Reply to A Solution to the TJ Lottery Madness

Forum Index » Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)

Reply to "A Solution to the TJ Lottery Madness"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]In reading about the FCPS' frenzied, half-assed approach to revamping TJ admissions, it seems to me that the proposed merit-based lottery system is an inane solution to addressing diversity. More alarmingly, it is detrimental to the quality of a high school that refreshingly has a rigorous curriculum and a high standard. For a change, we have a school that is competitive with what would be routine in other countries.

If only our Middle Schools and Elementary Schools had such high standards, we would be building a strong foundation in the children from early on for all demographics, and not be in this situation. On the contrary, look at the number elementary school teachers who teach Math and Science who actually have a STEM background – they may be counted on the one hand. In other countries, elementary school Math is taught by someone with math expertise and the Science teacher has a science background. The data in this survey -- https://www.sreb.org/blog-post/giving-elementary-teachers-tools-teach-math-well -- is quite telling: only 3% of elementary school teachers have a degree in Math or Math Education. It is appalling that anyone in this country can become an elementary school teacher with only a teacher certification. Most of them are liberal arts majors, with no clear understanding of Math or Science concepts themselves and, sadly, with an expressed dislike for Math and Science. What kind of passion can you expect them to instill in our children? As a result, most of our elementary school education is focused on social studies and the soft subjects, with only lip service to Science and Math. Much of the math and science education, therefore, is left to the parents’ initiatives to provide the training and exposure. So, the result is not surprising. We routinely turn a blind eye toward this science and math apathy in the foundational years of school. Our public school education system is failing at the foundation and here we are trying to paint the roof with a desired proportion of colors. To paraphrase Thomas L. Friedman, we are rapidly racing ourselves to the bottom.

The crap shoot approach being proposed for TJ admissions would amount to nothing but diluting the quality of an exemplary school and, in fact, would lead to reverse-discrimination of excluding the top students with a genuine STEM passion by subjecting them to a game of chance. Of course, there is no NAACP or politician championing for the top STEM students, because it is not politically sexy and doesn’t get votes. The argument that the FCPS Superintendent offered in favor of this lottery system is that certain families spend about $15,000 in test prep. This argument is ludicrous, at best. Why is preparing for a test a dirty word? How is this different from preparing for any standardized test? How is this different from training for a sport or a music competition, where parents do spend a lot of money? In a similar vein to the lottery-based admission to a STEM school, would the school and college athletics programs also adopt a lottery system? After all, parents spend a lot of money on sports camps and training athletes to be competitive. Professional NBA is made of 74% Blacks, 23% White, 1.8% Latino and 0.2% Asian players (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_NBA). Similarly, NFL has 70% Blacks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_players_in_professional_American_football). Are these numbers representative of our demographic? Why aren’t we addressing that?

Returning to the issue of our hometown, there is a sensible and meaningful solution to the TJ situation: If the goal is to have a certain percentage/number of preferred inclusion of the underrepresented groups, why not carve out the desired fraction of admissions in each class exclusively for the underrepresented groups? Let's say a class has 500 students, and a 20% representation (or pick whatever distribution that fancies the bean counters) of the underrepresented groups is desired. This means that 100 of the spots would be dedicated to the underrepresented population. Among the 100, the target may be 40 Black, 30 Hispanic, 30 other underrepresented groups. Then, admit the top scorers in the admissions test, teacher recommendations, SIS essays within the respective groups – in our example, the top 40 among all Black applicants, the top 30 among all Hispanic applicants and the top 30 among the other underrepresented groups. The remaining 400 is open to all other groups – Asians, Whites and anyone else. This will ensure that each class will have exactly the same demographic proportion desired and the politicians can win elections touting their dedication to diversity. This is still merit based and will be rewarding the top STEM students than leaving their fate to a game of chance. It is a win-all solution.

Is anyone listening?[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics