Reply to TJ Decisions are Out

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My child is in class of 2025 (first under new system)  Says there are definitely kids at TJ in their class who are struggling academically a great deal. Attributes some of that to not putting in the effort. Other classmates try and work hard but still are struggling. They are repeating math classes (like taking math 4 again in second semester because didn’t do well enough first semester to progress to math 5). I don’t think that happened much, if at all, for classes admitted under the old system. Child believes there are more than a handful of kids that would not have gotten in under the old system. It is one thing if the kids admitted under the new system at historically underrepresented schools can thrive and are thriving at TJ.  But it is very concerning and problematic when there are a lot more kids now struggling and find TJ extremely challenging.  Hate to say it. But they probably should not be at TJ. [/quote]

I strongly believe that those kids from underrepresented schools who are able to prevail will likely be more successful in life. Is it worth to sacrifice some more qualified kids who lost their opportunities due to the admission process change? I am not sure. I wish TJ can share some honest data about those kids so we can have an objective evaluation on that. Overall I still believe that the solution should be on making advanced resources more available to all the middle schools. It’s a shame that the VA attorney general attacked the special tutoring program for URMs. The solution should be such programs for all middle schools and a fair merit based admission process.  I don’t think the Asian families really mind this special programs for URM groups as long as a fair merit based admission process is in place. [/quote]

A lot of this centers on what is fair and merit-based. The old system was easily gamed. The new one is less able to identify top students because things like grade inflation make that difficult.[/quote]

To me, this is why teacher recommendations are the answer. If you combine a really solid teacher rec system that is designed to compare students to one another with the 1.5% allocation and an actual holistic evaluation system (meaning scrapping the points system and, therefore, the "experience factors"), you'd get at both merit AND diversity.[/quote]

Taking out teacher recommendations is by far the biggest mistake. If you think the test is being gamed, there is no need to take out teacher recommendations.

The only reason to take out teacher recommendations is to enable you to game the system to FCPS liking. [/quote]

Peer-reviewed studies have shown teacher recs were inconsistent and biased, especially against URMs. [/quote]

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