Reply to Alexandria's ban on Thomas Jefferson magnet school

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Reply to "Alexandria's ban on Thomas Jefferson magnet school"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Good for Alexandria.  The jury is still out on whether TJ has had a positive or negative impact on other NoVa schools.   [/quote]

Does anyone really doubt for a second that the TJ "magnet' has indeed been a magnet that attracts families for whom education is a priority to Fairfax County?

Fairfax has the highest SAT scores of any major public school system in the region.  It has 8 of the top 10 high schools in Virginia, according to the latest US News rankings, and others in the top 25.

FCPS has many kids who aspire to attend TJ.  If they aren't admitted, they don't quit, but often go on to excel at schools like McLean, Oakton, Chantilly and Langley (the top pyramids for sending kids to TJ).

If there has been a negative effect, it likely has been more localized.  Prior to TJHSST, there was a Jefferson HS.  When that school was closed as a neighborhood school, the lower-income apartments near Landmark that had attended Jefferson were sent to Annandale HS, which already had low-income apartments just inside the Beltway.  It led to overcrowding at Annandale that, over time, has seen the FCPS School Board systematically strip Annandale of multiple single-family neighborhoods and reassign them to other schools.  Poe MS, which feeds to Annandale, is now the poorest middle school in the county.  These schools would have more poverty now than in the mid-80s, just like Glasgow MS and Justice HS today are much poorer than Glasgow MS and Stuart HS were in the mid-80s.  But the conversion of Jefferson to TJHSST may have accelerated some of the changes.

[b]If the jury is out on anything, it's whether Alexandria's policy retains high-achieving kids in ACPS or leads more education-focused families to avoid ACPS altogether.[/b] [/quote]

I don't think Alexandria's TJ policy is responsible for much of the flight from ACPS---people have other reasons for leaving.  TJ is not the be all end all.  Just look at the TC Williams senior who just won that $250K science prize and is going to Harvard to study astrophysics next year.  Alexandria's TJ policy didn't matter much for her.   [/quote]

That's fantastic.  But the policy will never change, or even seriously be reconsidered, so long as people simply substitute anecdotes for data and analysis. [/quote]

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