District Court's Order stands period.

If their order stood, the Admissions process for the Class of 2027, which is currently underway, wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. The stay, however temporary it is, will remain in place until the same three-judge panel that implemented the stay reverses the ruling.

Harvard and UNC will have no bearing on TJ because those schools use race directly in the admissions process. FCPS, despite a lot of rather obvious misinformation here, does not with respect to TJ.

It's misinformation for you to say the district court ruling's no longer "stands." It has simply been stayed by the Fourth Circuit pending appeal, which is typical. Given the fact that the current SCOTUS is an activist conservative court, some expected the Court to intervene and overturn the stay, but it declined to do so at this juncture (which again is typical).

It's also not accurate to say the Harvard and UNC cases will have "no bearing" on TJ. Even though those schools, unlike FCPS, use race directly in their admissions processes, there may be language in those decisions that affect how the lower courts ultimately decide to address the TJ case.

Finally, one should not lose sight of the fact that the AG investigation into potential violations of the Virginia Human Rights Act will be a distinct matter from the case alleging a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Even if FCPS is found not to have violated the Constitution in the federal case, FCPS may yet be found to have violated the VHRA, which could give rise to sanctions on FCPS.

Short version: FCPS is going to have a lot on its plate to defend when it comes to TJ for a long time.

DP. You are grasping at straws here.

So you wish. In case you haven't noticed, FCPS hasn't been doing too well in the courts on many fronts lately.

They're winning on this one.

No, they lost at the District Court level and we are waiting for the Court of Appeals to rule on the merits.

The only impact of FCPS having "lost" anything to this point in this mess is that the Class of 2026 was seated somewhat later than it should have been because of the delay caused by the initial, since-stayed ruling.

The Coalition has won literally zero in terms of action items. That's great for them that they've gotten a sympathetic state government to engage in an investigation, but the investigation is going to turn up a clerical error.

The state AG investigation is examining both (1) the change in admissions policy and (2) the delayed notification to recipients of Letters of Commendation.

Whatever it finds, it will be more than a "clerical error" relating to the latter. It doesn't help your cause to misrepresent the scope of the state investigation.

This is just another GOP goose chase that will yield nothing but it will help rally Youngkin's extreme far-right base.

Exactly what is far-right about investigating why and how any high school could possible fail for years to provide the notification of commended National Merit Status on a timely basis? TJ is a VA governors school managed by FCPS. Located in Fairfax County VA. Notofication of that status anywhere in the USA has been provided for decades - even before the availability of digital communication. Standard operating procedure. Robinson press release with names for Merit semi-finalists, commended, AA, Hispanic. https://robinsonss.fcps.edu/features/national-merit-breakfast-recognition

So somehow FCPS thinks TJ should operate differently than any other school funded by local, state tax dollars? FCPS already operates facilities divergent from state law.

It could have been 1 student or 100+ students. If any FCPS managed high schools and any VA gov schools provided timely notification then so to should have TJ. Maggie Walker is also a VA Governors School. https://mlwgs.com/47-seniors-named-commended-students-in-the-2022-national-merit-scholarship-program/
PSAT awards also include National Recognition status for those who check boxes : Hispanic/Latinx, African American/Black, Indigenous, or rural area students.
https://mlwgs.com/maggie-walker-gs-students-awarded-with-academic-honors-from-college-board-national-recognition-programs/

They DO notify the kids that got commended each year. The issue is imply that this time someone accidentally messed up by forgetting to hand them out right away when they came in. The fact that the college board screwed up first by not putting enough stamps on the package to TJ so it was a month delayed in getting to the school compounded this.

This lack of notification did not begin in fall 2022. See the emails written in fall 2020. https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/fairfax_county/as-tjhsst-is-investigated-an-email-from-2020-reveals-a-pattern-and-practice-of-hiding/article_c81ad93e-8d15-11ed-a224-a364200eb1d3.html

No. They haven't been notifying students each year, contrary to the claims of FCPS that this was a 'one-off.' Which is why there is an investigation because there is credible evidence that this has been going on for years.

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Anonymous wrote:Anecdotally, TJ has not been selecting the top students within a school, who would make the most use of the advanced classes.
I should say FCPS is not selecting the top students, as my understanding is TJ doesn't handle the admissions.

That is incorrect only the top 1.5% of students are selected from each school.

The top according to their scoring, which unfortunately doesn't do a good job of identifying the top students.

It absolutely does identify the top students. The old system just identified those who could afford to buy the test. This is vastly better.

True but I like to come up with an alternate definition of merit that suits my preferred outcome.

A system for a regional school that assigns a minimum percentage of seats to every middle school, including schools that don't have AAP programs and have few LLIV-eligible students, and then relies on more subjective factors might be more geographically diverse but is definitely not going to identify the top students in the region and may not even identify the top students at an individual school.

This is the real challenge facing FCPS moving forward.

There isn't really a good argument to stop with the middle school allocation process, and that has created wonderful new diversity in the hallways and in each individual classroom. The culture of TJ remains alive and well in the face of individuals outside of the community who seek to destroy it.

But there is a serious question regarding whether or not the current admissions process is actually identifying the students who will contribute the most to the educational community of the school. The previous process certainly did not - it merely identified who was most likely to score well on college entrance exams - but there's not a whole lot of evidence that the new process does either.

Given that we've established that standardized exams are occlusive to the process of evaluating students, the best answer seems to be a re-imagined teacher recommendation form that asks teachers to compare students to one another within their respective classrooms and offers them the opportunity to write on behalf of or against a very small group of students.

Middle school teachers know who the students are in their building who most belong at TJ through a combination of aptitude for the material and dedication to the collaborative educational process and they should be afforded the opportunity to weigh in on the matter.

I would strongly suggest you education yourself on bias in the identification of gifted students.

Sure. Only been around them for my entire life.

But again, we’re not just talking about gifted students here - we’re talking about students who would make the strongest and most positive total impacts to the TJ community as a group, rather than as individuals.

It is has been empirically established that Asians are rated relatively lower on “group contribution” at Harvard and other places. The Supreme Court will decide whether these proxies for discrimination will pass muster.

Of course, but fortunately race isn't a factor for TJ admissions since it's a race blind process so the SCOTUS decision is irrelevant.

It was designed and implemented to reduce Asian students at TJ. We won't have to wait long for SCOTUs to tell us.

I wouldn’t hold your breath since the case isn’t even before SCOTUS.

The legality of use of 'race' for public and private school is before the SCOTUS! SCOTUS' decision will be binding on all private and public schools in the US.

It won’t necessarily be clear how these decisions apply, if at all, to an admissions policy like the new TJ admissions policy that on its face is race-neutral.

We have a US District Court's factual finding that there was a racial discrimination that was unconstitutional and no Court has reversed that ruling. Pretty clear.

No court has reversed it, but a higher court quickly invalidated its order and the activist Supreme Court declined to intervene. Pretty strong statements and part of the reason that the District Court judge hasn’t been promoted in 40 years on the bench.

Actually, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has NOT ruled on the appeal and they merely stayed the implementation of the District Court's Order and the SCOTUS has decided not to intervene in the case yet and we will have to see what happens at the Circuit Court of Appeals. The Harvard case will impact the eventual ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals since they are legally bound by the SCOTUS' decisions! The US District Court's Order stands period.

If their order stood, the Admissions process for the Class of 2027, which is currently underway, wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. The stay, however temporary it is, will remain in place until the same three-judge panel that implemented the stay reverses the ruling.

Harvard and UNC will have no bearing on TJ because those schools use race directly in the admissions process. FCPS, despite a lot of rather obvious misinformation here, does not with respect to TJ.

It's misinformation for you to say the district court ruling's no longer "stands." It has simply been stayed by the Fourth Circuit pending appeal, which is typical. Given the fact that the current SCOTUS is an activist conservative court, some expected the Court to intervene and overturn the stay, but it declined to do so at this juncture (which again is typical).

It's also not accurate to say the Harvard and UNC cases will have "no bearing" on TJ. Even though those schools, unlike FCPS, use race directly in their admissions processes, there may be language in those decisions that affect how the lower courts ultimately decide to address the TJ case.

Finally, one should not lose sight of the fact that the AG investigation into potential violations of the Virginia Human Rights Act will be a distinct matter from the case alleging a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Even if FCPS is found not to have violated the Constitution in the federal case, FCPS may yet be found to have violated the VHRA, which could give rise to sanctions on FCPS.

Short version: FCPS is going to have a lot on its plate to defend when it comes to TJ for a long time.

DP. You are grasping at straws here.

So you wish. In case you haven't noticed, FCPS hasn't been doing too well in the courts on many fronts lately.

They're winning on this one.

No, they lost at the District Court level and we are waiting for the Court of Appeals to rule on the merits.

The only impact of FCPS having "lost" anything to this point in this mess is that the Class of 2026 was seated somewhat later than it should have been because of the delay caused by the initial, since-stayed ruling.

The Coalition has won literally zero in terms of action items. That's great for them that they've gotten a sympathetic state government to engage in an investigation, but the investigation is going to turn up a clerical error.

The state AG investigation is examining both (1) the change in admissions policy and (2) the delayed notification to recipients of Letters of Commendation.

Whatever it finds, it will be more than a "clerical error" relating to the latter. It doesn't help your cause to misrepresent the scope of the state investigation.

This is just another GOP goose chase that will yield nothing but it will help rally Youngkin's extreme far-right base.

Exactly what is far-right about investigating why and how any high school could possible fail for years to provide the notification of commended National Merit Status on a timely basis? TJ is a VA governors school managed by FCPS. Located in Fairfax County VA. Notofication of that status anywhere in the USA has been provided for decades - even before the availability of digital communication. Standard operating procedure. Robinson press release with names for Merit semi-finalists, commended, AA, Hispanic. https://robinsonss.fcps.edu/features/national-merit-breakfast-recognition

So somehow FCPS thinks TJ should operate differently than any other school funded by local, state tax dollars? FCPS already operates facilities divergent from state law.

It could have been 1 student or 100+ students. If any FCPS managed high schools and any VA gov schools provided timely notification then so to should have TJ. Maggie Walker is also a VA Governors School. https://mlwgs.com/47-seniors-named-commended-students-in-the-2022-national-merit-scholarship-program/
PSAT awards also include National Recognition status for those who check boxes : Hispanic/Latinx, African American/Black, Indigenous, or rural area students.
https://mlwgs.com/maggie-walker-gs-students-awarded-with-academic-honors-from-college-board-national-recognition-programs/

They DO notify the kids that got commended each year. The issue is imply that this time someone accidentally messed up by forgetting to hand them out right away when they came in. The fact that the college board screwed up first by not putting enough stamps on the package to TJ so it was a month delayed in getting to the school compounded this.

This lack of notification did not begin in fall 2022. See the emails written in fall 2020. https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/fairfax_county/as-tjhsst-is-investigated-an-email-from-2020-reveals-a-pattern-and-practice-of-hiding/article_c81ad93e-8d15-11ed-a224-a364200eb1d3.html

No. They haven't been notifying students each year, contrary to the claims of FCPS that this was a 'one-off.' Which is why there is an investigation because there is credible evidence that this has been going on for years.

What does notification mean in this case? Handing over the certificate or sending out an email notification to the parents as other school did? If it is later, I think that could be the case, but it is hard to believe that they did not give the certificate out after they receiving them, what's the point to keep them, and why they send them out this year?

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Anonymous wrote:Anecdotally, TJ has not been selecting the top students within a school, who would make the most use of the advanced classes.
I should say FCPS is not selecting the top students, as my understanding is TJ doesn't handle the admissions.

That is incorrect only the top 1.5% of students are selected from each school.

The top according to their scoring, which unfortunately doesn't do a good job of identifying the top students.

It absolutely does identify the top students. The old system just identified those who could afford to buy the test. This is vastly better.

True but I like to come up with an alternate definition of merit that suits my preferred outcome.

A system for a regional school that assigns a minimum percentage of seats to every middle school, including schools that don't have AAP programs and have few LLIV-eligible students, and then relies on more subjective factors might be more geographically diverse but is definitely not going to identify the top students in the region and may not even identify the top students at an individual school.

This is the real challenge facing FCPS moving forward.

There isn't really a good argument to stop with the middle school allocation process, and that has created wonderful new diversity in the hallways and in each individual classroom. The culture of TJ remains alive and well in the face of individuals outside of the community who seek to destroy it.

But there is a serious question regarding whether or not the current admissions process is actually identifying the students who will contribute the most to the educational community of the school. The previous process certainly did not - it merely identified who was most likely to score well on college entrance exams - but there's not a whole lot of evidence that the new process does either.

Given that we've established that standardized exams are occlusive to the process of evaluating students, the best answer seems to be a re-imagined teacher recommendation form that asks teachers to compare students to one another within their respective classrooms and offers them the opportunity to write on behalf of or against a very small group of students.

Middle school teachers know who the students are in their building who most belong at TJ through a combination of aptitude for the material and dedication to the collaborative educational process and they should be afforded the opportunity to weigh in on the matter.

I would strongly suggest you education yourself on bias in the identification of gifted students.

Sure. Only been around them for my entire life.

But again, we’re not just talking about gifted students here - we’re talking about students who would make the strongest and most positive total impacts to the TJ community as a group, rather than as individuals.

It is has been empirically established that Asians are rated relatively lower on “group contribution” at Harvard and other places. The Supreme Court will decide whether these proxies for discrimination will pass muster.

Of course, but fortunately race isn't a factor for TJ admissions since it's a race blind process so the SCOTUS decision is irrelevant.

It was designed and implemented to reduce Asian students at TJ. We won't have to wait long for SCOTUs to tell us.

I wouldn’t hold your breath since the case isn’t even before SCOTUS.

The legality of use of 'race' for public and private school is before the SCOTUS! SCOTUS' decision will be binding on all private and public schools in the US.

It won’t necessarily be clear how these decisions apply, if at all, to an admissions policy like the new TJ admissions policy that on its face is race-neutral.

We have a US District Court's factual finding that there was a racial discrimination that was unconstitutional and no Court has reversed that ruling. Pretty clear.

No court has reversed it, but a higher court quickly invalidated its order and the activist Supreme Court declined to intervene. Pretty strong statements and part of the reason that the District Court judge hasn’t been promoted in 40 years on the bench.

Actually, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has NOT ruled on the appeal and they merely stayed the implementation of the District Court's Order and the SCOTUS has decided not to intervene in the case yet and we will have to see what happens at the Circuit Court of Appeals. The Harvard case will impact the eventual ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals since they are legally bound by the SCOTUS' decisions! The US District Court's Order stands period.

If their order stood, the Admissions process for the Class of 2027, which is currently underway, wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. The stay, however temporary it is, will remain in place until the same three-judge panel that implemented the stay reverses the ruling.

Harvard and UNC will have no bearing on TJ because those schools use race directly in the admissions process. FCPS, despite a lot of rather obvious misinformation here, does not with respect to TJ.

It's misinformation for you to say the district court ruling's no longer "stands." It has simply been stayed by the Fourth Circuit pending appeal, which is typical. Given the fact that the current SCOTUS is an activist conservative court, some expected the Court to intervene and overturn the stay, but it declined to do so at this juncture (which again is typical).

It's also not accurate to say the Harvard and UNC cases will have "no bearing" on TJ. Even though those schools, unlike FCPS, use race directly in their admissions processes, there may be language in those decisions that affect how the lower courts ultimately decide to address the TJ case.

Finally, one should not lose sight of the fact that the AG investigation into potential violations of the Virginia Human Rights Act will be a distinct matter from the case alleging a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Even if FCPS is found not to have violated the Constitution in the federal case, FCPS may yet be found to have violated the VHRA, which could give rise to sanctions on FCPS.

Short version: FCPS is going to have a lot on its plate to defend when it comes to TJ for a long time.

DP. You are grasping at straws here.

So you wish. In case you haven't noticed, FCPS hasn't been doing too well in the courts on many fronts lately.

They're winning on this one.

No, they lost at the District Court level and we are waiting for the Court of Appeals to rule on the merits.

The only impact of FCPS having "lost" anything to this point in this mess is that the Class of 2026 was seated somewhat later than it should have been because of the delay caused by the initial, since-stayed ruling.

The Coalition has won literally zero in terms of action items. That's great for them that they've gotten a sympathetic state government to engage in an investigation, but the investigation is going to turn up a clerical error.

The state AG investigation is examining both (1) the change in admissions policy and (2) the delayed notification to recipients of Letters of Commendation.

Whatever it finds, it will be more than a "clerical error" relating to the latter. It doesn't help your cause to misrepresent the scope of the state investigation.

This is just another GOP goose chase that will yield nothing but it will help rally Youngkin's extreme far-right base.

Exactly what is far-right about investigating why and how any high school could possible fail for years to provide the notification of commended National Merit Status on a timely basis? TJ is a VA governors school managed by FCPS. Located in Fairfax County VA. Notofication of that status anywhere in the USA has been provided for decades - even before the availability of digital communication. Standard operating procedure. Robinson press release with names for Merit semi-finalists, commended, AA, Hispanic. https://robinsonss.fcps.edu/features/national-merit-breakfast-recognition

So somehow FCPS thinks TJ should operate differently than any other school funded by local, state tax dollars? FCPS already operates facilities divergent from state law.

It could have been 1 student or 100+ students. If any FCPS managed high schools and any VA gov schools provided timely notification then so to should have TJ. Maggie Walker is also a VA Governors School. https://mlwgs.com/47-seniors-named-commended-students-in-the-2022-national-merit-scholarship-program/
PSAT awards also include National Recognition status for those who check boxes : Hispanic/Latinx, African American/Black, Indigenous, or rural area students.
https://mlwgs.com/maggie-walker-gs-students-awarded-with-academic-honors-from-college-board-national-recognition-programs/

They DO notify the kids that got commended each year. The issue is imply that this time someone accidentally messed up by forgetting to hand them out right away when they came in. The fact that the college board screwed up first by not putting enough stamps on the package to TJ so it was a month delayed in getting to the school compounded this.

This lack of notification did not begin in fall 2022. See the emails written in fall 2020. https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/fairfax_county/as-tjhsst-is-investigated-an-email-from-2020-reveals-a-pattern-and-practice-of-hiding/article_c81ad93e-8d15-11ed-a224-a364200eb1d3.html

No. They haven't been notifying students each year, contrary to the claims of FCPS that this was a 'one-off.' Which is why there is an investigation because there is credible evidence that this has been going on for years.

The Fairfax Times article is contradicted by its own evidence. It seems they did notify students ("The commended scholars were notified via Naviance"), just digitally since everyone was online. They moved the distribution of the physical letters to June because everyone would be in one place for graduation, making distribution easier. Even if they didn't immediately deliver the certificates to the students, they did promptly notify every commended scholar, which seems reasonable within the context of the pandemic and remote learning.

[Anonymous]

Sometime in the fall of 2020, a guidance counselor, “Mrs. Cox,” sent a message to one awardee via Naviance, a clunky software college and career planning platform that most students ignore because they get so much spam, according to a copy of the message obtained by the Fairfax Times.

Naviance notifications are all updates from the student services department, not spam. Normally, the contents include links to internship and scholarship applications, as well as upcoming deadlines for college application-related events (e.g. transcript requests). If the kids are ignoring those messages, then that's their mistake, not the school's.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anecdotally, TJ has not been selecting the top students within a school, who would make the most use of the advanced classes.
I should say FCPS is not selecting the top students, as my understanding is TJ doesn't handle the admissions.

That is incorrect only the top 1.5% of students are selected from each school.

The top according to their scoring, which unfortunately doesn't do a good job of identifying the top students.

It absolutely does identify the top students. The old system just identified those who could afford to buy the test. This is vastly better.

True but I like to come up with an alternate definition of merit that suits my preferred outcome.

A system for a regional school that assigns a minimum percentage of seats to every middle school, including schools that don't have AAP programs and have few LLIV-eligible students, and then relies on more subjective factors might be more geographically diverse but is definitely not going to identify the top students in the region and may not even identify the top students at an individual school.

This is the real challenge facing FCPS moving forward.

There isn't really a good argument to stop with the middle school allocation process, and that has created wonderful new diversity in the hallways and in each individual classroom. The culture of TJ remains alive and well in the face of individuals outside of the community who seek to destroy it.

But there is a serious question regarding whether or not the current admissions process is actually identifying the students who will contribute the most to the educational community of the school. The previous process certainly did not - it merely identified who was most likely to score well on college entrance exams - but there's not a whole lot of evidence that the new process does either.

Given that we've established that standardized exams are occlusive to the process of evaluating students, the best answer seems to be a re-imagined teacher recommendation form that asks teachers to compare students to one another within their respective classrooms and offers them the opportunity to write on behalf of or against a very small group of students.

Middle school teachers know who the students are in their building who most belong at TJ through a combination of aptitude for the material and dedication to the collaborative educational process and they should be afforded the opportunity to weigh in on the matter.

I would strongly suggest you education yourself on bias in the identification of gifted students.

Sure. Only been around them for my entire life.

But again, we’re not just talking about gifted students here - we’re talking about students who would make the strongest and most positive total impacts to the TJ community as a group, rather than as individuals.

It is has been empirically established that Asians are rated relatively lower on “group contribution” at Harvard and other places. The Supreme Court will decide whether these proxies for discrimination will pass muster.

Of course, but fortunately race isn't a factor for TJ admissions since it's a race blind process so the SCOTUS decision is irrelevant.

It was designed and implemented to reduce Asian students at TJ. We won't have to wait long for SCOTUs to tell us.

I wouldn’t hold your breath since the case isn’t even before SCOTUS.

The legality of use of 'race' for public and private school is before the SCOTUS! SCOTUS' decision will be binding on all private and public schools in the US.

It won’t necessarily be clear how these decisions apply, if at all, to an admissions policy like the new TJ admissions policy that on its face is race-neutral.

We have a US District Court's factual finding that there was a racial discrimination that was unconstitutional and no Court has reversed that ruling. Pretty clear.

No court has reversed it, but a higher court quickly invalidated its order and the activist Supreme Court declined to intervene. Pretty strong statements and part of the reason that the District Court judge hasn’t been promoted in 40 years on the bench.

Actually, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has NOT ruled on the appeal and they merely stayed the implementation of the District Court's Order and the SCOTUS has decided not to intervene in the case yet and we will have to see what happens at the Circuit Court of Appeals. The Harvard case will impact the eventual ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals since they are legally bound by the SCOTUS' decisions! The US District Court's Order stands period.

If their order stood, the Admissions process for the Class of 2027, which is currently underway, wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. The stay, however temporary it is, will remain in place until the same three-judge panel that implemented the stay reverses the ruling.

Harvard and UNC will have no bearing on TJ because those schools use race directly in the admissions process. FCPS, despite a lot of rather obvious misinformation here, does not with respect to TJ.

It's misinformation for you to say the district court ruling's no longer "stands." It has simply been stayed by the Fourth Circuit pending appeal, which is typical. Given the fact that the current SCOTUS is an activist conservative court, some expected the Court to intervene and overturn the stay, but it declined to do so at this juncture (which again is typical).

It's also not accurate to say the Harvard and UNC cases will have "no bearing" on TJ. Even though those schools, unlike FCPS, use race directly in their admissions processes, there may be language in those decisions that affect how the lower courts ultimately decide to address the TJ case.

Finally, one should not lose sight of the fact that the AG investigation into potential violations of the Virginia Human Rights Act will be a distinct matter from the case alleging a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Even if FCPS is found not to have violated the Constitution in the federal case, FCPS may yet be found to have violated the VHRA, which could give rise to sanctions on FCPS.

Short version: FCPS is going to have a lot on its plate to defend when it comes to TJ for a long time.

DP. You are grasping at straws here.

So you wish. In case you haven't noticed, FCPS hasn't been doing too well in the courts on many fronts lately.

They're winning on this one.

No, they lost at the District Court level and we are waiting for the Court of Appeals to rule on the merits.

The only impact of FCPS having "lost" anything to this point in this mess is that the Class of 2026 was seated somewhat later than it should have been because of the delay caused by the initial, since-stayed ruling.

The Coalition has won literally zero in terms of action items. That's great for them that they've gotten a sympathetic state government to engage in an investigation, but the investigation is going to turn up a clerical error.

The state AG investigation is examining both (1) the change in admissions policy and (2) the delayed notification to recipients of Letters of Commendation.

Whatever it finds, it will be more than a "clerical error" relating to the latter. It doesn't help your cause to misrepresent the scope of the state investigation.

This is just another GOP goose chase that will yield nothing but it will help rally Youngkin's extreme far-right base.

Exactly what is far-right about investigating why and how any high school could possible fail for years to provide the notification of commended National Merit Status on a timely basis? TJ is a VA governors school managed by FCPS. Located in Fairfax County VA. Notofication of that status anywhere in the USA has been provided for decades - even before the availability of digital communication. Standard operating procedure. Robinson press release with names for Merit semi-finalists, commended, AA, Hispanic. https://robinsonss.fcps.edu/features/national-merit-breakfast-recognition

So somehow FCPS thinks TJ should operate differently than any other school funded by local, state tax dollars? FCPS already operates facilities divergent from state law.

It could have been 1 student or 100+ students. If any FCPS managed high schools and any VA gov schools provided timely notification then so to should have TJ. Maggie Walker is also a VA Governors School. https://mlwgs.com/47-seniors-named-commended-students-in-the-2022-national-merit-scholarship-program/
PSAT awards also include National Recognition status for those who check boxes : Hispanic/Latinx, African American/Black, Indigenous, or rural area students.
https://mlwgs.com/maggie-walker-gs-students-awarded-with-academic-honors-from-college-board-national-recognition-programs/

They DO notify the kids that got commended each year. The issue is imply that this time someone accidentally messed up by forgetting to hand them out right away when they came in. The fact that the college board screwed up first by not putting enough stamps on the package to TJ so it was a month delayed in getting to the school compounded this.

This lack of notification did not begin in fall 2022. See the emails written in fall 2020. https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/fairfax_county/as-tjhsst-is-investigated-an-email-from-2020-reveals-a-pattern-and-practice-of-hiding/article_c81ad93e-8d15-11ed-a224-a364200eb1d3.html

No. They haven't been notifying students each year, contrary to the claims of FCPS that this was a 'one-off.' Which is why there is an investigation because there is credible evidence that this has been going on for years.

What does notification mean in this case? Handing over the certificate or sending out an email notification to the parents as other school did? If it is later, I think that could be the case, but it is hard to believe that they did not give the certificate out after they receiving them, what's the point to keep them, and why they send them out this year?

They didn't give out the certificates after receiving them because this happened in 2020, while everyone was at home because of COVID. There were no staff or students at TJ at the time.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anecdotally, TJ has not been selecting the top students within a school, who would make the most use of the advanced classes.
I should say FCPS is not selecting the top students, as my understanding is TJ doesn't handle the admissions.

That is incorrect only the top 1.5% of students are selected from each school.

The top according to their scoring, which unfortunately doesn't do a good job of identifying the top students.

It absolutely does identify the top students. The old system just identified those who could afford to buy the test. This is vastly better.

True but I like to come up with an alternate definition of merit that suits my preferred outcome.

A system for a regional school that assigns a minimum percentage of seats to every middle school, including schools that don't have AAP programs and have few LLIV-eligible students, and then relies on more subjective factors might be more geographically diverse but is definitely not going to identify the top students in the region and may not even identify the top students at an individual school.

This is the real challenge facing FCPS moving forward.

There isn't really a good argument to stop with the middle school allocation process, and that has created wonderful new diversity in the hallways and in each individual classroom. The culture of TJ remains alive and well in the face of individuals outside of the community who seek to destroy it.

But there is a serious question regarding whether or not the current admissions process is actually identifying the students who will contribute the most to the educational community of the school. The previous process certainly did not - it merely identified who was most likely to score well on college entrance exams - but there's not a whole lot of evidence that the new process does either.

Given that we've established that standardized exams are occlusive to the process of evaluating students, the best answer seems to be a re-imagined teacher recommendation form that asks teachers to compare students to one another within their respective classrooms and offers them the opportunity to write on behalf of or against a very small group of students.

Middle school teachers know who the students are in their building who most belong at TJ through a combination of aptitude for the material and dedication to the collaborative educational process and they should be afforded the opportunity to weigh in on the matter.

I would strongly suggest you education yourself on bias in the identification of gifted students.

Sure. Only been around them for my entire life.

But again, we’re not just talking about gifted students here - we’re talking about students who would make the strongest and most positive total impacts to the TJ community as a group, rather than as individuals.

It is has been empirically established that Asians are rated relatively lower on “group contribution” at Harvard and other places. The Supreme Court will decide whether these proxies for discrimination will pass muster.

Of course, but fortunately race isn't a factor for TJ admissions since it's a race blind process so the SCOTUS decision is irrelevant.

It was designed and implemented to reduce Asian students at TJ. We won't have to wait long for SCOTUs to tell us.

I wouldn’t hold your breath since the case isn’t even before SCOTUS.

The legality of use of 'race' for public and private school is before the SCOTUS! SCOTUS' decision will be binding on all private and public schools in the US.

It won’t necessarily be clear how these decisions apply, if at all, to an admissions policy like the new TJ admissions policy that on its face is race-neutral.

We have a US District Court's factual finding that there was a racial discrimination that was unconstitutional and no Court has reversed that ruling. Pretty clear.

No court has reversed it, but a higher court quickly invalidated its order and the activist Supreme Court declined to intervene. Pretty strong statements and part of the reason that the District Court judge hasn’t been promoted in 40 years on the bench.

Actually, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has NOT ruled on the appeal and they merely stayed the implementation of the District Court's Order and the SCOTUS has decided not to intervene in the case yet and we will have to see what happens at the Circuit Court of Appeals. The Harvard case will impact the eventual ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals since they are legally bound by the SCOTUS' decisions! The US District Court's Order stands period.

If their order stood, the Admissions process for the Class of 2027, which is currently underway, wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. The stay, however temporary it is, will remain in place until the same three-judge panel that implemented the stay reverses the ruling.

Harvard and UNC will have no bearing on TJ because those schools use race directly in the admissions process. FCPS, despite a lot of rather obvious misinformation here, does not with respect to TJ.

It's misinformation for you to say the district court ruling's no longer "stands." It has simply been stayed by the Fourth Circuit pending appeal, which is typical. Given the fact that the current SCOTUS is an activist conservative court, some expected the Court to intervene and overturn the stay, but it declined to do so at this juncture (which again is typical).

It's also not accurate to say the Harvard and UNC cases will have "no bearing" on TJ. Even though those schools, unlike FCPS, use race directly in their admissions processes, there may be language in those decisions that affect how the lower courts ultimately decide to address the TJ case.

Finally, one should not lose sight of the fact that the AG investigation into potential violations of the Virginia Human Rights Act will be a distinct matter from the case alleging a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Even if FCPS is found not to have violated the Constitution in the federal case, FCPS may yet be found to have violated the VHRA, which could give rise to sanctions on FCPS.

Short version: FCPS is going to have a lot on its plate to defend when it comes to TJ for a long time.

DP. You are grasping at straws here.

So you wish. In case you haven't noticed, FCPS hasn't been doing too well in the courts on many fronts lately.

They're winning on this one.

No, they lost at the District Court level and we are waiting for the Court of Appeals to rule on the merits.

The only impact of FCPS having "lost" anything to this point in this mess is that the Class of 2026 was seated somewhat later than it should have been because of the delay caused by the initial, since-stayed ruling.

The Coalition has won literally zero in terms of action items. That's great for them that they've gotten a sympathetic state government to engage in an investigation, but the investigation is going to turn up a clerical error.

The state AG investigation is examining both (1) the change in admissions policy and (2) the delayed notification to recipients of Letters of Commendation.

Whatever it finds, it will be more than a "clerical error" relating to the latter. It doesn't help your cause to misrepresent the scope of the state investigation.

This is just another GOP goose chase that will yield nothing but it will help rally Youngkin's extreme far-right base.

Exactly what is far-right about investigating why and how any high school could possible fail for years to provide the notification of commended National Merit Status on a timely basis? TJ is a VA governors school managed by FCPS. Located in Fairfax County VA. Notofication of that status anywhere in the USA has been provided for decades - even before the availability of digital communication. Standard operating procedure. Robinson press release with names for Merit semi-finalists, commended, AA, Hispanic. https://robinsonss.fcps.edu/features/national-merit-breakfast-recognition

So somehow FCPS thinks TJ should operate differently than any other school funded by local, state tax dollars? FCPS already operates facilities divergent from state law.

It could have been 1 student or 100+ students. If any FCPS managed high schools and any VA gov schools provided timely notification then so to should have TJ. Maggie Walker is also a VA Governors School. https://mlwgs.com/47-seniors-named-commended-students-in-the-2022-national-merit-scholarship-program/
PSAT awards also include National Recognition status for those who check boxes : Hispanic/Latinx, African American/Black, Indigenous, or rural area students.
https://mlwgs.com/maggie-walker-gs-students-awarded-with-academic-honors-from-college-board-national-recognition-programs/

They DO notify the kids that got commended each year. The issue is imply that this time someone accidentally messed up by forgetting to hand them out right away when they came in. The fact that the college board screwed up first by not putting enough stamps on the package to TJ so it was a month delayed in getting to the school compounded this.

It seems like some posters are deliberately trying to spin this big nothing into something to push their far-right agenda.

The allegation is that, according to the director of student services, the school delayed notifying commended students so TJ students who were not Semifinalists or Commended students would not have their feelings hurt.

I have a feeling that the DSS is going to go down for that. Sounds to me like he screwed up and tried to cover his ass. In the absence of those quotes, this is even more of a non-story.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anecdotally, TJ has not been selecting the top students within a school, who would make the most use of the advanced classes.
I should say FCPS is not selecting the top students, as my understanding is TJ doesn't handle the admissions.

That is incorrect only the top 1.5% of students are selected from each school.

The top according to their scoring, which unfortunately doesn't do a good job of identifying the top students.

It absolutely does identify the top students. The old system just identified those who could afford to buy the test. This is vastly better.

True but I like to come up with an alternate definition of merit that suits my preferred outcome.

A system for a regional school that assigns a minimum percentage of seats to every middle school, including schools that don't have AAP programs and have few LLIV-eligible students, and then relies on more subjective factors might be more geographically diverse but is definitely not going to identify the top students in the region and may not even identify the top students at an individual school.

This is the real challenge facing FCPS moving forward.

There isn't really a good argument to stop with the middle school allocation process, and that has created wonderful new diversity in the hallways and in each individual classroom. The culture of TJ remains alive and well in the face of individuals outside of the community who seek to destroy it.

But there is a serious question regarding whether or not the current admissions process is actually identifying the students who will contribute the most to the educational community of the school. The previous process certainly did not - it merely identified who was most likely to score well on college entrance exams - but there's not a whole lot of evidence that the new process does either.

Given that we've established that standardized exams are occlusive to the process of evaluating students, the best answer seems to be a re-imagined teacher recommendation form that asks teachers to compare students to one another within their respective classrooms and offers them the opportunity to write on behalf of or against a very small group of students.

Middle school teachers know who the students are in their building who most belong at TJ through a combination of aptitude for the material and dedication to the collaborative educational process and they should be afforded the opportunity to weigh in on the matter.

I would strongly suggest you education yourself on bias in the identification of gifted students.

Sure. Only been around them for my entire life.

But again, we’re not just talking about gifted students here - we’re talking about students who would make the strongest and most positive total impacts to the TJ community as a group, rather than as individuals.

It is has been empirically established that Asians are rated relatively lower on “group contribution” at Harvard and other places. The Supreme Court will decide whether these proxies for discrimination will pass muster.

Of course, but fortunately race isn't a factor for TJ admissions since it's a race blind process so the SCOTUS decision is irrelevant.

It was designed and implemented to reduce Asian students at TJ. We won't have to wait long for SCOTUs to tell us.

I wouldn’t hold your breath since the case isn’t even before SCOTUS.

The legality of use of 'race' for public and private school is before the SCOTUS! SCOTUS' decision will be binding on all private and public schools in the US.

It won’t necessarily be clear how these decisions apply, if at all, to an admissions policy like the new TJ admissions policy that on its face is race-neutral.

We have a US District Court's factual finding that there was a racial discrimination that was unconstitutional and no Court has reversed that ruling. Pretty clear.

No court has reversed it, but a higher court quickly invalidated its order and the activist Supreme Court declined to intervene. Pretty strong statements and part of the reason that the District Court judge hasn’t been promoted in 40 years on the bench.

Actually, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has NOT ruled on the appeal and they merely stayed the implementation of the District Court's Order and the SCOTUS has decided not to intervene in the case yet and we will have to see what happens at the Circuit Court of Appeals. The Harvard case will impact the eventual ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals since they are legally bound by the SCOTUS' decisions! The US District Court's Order stands period.

If their order stood, the Admissions process for the Class of 2027, which is currently underway, wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. The stay, however temporary it is, will remain in place until the same three-judge panel that implemented the stay reverses the ruling.

Harvard and UNC will have no bearing on TJ because those schools use race directly in the admissions process. FCPS, despite a lot of rather obvious misinformation here, does not with respect to TJ.

It's misinformation for you to say the district court ruling's no longer "stands." It has simply been stayed by the Fourth Circuit pending appeal, which is typical. Given the fact that the current SCOTUS is an activist conservative court, some expected the Court to intervene and overturn the stay, but it declined to do so at this juncture (which again is typical).

It's also not accurate to say the Harvard and UNC cases will have "no bearing" on TJ. Even though those schools, unlike FCPS, use race directly in their admissions processes, there may be language in those decisions that affect how the lower courts ultimately decide to address the TJ case.

Finally, one should not lose sight of the fact that the AG investigation into potential violations of the Virginia Human Rights Act will be a distinct matter from the case alleging a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Even if FCPS is found not to have violated the Constitution in the federal case, FCPS may yet be found to have violated the VHRA, which could give rise to sanctions on FCPS.

Short version: FCPS is going to have a lot on its plate to defend when it comes to TJ for a long time.

DP. You are grasping at straws here.

So you wish. In case you haven't noticed, FCPS hasn't been doing too well in the courts on many fronts lately.

They're winning on this one.

No, they lost at the District Court level and we are waiting for the Court of Appeals to rule on the merits.

The only impact of FCPS having "lost" anything to this point in this mess is that the Class of 2026 was seated somewhat later than it should have been because of the delay caused by the initial, since-stayed ruling.

The Coalition has won literally zero in terms of action items. That's great for them that they've gotten a sympathetic state government to engage in an investigation, but the investigation is going to turn up a clerical error.

The state AG investigation is examining both (1) the change in admissions policy and (2) the delayed notification to recipients of Letters of Commendation.

Whatever it finds, it will be more than a "clerical error" relating to the latter. It doesn't help your cause to misrepresent the scope of the state investigation.

This is just another GOP goose chase that will yield nothing but it will help rally Youngkin's extreme far-right base.

Exactly what is far-right about investigating why and how any high school could possible fail for years to provide the notification of commended National Merit Status on a timely basis? TJ is a VA governors school managed by FCPS. Located in Fairfax County VA. Notofication of that status anywhere in the USA has been provided for decades - even before the availability of digital communication. Standard operating procedure. Robinson press release with names for Merit semi-finalists, commended, AA, Hispanic. https://robinsonss.fcps.edu/features/national-merit-breakfast-recognition

So somehow FCPS thinks TJ should operate differently than any other school funded by local, state tax dollars? FCPS already operates facilities divergent from state law.

It could have been 1 student or 100+ students. If any FCPS managed high schools and any VA gov schools provided timely notification then so to should have TJ. Maggie Walker is also a VA Governors School. https://mlwgs.com/47-seniors-named-commended-students-in-the-2022-national-merit-scholarship-program/
PSAT awards also include National Recognition status for those who check boxes : Hispanic/Latinx, African American/Black, Indigenous, or rural area students.
https://mlwgs.com/maggie-walker-gs-students-awarded-with-academic-honors-from-college-board-national-recognition-programs/

They DO notify the kids that got commended each year. The issue is imply that this time someone accidentally messed up by forgetting to hand them out right away when they came in. The fact that the college board screwed up first by not putting enough stamps on the package to TJ so it was a month delayed in getting to the school compounded this.

It seems like some posters are deliberately trying to spin this big nothing into something to push their far-right agenda.

The allegation is that, according to the director of student services, the school delayed notifying commended students so TJ students who were not Semifinalists or Commended students would not have their feelings hurt.

I have a feeling that the DSS is going to go down for that. Sounds to me like he screwed up and tried to cover his ass. In the absence of those quotes, this is even more of a non-story.

LOL no that's not even what he said. He said they didn't hold a big ceremony because they didn't want to hurt the kids who didn't get anything. It's in the emails they published.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anecdotally, TJ has not been selecting the top students within a school, who would make the most use of the advanced classes.
I should say FCPS is not selecting the top students, as my understanding is TJ doesn't handle the admissions.

That is incorrect only the top 1.5% of students are selected from each school.

The top according to their scoring, which unfortunately doesn't do a good job of identifying the top students.

It absolutely does identify the top students. The old system just identified those who could afford to buy the test. This is vastly better.

True but I like to come up with an alternate definition of merit that suits my preferred outcome.

A system for a regional school that assigns a minimum percentage of seats to every middle school, including schools that don't have AAP programs and have few LLIV-eligible students, and then relies on more subjective factors might be more geographically diverse but is definitely not going to identify the top students in the region and may not even identify the top students at an individual school.

This is the real challenge facing FCPS moving forward.

There isn't really a good argument to stop with the middle school allocation process, and that has created wonderful new diversity in the hallways and in each individual classroom. The culture of TJ remains alive and well in the face of individuals outside of the community who seek to destroy it.

But there is a serious question regarding whether or not the current admissions process is actually identifying the students who will contribute the most to the educational community of the school. The previous process certainly did not - it merely identified who was most likely to score well on college entrance exams - but there's not a whole lot of evidence that the new process does either.

Given that we've established that standardized exams are occlusive to the process of evaluating students, the best answer seems to be a re-imagined teacher recommendation form that asks teachers to compare students to one another within their respective classrooms and offers them the opportunity to write on behalf of or against a very small group of students.

Middle school teachers know who the students are in their building who most belong at TJ through a combination of aptitude for the material and dedication to the collaborative educational process and they should be afforded the opportunity to weigh in on the matter.

I would strongly suggest you education yourself on bias in the identification of gifted students.

Sure. Only been around them for my entire life.

But again, we’re not just talking about gifted students here - we’re talking about students who would make the strongest and most positive total impacts to the TJ community as a group, rather than as individuals.

It is has been empirically established that Asians are rated relatively lower on “group contribution” at Harvard and other places. The Supreme Court will decide whether these proxies for discrimination will pass muster.

Of course, but fortunately race isn't a factor for TJ admissions since it's a race blind process so the SCOTUS decision is irrelevant.

It was designed and implemented to reduce Asian students at TJ. We won't have to wait long for SCOTUs to tell us.

I wouldn’t hold your breath since the case isn’t even before SCOTUS.

The legality of use of 'race' for public and private school is before the SCOTUS! SCOTUS' decision will be binding on all private and public schools in the US.

It won’t necessarily be clear how these decisions apply, if at all, to an admissions policy like the new TJ admissions policy that on its face is race-neutral.

We have a US District Court's factual finding that there was a racial discrimination that was unconstitutional and no Court has reversed that ruling. Pretty clear.

No court has reversed it, but a higher court quickly invalidated its order and the activist Supreme Court declined to intervene. Pretty strong statements and part of the reason that the District Court judge hasn’t been promoted in 40 years on the bench.

Actually, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has NOT ruled on the appeal and they merely stayed the implementation of the District Court's Order and the SCOTUS has decided not to intervene in the case yet and we will have to see what happens at the Circuit Court of Appeals. The Harvard case will impact the eventual ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals since they are legally bound by the SCOTUS' decisions! The US District Court's Order stands period.

If their order stood, the Admissions process for the Class of 2027, which is currently underway, wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. The stay, however temporary it is, will remain in place until the same three-judge panel that implemented the stay reverses the ruling.

Harvard and UNC will have no bearing on TJ because those schools use race directly in the admissions process. FCPS, despite a lot of rather obvious misinformation here, does not with respect to TJ.

It's misinformation for you to say the district court ruling's no longer "stands." It has simply been stayed by the Fourth Circuit pending appeal, which is typical. Given the fact that the current SCOTUS is an activist conservative court, some expected the Court to intervene and overturn the stay, but it declined to do so at this juncture (which again is typical).

It's also not accurate to say the Harvard and UNC cases will have "no bearing" on TJ. Even though those schools, unlike FCPS, use race directly in their admissions processes, there may be language in those decisions that affect how the lower courts ultimately decide to address the TJ case.

Finally, one should not lose sight of the fact that the AG investigation into potential violations of the Virginia Human Rights Act will be a distinct matter from the case alleging a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Even if FCPS is found not to have violated the Constitution in the federal case, FCPS may yet be found to have violated the VHRA, which could give rise to sanctions on FCPS.

Short version: FCPS is going to have a lot on its plate to defend when it comes to TJ for a long time.

DP. You are grasping at straws here.

So you wish. In case you haven't noticed, FCPS hasn't been doing too well in the courts on many fronts lately.

They're winning on this one.

No, they lost at the District Court level and we are waiting for the Court of Appeals to rule on the merits.

The only impact of FCPS having "lost" anything to this point in this mess is that the Class of 2026 was seated somewhat later than it should have been because of the delay caused by the initial, since-stayed ruling.

The Coalition has won literally zero in terms of action items. That's great for them that they've gotten a sympathetic state government to engage in an investigation, but the investigation is going to turn up a clerical error.

The state AG investigation is examining both (1) the change in admissions policy and (2) the delayed notification to recipients of Letters of Commendation.

Whatever it finds, it will be more than a "clerical error" relating to the latter. It doesn't help your cause to misrepresent the scope of the state investigation.

This is just another GOP goose chase that will yield nothing but it will help rally Youngkin's extreme far-right base.

Exactly what is far-right about investigating why and how any high school could possible fail for years to provide the notification of commended National Merit Status on a timely basis? TJ is a VA governors school managed by FCPS. Located in Fairfax County VA. Notofication of that status anywhere in the USA has been provided for decades - even before the availability of digital communication. Standard operating procedure. Robinson press release with names for Merit semi-finalists, commended, AA, Hispanic. https://robinsonss.fcps.edu/features/national-merit-breakfast-recognition

So somehow FCPS thinks TJ should operate differently than any other school funded by local, state tax dollars? FCPS already operates facilities divergent from state law.

It could have been 1 student or 100+ students. If any FCPS managed high schools and any VA gov schools provided timely notification then so to should have TJ. Maggie Walker is also a VA Governors School. https://mlwgs.com/47-seniors-named-commended-students-in-the-2022-national-merit-scholarship-program/
PSAT awards also include National Recognition status for those who check boxes : Hispanic/Latinx, African American/Black, Indigenous, or rural area students.
https://mlwgs.com/maggie-walker-gs-students-awarded-with-academic-honors-from-college-board-national-recognition-programs/

They DO notify the kids that got commended each year. The issue is imply that this time someone accidentally messed up by forgetting to hand them out right away when they came in. The fact that the college board screwed up first by not putting enough stamps on the package to TJ so it was a month delayed in getting to the school compounded this.

This lack of notification did not begin in fall 2022. See the emails written in fall 2020. https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/fairfax_county/as-tjhsst-is-investigated-an-email-from-2020-reveals-a-pattern-and-practice-of-hiding/article_c81ad93e-8d15-11ed-a224-a364200eb1d3.html

No. They haven't been notifying students each year, contrary to the claims of FCPS that this was a 'one-off.' Which is why there is an investigation because there is credible evidence that this has been going on for years.

What does notification mean in this case? Handing over the certificate or sending out an email notification to the parents as other school did? If it is later, I think that could be the case, but it is hard to believe that they did not give the certificate out after they receiving them, what's the point to keep them, and why they send them out this year?

They didn't give out the certificates after receiving them because this happened in 2020, while everyone was at home because of COVID. There were no staff or students at TJ at the time.

That makes more sense. Whoever try to twist the fact to fit their own agenda should be sued and investigated to clear the name of TJ Student Service department. This is shameless defamation.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Anecdotally, TJ has not been selecting the top students within a school, who would make the most use of the advanced classes.
I should say FCPS is not selecting the top students, as my understanding is TJ doesn't handle the admissions.

That is incorrect only the top 1.5% of students are selected from each school.

The top according to their scoring, which unfortunately doesn't do a good job of identifying the top students.

It absolutely does identify the top students. The old system just identified those who could afford to buy the test. This is vastly better.

True but I like to come up with an alternate definition of merit that suits my preferred outcome.

A system for a regional school that assigns a minimum percentage of seats to every middle school, including schools that don't have AAP programs and have few LLIV-eligible students, and then relies on more subjective factors might be more geographically diverse but is definitely not going to identify the top students in the region and may not even identify the top students at an individual school.

This is the real challenge facing FCPS moving forward.

There isn't really a good argument to stop with the middle school allocation process, and that has created wonderful new diversity in the hallways and in each individual classroom. The culture of TJ remains alive and well in the face of individuals outside of the community who seek to destroy it.

But there is a serious question regarding whether or not the current admissions process is actually identifying the students who will contribute the most to the educational community of the school. The previous process certainly did not - it merely identified who was most likely to score well on college entrance exams - but there's not a whole lot of evidence that the new process does either.

Given that we've established that standardized exams are occlusive to the process of evaluating students, the best answer seems to be a re-imagined teacher recommendation form that asks teachers to compare students to one another within their respective classrooms and offers them the opportunity to write on behalf of or against a very small group of students.

Middle school teachers know who the students are in their building who most belong at TJ through a combination of aptitude for the material and dedication to the collaborative educational process and they should be afforded the opportunity to weigh in on the matter.

I would strongly suggest you education yourself on bias in the identification of gifted students.

Sure. Only been around them for my entire life.

But again, we’re not just talking about gifted students here - we’re talking about students who would make the strongest and most positive total impacts to the TJ community as a group, rather than as individuals.

It is has been empirically established that Asians are rated relatively lower on “group contribution” at Harvard and other places. The Supreme Court will decide whether these proxies for discrimination will pass muster.

Of course, but fortunately race isn't a factor for TJ admissions since it's a race blind process so the SCOTUS decision is irrelevant.

It was designed and implemented to reduce Asian students at TJ. We won't have to wait long for SCOTUs to tell us.

I wouldn’t hold your breath since the case isn’t even before SCOTUS.

The legality of use of 'race' for public and private school is before the SCOTUS! SCOTUS' decision will be binding on all private and public schools in the US.

It won’t necessarily be clear how these decisions apply, if at all, to an admissions policy like the new TJ admissions policy that on its face is race-neutral.

We have a US District Court's factual finding that there was a racial discrimination that was unconstitutional and no Court has reversed that ruling. Pretty clear.

No court has reversed it, but a higher court quickly invalidated its order and the activist Supreme Court declined to intervene. Pretty strong statements and part of the reason that the District Court judge hasn’t been promoted in 40 years on the bench.

Actually, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has NOT ruled on the appeal and they merely stayed the implementation of the District Court's Order and the SCOTUS has decided not to intervene in the case yet and we will have to see what happens at the Circuit Court of Appeals. The Harvard case will impact the eventual ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals since they are legally bound by the SCOTUS' decisions! The US District Court's Order stands period.

If their order stood, the Admissions process for the Class of 2027, which is currently underway, wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. The stay, however temporary it is, will remain in place until the same three-judge panel that implemented the stay reverses the ruling.

Harvard and UNC will have no bearing on TJ because those schools use race directly in the admissions process. FCPS, despite a lot of rather obvious misinformation here, does not with respect to TJ.

It's misinformation for you to say the district court ruling's no longer "stands." It has simply been stayed by the Fourth Circuit pending appeal, which is typical. Given the fact that the current SCOTUS is an activist conservative court, some expected the Court to intervene and overturn the stay, but it declined to do so at this juncture (which again is typical).

It's also not accurate to say the Harvard and UNC cases will have "no bearing" on TJ. Even though those schools, unlike FCPS, use race directly in their admissions processes, there may be language in those decisions that affect how the lower courts ultimately decide to address the TJ case.

Finally, one should not lose sight of the fact that the AG investigation into potential violations of the Virginia Human Rights Act will be a distinct matter from the case alleging a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Even if FCPS is found not to have violated the Constitution in the federal case, FCPS may yet be found to have violated the VHRA, which could give rise to sanctions on FCPS.

Short version: FCPS is going to have a lot on its plate to defend when it comes to TJ for a long time.

DP. You are grasping at straws here.

So you wish. In case you haven't noticed, FCPS hasn't been doing too well in the courts on many fronts lately.

They're winning on this one.

No, they lost at the District Court level and we are waiting for the Court of Appeals to rule on the merits.

The only impact of FCPS having "lost" anything to this point in this mess is that the Class of 2026 was seated somewhat later than it should have been because of the delay caused by the initial, since-stayed ruling.

The Coalition has won literally zero in terms of action items. That's great for them that they've gotten a sympathetic state government to engage in an investigation, but the investigation is going to turn up a clerical error.

The state AG investigation is examining both (1) the change in admissions policy and (2) the delayed notification to recipients of Letters of Commendation.

Whatever it finds, it will be more than a "clerical error" relating to the latter. It doesn't help your cause to misrepresent the scope of the state investigation.

This is just another GOP goose chase that will yield nothing but it will help rally Youngkin's extreme far-right base.

Exactly what is far-right about investigating why and how any high school could possible fail for years to provide the notification of commended National Merit Status on a timely basis? TJ is a VA governors school managed by FCPS. Located in Fairfax County VA. Notofication of that status anywhere in the USA has been provided for decades - even before the availability of digital communication. Standard operating procedure. Robinson press release with names for Merit semi-finalists, commended, AA, Hispanic. https://robinsonss.fcps.edu/features/national-merit-breakfast-recognition

So somehow FCPS thinks TJ should operate differently than any other school funded by local, state tax dollars? FCPS already operates facilities divergent from state law.

It could have been 1 student or 100+ students. If any FCPS managed high schools and any VA gov schools provided timely notification then so to should have TJ. Maggie Walker is also a VA Governors School. https://mlwgs.com/47-seniors-named-commended-students-in-the-2022-national-merit-scholarship-program/
PSAT awards also include National Recognition status for those who check boxes : Hispanic/Latinx, African American/Black, Indigenous, or rural area students.
https://mlwgs.com/maggie-walker-gs-students-awarded-with-academic-honors-from-college-board-national-recognition-programs/

They DO notify the kids that got commended each year. The issue is imply that this time someone accidentally messed up by forgetting to hand them out right away when they came in. The fact that the college board screwed up first by not putting enough stamps on the package to TJ so it was a month delayed in getting to the school compounded this.

It seems like some posters are deliberately trying to spin this big nothing into something to push their far-right agenda.

The allegation is that, according to the director of student services, the school delayed notifying commended students so TJ students who were not Semifinalists or Commended students would not have their feelings hurt.

I have a feeling that the DSS is going to go down for that. Sounds to me like he screwed up and tried to cover his ass. In the absence of those quotes, this is even more of a non-story.

LOL no that's not even what he said. He said they didn't hold a big ceremony because they didn't want to hurt the kids who didn't get anything. It's in the emails they published.

To celebrate for 300+ out of 400+ kids with a big ceremony? My daughter is one of the semifinalist this year (out of 132), I agree with what he said, and I believe most of TJ kids also agreed with him. Academic excellence is an important factor of their school life, but should not be the only one.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Anecdotally, TJ has not been selecting the top students within a school, who would make the most use of the advanced classes.
I should say FCPS is not selecting the top students, as my understanding is TJ doesn't handle the admissions.

That is incorrect only the top 1.5% of students are selected from each school.

The top according to their scoring, which unfortunately doesn't do a good job of identifying the top students.

It absolutely does identify the top students. The old system just identified those who could afford to buy the test. This is vastly better.

True but I like to come up with an alternate definition of merit that suits my preferred outcome.

A system for a regional school that assigns a minimum percentage of seats to every middle school, including schools that don't have AAP programs and have few LLIV-eligible students, and then relies on more subjective factors might be more geographically diverse but is definitely not going to identify the top students in the region and may not even identify the top students at an individual school.

This is the real challenge facing FCPS moving forward.

There isn't really a good argument to stop with the middle school allocation process, and that has created wonderful new diversity in the hallways and in each individual classroom. The culture of TJ remains alive and well in the face of individuals outside of the community who seek to destroy it.

But there is a serious question regarding whether or not the current admissions process is actually identifying the students who will contribute the most to the educational community of the school. The previous process certainly did not - it merely identified who was most likely to score well on college entrance exams - but there's not a whole lot of evidence that the new process does either.

Given that we've established that standardized exams are occlusive to the process of evaluating students, the best answer seems to be a re-imagined teacher recommendation form that asks teachers to compare students to one another within their respective classrooms and offers them the opportunity to write on behalf of or against a very small group of students.

Middle school teachers know who the students are in their building who most belong at TJ through a combination of aptitude for the material and dedication to the collaborative educational process and they should be afforded the opportunity to weigh in on the matter.

I would strongly suggest you education yourself on bias in the identification of gifted students.

Sure. Only been around them for my entire life.

But again, we’re not just talking about gifted students here - we’re talking about students who would make the strongest and most positive total impacts to the TJ community as a group, rather than as individuals.

It is has been empirically established that Asians are rated relatively lower on “group contribution” at Harvard and other places. The Supreme Court will decide whether these proxies for discrimination will pass muster.

Of course, but fortunately race isn't a factor for TJ admissions since it's a race blind process so the SCOTUS decision is irrelevant.

It was designed and implemented to reduce Asian students at TJ. We won't have to wait long for SCOTUs to tell us.

I wouldn’t hold your breath since the case isn’t even before SCOTUS.

The legality of use of 'race' for public and private school is before the SCOTUS! SCOTUS' decision will be binding on all private and public schools in the US.

It won’t necessarily be clear how these decisions apply, if at all, to an admissions policy like the new TJ admissions policy that on its face is race-neutral.

We have a US District Court's factual finding that there was a racial discrimination that was unconstitutional and no Court has reversed that ruling. Pretty clear.

No court has reversed it, but a higher court quickly invalidated its order and the activist Supreme Court declined to intervene. Pretty strong statements and part of the reason that the District Court judge hasn’t been promoted in 40 years on the bench.

Actually, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has NOT ruled on the appeal and they merely stayed the implementation of the District Court's Order and the SCOTUS has decided not to intervene in the case yet and we will have to see what happens at the Circuit Court of Appeals. The Harvard case will impact the eventual ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals since they are legally bound by the SCOTUS' decisions! The US District Court's Order stands period.

If their order stood, the Admissions process for the Class of 2027, which is currently underway, wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. The stay, however temporary it is, will remain in place until the same three-judge panel that implemented the stay reverses the ruling.

Harvard and UNC will have no bearing on TJ because those schools use race directly in the admissions process. FCPS, despite a lot of rather obvious misinformation here, does not with respect to TJ.

It's misinformation for you to say the district court ruling's no longer "stands." It has simply been stayed by the Fourth Circuit pending appeal, which is typical. Given the fact that the current SCOTUS is an activist conservative court, some expected the Court to intervene and overturn the stay, but it declined to do so at this juncture (which again is typical).

It's also not accurate to say the Harvard and UNC cases will have "no bearing" on TJ. Even though those schools, unlike FCPS, use race directly in their admissions processes, there may be language in those decisions that affect how the lower courts ultimately decide to address the TJ case.

Finally, one should not lose sight of the fact that the AG investigation into potential violations of the Virginia Human Rights Act will be a distinct matter from the case alleging a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Even if FCPS is found not to have violated the Constitution in the federal case, FCPS may yet be found to have violated the VHRA, which could give rise to sanctions on FCPS.

Short version: FCPS is going to have a lot on its plate to defend when it comes to TJ for a long time.

DP. You are grasping at straws here.

So you wish. In case you haven't noticed, FCPS hasn't been doing too well in the courts on many fronts lately.

They're winning on this one.

No, they lost at the District Court level and we are waiting for the Court of Appeals to rule on the merits.

The only impact of FCPS having "lost" anything to this point in this mess is that the Class of 2026 was seated somewhat later than it should have been because of the delay caused by the initial, since-stayed ruling.

The Coalition has won literally zero in terms of action items. That's great for them that they've gotten a sympathetic state government to engage in an investigation, but the investigation is going to turn up a clerical error.

The state AG investigation is examining both (1) the change in admissions policy and (2) the delayed notification to recipients of Letters of Commendation.

Whatever it finds, it will be more than a "clerical error" relating to the latter. It doesn't help your cause to misrepresent the scope of the state investigation.

This is just another GOP goose chase that will yield nothing but it will help rally Youngkin's extreme far-right base.

Exactly what is far-right about investigating why and how any high school could possible fail for years to provide the notification of commended National Merit Status on a timely basis? TJ is a VA governors school managed by FCPS. Located in Fairfax County VA. Notofication of that status anywhere in the USA has been provided for decades - even before the availability of digital communication. Standard operating procedure. Robinson press release with names for Merit semi-finalists, commended, AA, Hispanic. https://robinsonss.fcps.edu/features/national-merit-breakfast-recognition

So somehow FCPS thinks TJ should operate differently than any other school funded by local, state tax dollars? FCPS already operates facilities divergent from state law.

It could have been 1 student or 100+ students. If any FCPS managed high schools and any VA gov schools provided timely notification then so to should have TJ. Maggie Walker is also a VA Governors School. https://mlwgs.com/47-seniors-named-commended-students-in-the-2022-national-merit-scholarship-program/
PSAT awards also include National Recognition status for those who check boxes : Hispanic/Latinx, African American/Black, Indigenous, or rural area students.
https://mlwgs.com/maggie-walker-gs-students-awarded-with-academic-honors-from-college-board-national-recognition-programs/

They DO notify the kids that got commended each year. The issue is imply that this time someone accidentally messed up by forgetting to hand them out right away when they came in. The fact that the college board screwed up first by not putting enough stamps on the package to TJ so it was a month delayed in getting to the school compounded this.

It seems like some posters are deliberately trying to spin this big nothing into something to push their far-right agenda.

The allegation is that, according to the director of student services, the school delayed notifying commended students so TJ students who were not Semifinalists or Commended students would not have their feelings hurt.

I have a feeling that the DSS is going to go down for that. Sounds to me like he screwed up and tried to cover his ass. In the absence of those quotes, this is even more of a non-story.

LOL no that's not even what he said. He said they didn't hold a big ceremony because they didn't want to hurt the kids who didn't get anything. It's in the emails they published.

To celebrate for 300+ out of 400+ kids with a big ceremony? My daughter is one of the semifinalist this year (out of 132), I agree with what he said, and I believe most of TJ kids also agreed with him. Academic excellence is an important factor of their school life, but should not be the only one.

Yeah, and at that point you're basically just throwing a party for the entire senior class but leaving out that one group of kids. That's a bad look for the school as well.

[Anonymous]

I'm sure there's a way to recognize and provide appropriate, timely notice to all students at TJ recognized by the NMSF (either as Semifinalists or Commended Students), without holding an school or class-wide assembly or celebrated where the 20% or so of TJ kids who aren't recognized feel left out.

If this was done, much ado about nothing.

If this wasn't done, those responsible need to find other jobs and, if an investigation were to find it was racially motivated, potentially be held subject to stiffer sanctions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anecdotally, TJ has not been selecting the top students within a school, who would make the most use of the advanced classes.
I should say FCPS is not selecting the top students, as my understanding is TJ doesn't handle the admissions.

That is incorrect only the top 1.5% of students are selected from each school.

The top according to their scoring, which unfortunately doesn't do a good job of identifying the top students.

It absolutely does identify the top students. The old system just identified those who could afford to buy the test. This is vastly better.

True but I like to come up with an alternate definition of merit that suits my preferred outcome.

A system for a regional school that assigns a minimum percentage of seats to every middle school, including schools that don't have AAP programs and have few LLIV-eligible students, and then relies on more subjective factors might be more geographically diverse but is definitely not going to identify the top students in the region and may not even identify the top students at an individual school.

This is the real challenge facing FCPS moving forward.

There isn't really a good argument to stop with the middle school allocation process, and that has created wonderful new diversity in the hallways and in each individual classroom. The culture of TJ remains alive and well in the face of individuals outside of the community who seek to destroy it.

But there is a serious question regarding whether or not the current admissions process is actually identifying the students who will contribute the most to the educational community of the school. The previous process certainly did not - it merely identified who was most likely to score well on college entrance exams - but there's not a whole lot of evidence that the new process does either.

Given that we've established that standardized exams are occlusive to the process of evaluating students, the best answer seems to be a re-imagined teacher recommendation form that asks teachers to compare students to one another within their respective classrooms and offers them the opportunity to write on behalf of or against a very small group of students.

Middle school teachers know who the students are in their building who most belong at TJ through a combination of aptitude for the material and dedication to the collaborative educational process and they should be afforded the opportunity to weigh in on the matter.

I would strongly suggest you education yourself on bias in the identification of gifted students.

Sure. Only been around them for my entire life.

But again, we’re not just talking about gifted students here - we’re talking about students who would make the strongest and most positive total impacts to the TJ community as a group, rather than as individuals.

It is has been empirically established that Asians are rated relatively lower on “group contribution” at Harvard and other places. The Supreme Court will decide whether these proxies for discrimination will pass muster.

Of course, but fortunately race isn't a factor for TJ admissions since it's a race blind process so the SCOTUS decision is irrelevant.

It was designed and implemented to reduce Asian students at TJ. We won't have to wait long for SCOTUs to tell us.

I wouldn’t hold your breath since the case isn’t even before SCOTUS.

The legality of use of 'race' for public and private school is before the SCOTUS! SCOTUS' decision will be binding on all private and public schools in the US.

It won’t necessarily be clear how these decisions apply, if at all, to an admissions policy like the new TJ admissions policy that on its face is race-neutral.

We have a US District Court's factual finding that there was a racial discrimination that was unconstitutional and no Court has reversed that ruling. Pretty clear.

No court has reversed it, but a higher court quickly invalidated its order and the activist Supreme Court declined to intervene. Pretty strong statements and part of the reason that the District Court judge hasn’t been promoted in 40 years on the bench.

Actually, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has NOT ruled on the appeal and they merely stayed the implementation of the District Court's Order and the SCOTUS has decided not to intervene in the case yet and we will have to see what happens at the Circuit Court of Appeals. The Harvard case will impact the eventual ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals since they are legally bound by the SCOTUS' decisions! The US District Court's Order stands period.

If their order stood, the Admissions process for the Class of 2027, which is currently underway, wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. The stay, however temporary it is, will remain in place until the same three-judge panel that implemented the stay reverses the ruling.

Harvard and UNC will have no bearing on TJ because those schools use race directly in the admissions process. FCPS, despite a lot of rather obvious misinformation here, does not with respect to TJ.

It's misinformation for you to say the district court ruling's no longer "stands." It has simply been stayed by the Fourth Circuit pending appeal, which is typical. Given the fact that the current SCOTUS is an activist conservative court, some expected the Court to intervene and overturn the stay, but it declined to do so at this juncture (which again is typical).

It's also not accurate to say the Harvard and UNC cases will have "no bearing" on TJ. Even though those schools, unlike FCPS, use race directly in their admissions processes, there may be language in those decisions that affect how the lower courts ultimately decide to address the TJ case.

Finally, one should not lose sight of the fact that the AG investigation into potential violations of the Virginia Human Rights Act will be a distinct matter from the case alleging a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Even if FCPS is found not to have violated the Constitution in the federal case, FCPS may yet be found to have violated the VHRA, which could give rise to sanctions on FCPS.

Short version: FCPS is going to have a lot on its plate to defend when it comes to TJ for a long time.

DP. You are grasping at straws here.

So you wish. In case you haven't noticed, FCPS hasn't been doing too well in the courts on many fronts lately.

They're winning on this one.

No, they lost at the District Court level and we are waiting for the Court of Appeals to rule on the merits.

The only impact of FCPS having "lost" anything to this point in this mess is that the Class of 2026 was seated somewhat later than it should have been because of the delay caused by the initial, since-stayed ruling.

The Coalition has won literally zero in terms of action items. That's great for them that they've gotten a sympathetic state government to engage in an investigation, but the investigation is going to turn up a clerical error.

The state AG investigation is examining both (1) the change in admissions policy and (2) the delayed notification to recipients of Letters of Commendation.

Whatever it finds, it will be more than a "clerical error" relating to the latter. It doesn't help your cause to misrepresent the scope of the state investigation.

This is just another GOP goose chase that will yield nothing but it will help rally Youngkin's extreme far-right base.

Exactly what is far-right about investigating why and how any high school could possible fail for years to provide the notification of commended National Merit Status on a timely basis? TJ is a VA governors school managed by FCPS. Located in Fairfax County VA. Notofication of that status anywhere in the USA has been provided for decades - even before the availability of digital communication. Standard operating procedure. Robinson press release with names for Merit semi-finalists, commended, AA, Hispanic. https://robinsonss.fcps.edu/features/national-merit-breakfast-recognition

So somehow FCPS thinks TJ should operate differently than any other school funded by local, state tax dollars? FCPS already operates facilities divergent from state law.

It could have been 1 student or 100+ students. If any FCPS managed high schools and any VA gov schools provided timely notification then so to should have TJ. Maggie Walker is also a VA Governors School. https://mlwgs.com/47-seniors-named-commended-students-in-the-2022-national-merit-scholarship-program/
PSAT awards also include National Recognition status for those who check boxes : Hispanic/Latinx, African American/Black, Indigenous, or rural area students.
https://mlwgs.com/maggie-walker-gs-students-awarded-with-academic-honors-from-college-board-national-recognition-programs/

They DO notify the kids that got commended each year. The issue is imply that this time someone accidentally messed up by forgetting to hand them out right away when they came in. The fact that the college board screwed up first by not putting enough stamps on the package to TJ so it was a month delayed in getting to the school compounded this.

This lack of notification did not begin in fall 2022. See the emails written in fall 2020. https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/fairfax_county/as-tjhsst-is-investigated-an-email-from-2020-reveals-a-pattern-and-practice-of-hiding/article_c81ad93e-8d15-11ed-a224-a364200eb1d3.html

No. They haven't been notifying students each year, contrary to the claims of FCPS that this was a 'one-off.' Which is why there is an investigation because there is credible evidence that this has been going on for years.

What does notification mean in this case? Handing over the certificate or sending out an email notification to the parents as other school did? If it is later, I think that could be the case, but it is hard to believe that they did not give the certificate out after they receiving them, what's the point to keep them, and why they send them out this year?

They didn't give out the certificates after receiving them because this happened in 2020, while everyone was at home because of COVID. There were no staff or students at TJ at the time.

ZERO evidence of that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm sure there's a way to recognize and provide appropriate, timely notice to all students at TJ recognized by the NMSF (either as Semifinalists or Commended Students), without holding an school or class-wide assembly or celebrated where the 20% or so of TJ kids who aren't recognized feel left out.

If this was done, much ado about nothing.

If this wasn't done, those responsible need to find other jobs and, if an investigation were to find it was racially motivated, potentially be held subject to stiffer sanctions.

+1. Seems like normally it's much ado about nothing. Something went wrong this year, so they should look into it, figure out what happened, and fix it appropriately so it doesn't happen again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm sure there's a way to recognize and provide appropriate, timely notice to all students at TJ recognized by the NMSF (either as Semifinalists or Commended Students), without holding an school or class-wide assembly or celebrated where the 20% or so of TJ kids who aren't recognized feel left out.

If this was done, much ado about nothing.

If this wasn't done, those responsible need to find other jobs and, if an investigation were to find it was racially motivated, potentially be held subject to stiffer sanctions.

Deciding how to pass the word to kids that they were commended or not racially motivated. The people trying to stir things up keep throwing in that the majority of the impacted kids are Asian. True. That's because the strong majority of the kids at TJ are Asian. You may as well claim that literally everything the school does is racist since every thing the school does will impact a group of majority Asian kids. This is nuts.

And the way TJ recognized them was by notifying them. When it's virtually the whole class that got this or a higher honor, I 100% support not holding a bigger fanfare. The kids should know and they were indeed notified.

- parent of a curretn TJ kid

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Anonymous wrote:Anecdotally, TJ has not been selecting the top students within a school, who would make the most use of the advanced classes.
I should say FCPS is not selecting the top students, as my understanding is TJ doesn't handle the admissions.

That is incorrect only the top 1.5% of students are selected from each school.

The top according to their scoring, which unfortunately doesn't do a good job of identifying the top students.

It absolutely does identify the top students. The old system just identified those who could afford to buy the test. This is vastly better.

True but I like to come up with an alternate definition of merit that suits my preferred outcome.

A system for a regional school that assigns a minimum percentage of seats to every middle school, including schools that don't have AAP programs and have few LLIV-eligible students, and then relies on more subjective factors might be more geographically diverse but is definitely not going to identify the top students in the region and may not even identify the top students at an individual school.

This is the real challenge facing FCPS moving forward.

There isn't really a good argument to stop with the middle school allocation process, and that has created wonderful new diversity in the hallways and in each individual classroom. The culture of TJ remains alive and well in the face of individuals outside of the community who seek to destroy it.

But there is a serious question regarding whether or not the current admissions process is actually identifying the students who will contribute the most to the educational community of the school. The previous process certainly did not - it merely identified who was most likely to score well on college entrance exams - but there's not a whole lot of evidence that the new process does either.

Given that we've established that standardized exams are occlusive to the process of evaluating students, the best answer seems to be a re-imagined teacher recommendation form that asks teachers to compare students to one another within their respective classrooms and offers them the opportunity to write on behalf of or against a very small group of students.

Middle school teachers know who the students are in their building who most belong at TJ through a combination of aptitude for the material and dedication to the collaborative educational process and they should be afforded the opportunity to weigh in on the matter.

I would strongly suggest you education yourself on bias in the identification of gifted students.

Sure. Only been around them for my entire life.

But again, we’re not just talking about gifted students here - we’re talking about students who would make the strongest and most positive total impacts to the TJ community as a group, rather than as individuals.

It is has been empirically established that Asians are rated relatively lower on “group contribution” at Harvard and other places. The Supreme Court will decide whether these proxies for discrimination will pass muster.

Of course, but fortunately race isn't a factor for TJ admissions since it's a race blind process so the SCOTUS decision is irrelevant.

It was designed and implemented to reduce Asian students at TJ. We won't have to wait long for SCOTUs to tell us.

I wouldn’t hold your breath since the case isn’t even before SCOTUS.

The legality of use of 'race' for public and private school is before the SCOTUS! SCOTUS' decision will be binding on all private and public schools in the US.

It won’t necessarily be clear how these decisions apply, if at all, to an admissions policy like the new TJ admissions policy that on its face is race-neutral.

We have a US District Court's factual finding that there was a racial discrimination that was unconstitutional and no Court has reversed that ruling. Pretty clear.

No court has reversed it, but a higher court quickly invalidated its order and the activist Supreme Court declined to intervene. Pretty strong statements and part of the reason that the District Court judge hasn’t been promoted in 40 years on the bench.

Actually, The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has NOT ruled on the appeal and they merely stayed the implementation of the District Court's Order and the SCOTUS has decided not to intervene in the case yet and we will have to see what happens at the Circuit Court of Appeals. The Harvard case will impact the eventual ruling by the Circuit Court of Appeals since they are legally bound by the SCOTUS' decisions! The US District Court's Order stands period.

If their order stood, the Admissions process for the Class of 2027, which is currently underway, wouldn’t be allowed to proceed. The stay, however temporary it is, will remain in place until the same three-judge panel that implemented the stay reverses the ruling.

Harvard and UNC will have no bearing on TJ because those schools use race directly in the admissions process. FCPS, despite a lot of rather obvious misinformation here, does not with respect to TJ.

It's misinformation for you to say the district court ruling's no longer "stands." It has simply been stayed by the Fourth Circuit pending appeal, which is typical. Given the fact that the current SCOTUS is an activist conservative court, some expected the Court to intervene and overturn the stay, but it declined to do so at this juncture (which again is typical).

It's also not accurate to say the Harvard and UNC cases will have "no bearing" on TJ. Even though those schools, unlike FCPS, use race directly in their admissions processes, there may be language in those decisions that affect how the lower courts ultimately decide to address the TJ case.

Finally, one should not lose sight of the fact that the AG investigation into potential violations of the Virginia Human Rights Act will be a distinct matter from the case alleging a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Even if FCPS is found not to have violated the Constitution in the federal case, FCPS may yet be found to have violated the VHRA, which could give rise to sanctions on FCPS.

Short version: FCPS is going to have a lot on its plate to defend when it comes to TJ for a long time.

DP. You are grasping at straws here.

So you wish. In case you haven't noticed, FCPS hasn't been doing too well in the courts on many fronts lately.

They're winning on this one.

No, they lost at the District Court level and we are waiting for the Court of Appeals to rule on the merits.

The only impact of FCPS having "lost" anything to this point in this mess is that the Class of 2026 was seated somewhat later than it should have been because of the delay caused by the initial, since-stayed ruling.

The Coalition has won literally zero in terms of action items. That's great for them that they've gotten a sympathetic state government to engage in an investigation, but the investigation is going to turn up a clerical error.

The state AG investigation is examining both (1) the change in admissions policy and (2) the delayed notification to recipients of Letters of Commendation.

Whatever it finds, it will be more than a "clerical error" relating to the latter. It doesn't help your cause to misrepresent the scope of the state investigation.

This is just another GOP goose chase that will yield nothing but it will help rally Youngkin's extreme far-right base.

Exactly what is far-right about investigating why and how any high school could possible fail for years to provide the notification of commended National Merit Status on a timely basis? TJ is a VA governors school managed by FCPS. Located in Fairfax County VA. Notofication of that status anywhere in the USA has been provided for decades - even before the availability of digital communication. Standard operating procedure. Robinson press release with names for Merit semi-finalists, commended, AA, Hispanic. https://robinsonss.fcps.edu/features/national-merit-breakfast-recognition

So somehow FCPS thinks TJ should operate differently than any other school funded by local, state tax dollars? FCPS already operates facilities divergent from state law.

It could have been 1 student or 100+ students. If any FCPS managed high schools and any VA gov schools provided timely notification then so to should have TJ. Maggie Walker is also a VA Governors School. https://mlwgs.com/47-seniors-named-commended-students-in-the-2022-national-merit-scholarship-program/
PSAT awards also include National Recognition status for those who check boxes : Hispanic/Latinx, African American/Black, Indigenous, or rural area students.
https://mlwgs.com/maggie-walker-gs-students-awarded-with-academic-honors-from-college-board-national-recognition-programs/

They DO notify the kids that got commended each year. The issue is imply that this time someone accidentally messed up by forgetting to hand them out right away when they came in. The fact that the college board screwed up first by not putting enough stamps on the package to TJ so it was a month delayed in getting to the school compounded this.

This lack of notification did not begin in fall 2022. See the emails written in fall 2020. https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/fairfax_county/as-tjhsst-is-investigated-an-email-from-2020-reveals-a-pattern-and-practice-of-hiding/article_c81ad93e-8d15-11ed-a224-a364200eb1d3.html

No. They haven't been notifying students each year, contrary to the claims of FCPS that this was a 'one-off.' Which is why there is an investigation because there is credible evidence that this has been going on for years.

What does notification mean in this case? Handing over the certificate or sending out an email notification to the parents as other school did? If it is later, I think that could be the case, but it is hard to believe that they did not give the certificate out after they receiving them, what's the point to keep them, and why they send them out this year?

They didn't give out the certificates after receiving them because this happened in 2020, while everyone was at home because of COVID. There were no staff or students at TJ at the time.

ZERO evidence of that.

Not sure what you mean. I'm talking about the incident in the Fairfax Times article published today, which is about distribution of certificates in fall 2020 -- in the middle of the pandemic. It's no secret that everyone was working/learning from home at the time.