Reply to TJ admissions now verifying free and reduced price meal status for successful 2026 applicants

Forum Index » Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)

Reply to "TJ admissions now verifying free and reduced price meal status for successful 2026 applicants "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Removing teacher recommendations is a massive red flag. The only reason to remove it was to make the process into a lottery.

One student who was caught cheating in Science Olympiad. Our team got penalized for it and that student was removed from the team for the state level competition. That student got in. Teacher recommendation would have been able to eliminate this.

[/quote]

The whole thing is so toxic. They should move to lottery. [/quote]

Some other counties do have lotteries for magnets. They determine which students are "qualified" and of the qualified students it is a lottery.  Seems like a good way to eliminate some of those trying to game the system, while still maintaining high quality.[/quote]

Or rethink TJ entirely and change it to an Academy.  Allow any student to enroll in the post-AP classes that are not offered at the base schools. [/quote]

Won't happen. It's built as a high school and must continue to function as such. That building was just recently renovated at a cost of over $100M and would make absolutely no sense as an academy.[/quote]

The only solution that is workable is turning it into a lottery. Too many people want to game admissions. Lottery is the only answer.[/quote]

Disagree. I am the most vocal pro-reform proponent on this board (apart from the nutjobs) and I reject the notion of a lottery. I believe there are genuinely a group of 50-100 students every year who wouldn't make sense at any high school other than TJ, and as we continue to reform the new admissions process, we need to make sure we are adding enough layers to the process to identify those kids.

But it's pretty obvious to any actual observer of the Northern Virginia academic community - and I mean the ENTIRE community, not just the Western Fairfax and Loudoun self-selected set - that beyond those 50-100, there are probably 1500-2000 kids who would be phenomenal at TJ. Many of those don't even apply, and we have to fix that. But of that additional group, it makes the most sense to have those students come from diverse backgrounds and bring diverse perspectives and talents.

It is important to the functioning of a high school - ESPECIALLY a high-achieving one like TJ - to prevent an environment where all 500 students in the class are trying to accomplish the same goal on the same path. THAT is the reason for the toxicity that has existed in TJ's past, and that LONG predates it becoming majority-Asian.

Read that again - TJ's historic toxicity IS NOT about its racial composition; it is about the fact that for too long there were too many students who all had goals and ambitions that were way too similar.

It matters far less for the strength of the TJ environment to have a few kids who score a few points higher on the SAT or a few kids who are a year more advanced in math than it does to have a few more kids who are invested in making the community a better place to go to school. The kid who creates beautiful art in the school's stairwells or runs for six touchdowns on the football field or can actually speak to what it's like to grow up in poverty does far more for the school than the one who takes us from 20 AIME qualifiers to 21. And that should be obvious to everyone.

At its core, TJ is still a HIGH SCHOOL. And it's fine if you don't understand what makes for a positive, memorable, transformative high school experience - many don't. But you need to get out of the way of those who do. [/quote]

The 50-100 who truly need a different experience should be in a dual enrollment program at George Mason and TJ should be returned to use as a community school that would naturally end up with the same diversity of talents that you somehow think a third-rate admissions department is going to be able to replicate.

Or, turn TJ into a full-time Academy program that only offers certain courses not available at base schools to a wider number of kids. If it were to function as a program site, rather than as a full-time school, you wouldn’t have to worry about the purported toxicity of the school or student body.

It remains beyond outrageous that the county spends so much time obsessing about the composition of, and environment at, a single high school when FCPS has neglected the needs of so many other schools. In fact, their latest tinkering with TJ will only aggravate the overcrowding at multiple schools.

Every single School Board member who has contributed to this mess needs to be booted out of office next year.  They have completely and utterly failed, again and again. [/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