Reply to TJ Students by FCPS Pyramid 2022-23

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The LCPS Academies model with kids going to their base school for History, English, PE, foreign Language/music, and then going to the Academy (or TJ in this case) for the other day to do Science, Math, Tech types of classes makes SO MUCH SENSE!

It allows kids to keep their base school connections, reduced commuting burdens, gives TWICE as many kids access to very top-level STEM classes/peers, and allows the specialty school to actually focus on the SPECIALTY (STEM) without being bogged down with kids who can't pass English or Spanish or whatever.

Let TJ focus on STEM and let twice as many kids have access.[/quote]

TJ is designed to be a full-service high school. The only reason it has such a strong national reputation when compared with AOS/AET is BECAUSE it's a full-service high school.

You are chasing prestige and that prestige will go away immediately if TJ transitions to an academy model, and besides, it's not built with that in mind. You have tons of rooms in that building that are built for humanities classes. You have two gyms, an auditorium, and a black box theatre. And that building cost $100 million and was completed five years ago.

You're out of your mind if you think the academy model is either possible or a good idea.[/quote]

Lots of high schools have two gyms and an auditorium, not sure what a black box theatre is.  TJ doesn't have its high reputation because of its humanities classes or its black box theatre, though those are probably very good too.  It has its reputation because of its math and science classes.  A club that can put a satellite in space.
Physics classes that other university professors come to see how they are teaching.[/quote]

Two things:

1) You completely missed the point - if the conversation is about turning TJ into an academy program, you can't do that in the current building without wasting an incredible amount of space and money. That building is designed to be a full-service high school and it's not like you can just take the humanities classrooms that are in there and convert them into STEM ready spaces in the blink of an eye. One imagines a building where the kids are running around in the lab spaces and entire wings of the building go totally unused for the entire year.

2) You are GROSSLY overestimating the level of teaching that goes on at TJ in comparison with other highly-ranked STEM academies or schools. What separates TJ from the rest of the schools in Northern Virginia is an exceptional STEM program, but what separates it from the other STEM academies that are out there is the ability to have a full-service high school experience at the same time as you're getting the world-class STEM education.  Most of the other highly ranked high schools that are out there have maybe 400-600 students or even fewer. Stuy and Bronx Science are comparable, but few others are.[/quote]

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