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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I wonder how the folks cheering because their kids got in without “prepping” (aka working for it) are going to feel when they discover that their kids are signed up for 90 hour workweeks?  I suppose they will argue their kids should get a TJ degree based on their “innate talent”.  And then will move on to college admissions by “innate talent,” etc.

I wonder at what point they will expect their kids to work hard at something?[/quote]

Genuinely talented kids do not have 90 hour workweeks at TJ. They come home, probably do about 2 hours of homework each night, and take a chunk of one of the two weekend days (4-5 hours) to get stuff done/get ahead for the week.

These kids have the ability to succeed in diverse extracurricular pursuits (athletics/arts/creatives) above and beyond just STEM, and it's no accident that those are the kids who tend to get into elite colleges.

I am sorry if this bursts your bubble with respect to your own kid, but it's the truth. [/quote]

+1000. You can draw a direct line between the kids who did extensive TJ prep and the kids who require a million hours to get through the TJ workload.[/quote]

My kids prep: took the practice test off the website.

My kid’s reality: some weeks leaving at 7am to commute and getting home from band or drama at 7:30-8:30 (with a parent off the grid 1-2 night a week to run the evening caropol) Eating and setting in at 9 for 3-4 hours of homework. Most weekends marching or doing drama at least one day. The other day on homework. When you add commute, plus school, plus ECs, plus homework, you get to 80-90 hours a week fast.  Most weeks, my kids had 40 in class, plus 12 commuting, plus 20-25 hours of homework  (3 a night, plus most of a weekend day)  plus 12-30+ between marching band and drama.  Until junior year, when the homework load increased significantly.

This was very much in line with most kids I knew.  Except the kids in crew, who put in even more time.  And before my kid accepted the offer, we sketched out what his day and week would look like.

It’s not 90 hours of homework a week. But each of your 7 junior classes will expect 3-4. Plus an longer school day. Plus commute time.  Plus ECs being so time intensive because TJ kids are expected to be the best at everything.  And that’s 90 hours. [/quote]

Well sure, if you add the extracurricular stuff and the commute to the definition of the "work week" you can get there. I'll grant that. Based on what I hear from your narrative, it sounds like your kid had a fantastic experience that was a fair amount like mine.[/quote]

He absolutely did. But he worked so hard and slept so little.  And it was a wake up call  his freshman year when he had a band concert and felt sick and missed a project checkin deadline the next day, and the teacher listened to him explain, flunked him and didn’t care.  My kid was solidly middle of the class and had some Cs in math.  Which was fine. He’s at a great college that is an amazing fit right  now. And sure, he got into Pitt and WM.  But 90 hours a week and UVA or an Ivy, no so much.

I really have concerns about three things:

(1) they appear to have chosen kids specifically based on the fact they did not do extra work.  The taking A1 over Geometry kids is perplexing, because all kids get screened for Algebra in 7th and they failed the screener. Or didn’t want to push themselves outside their academic comfort zone.  Geometry in 8th can happen with no prepping.   And you need basic calculus to taken standard, non-AP physics as a junior.

He may not have prepped, but in MS my kid did a state level EC asking 20+ hours a week at a TJ feeder, so he had some idea. And yet, we considered having him drop back first semester because of the time demands.  I’m sure some kids will swim. I’m equally sure more kids than usual will drop back.  And dropping back from TJ has a stigma, at least in my kid’s base school (younger kid did not want to go to TJ). There is the whispering and gossip and watching the kid to see what they do. It isn’t a small thing for a kid not to hack it. Some kids are so relieved they are out that they don’t care, but for many, it’s a real problem, especially since they didn’t start school with their peers.

(2). I am unclear on how you make TJ work for ESOL kids. If they need English support, how do they deal with being handed a dense AP Bio test book Day 1 freshman year, being told to read the first chapter, and then take a super picky Bio quiz? If they can get ESOL kids through without watering down expectations, great. But honestly, given the density of the materials and expectations in even Freshman English to write a significant research paper, I don’t  see how. Plus, let’s be honest, many of the TJ don’t have English as a first language. My very English kid spent sophomore year catching about 2/3 of the words his Chemistry teacher said.

(3’). TJ runs on carpools. Often a parent doing a three hour round trip drive. And, they got rid of neighborhood busing. If you want to bring in a class that’s 25% FARMs, you need to realize that doing drop off and pickup at bus depots and multiple hour round trips if you kid has a group project, wants to see a friend, gets sick or has an EC will be a problem.  FARMs kids are likely to have parents working shifts, may not have reliable transportation and gas is expensive.  If they want FARMs to work, the SB needs to go back to neighborhood busing, add a late bus every day and have sports, band, drama, clubs, kids in the school working all end at the same time. Managing TJ transportation is a lot if you have a SAHM. And really, really tough if both parents work in UMC, professional jobs (hand raised). I don’t see how it’s possible for many FARMs families.

And, once again, the solution to FARMs kids and transportation isn’t to keep FARMs kids out. It is to increase FCPS busing. But the SB hasn’t even thought through and budgeted for something as that. Just like they threw ESOL kids at TJ who must pass IBET and 2 years of HUM to graduate, but haven’t articulated  a plan for how that will work.

You can do things the smart way, with building a pipeline and adding supports in schools for less advantaged kids. Or you can slapdash and make a bunch of big changes in a COvId year ecause you care about the appearance of making a change more than having the change actually work. They were heavy on the buzz words with this plan and very light on actual implementation.  But, that’s how this Board has riled all year.

That’s my issue. Not that’s are making changes, but that they are doing so poorly, with little thought and without thinking through the downstream issue and the long term ramifications.

I’m glad my kid is out. [/quote]

PP. These are fantastic points and I'm really enjoying the conversation. I agree that they're placing a gigantic load on the school to create those support structures and while there are some folks there in the administration who will be supportive, there are others from the Glazer regime that still have very much a sink-or-swim attitude. Let me try to address each of the points:

1) I'm gonna guess that, while the number and percentage of Alg1 kids will increase significantly with this class, it's not going to be quite as overwhelming as many think. When I went to TJ, the Physics 1 and Pre-Calc curricula tracked pretty well together so that students would have the tools they needed to succeed in Physics. Given that about 50-60% of the class was Alg1 back then, this was a necessity. I don't know how well those two track nowadays, as seemingly fewer and fewer students each year actually take Physics 1 to begin with and jump to AP right off the bat, but obviously that will change somewhat with this group.

More kids than usual will definitely drop back, but many of them will be dropping back to communities where leaving TJ is far less of a stigma than it is for the traditional feeders.

2) I agree with you 100% that TJ is not designed for ESOL students. That is going to be a huge problem, depending on how significant the deficit in English is. Again - completely dependent on the attitudes of the folks in Student Services.

3) One of the realities of the new geographic distribution is that you will have a significant increase in the number of students who actually live relatively close to TJ - schools that were traditionally underserved, and where the balance of the FARMs kids are coming from, are in neighborhoods 10-15 minutes from the school. Bus depots are going to have to change significantly to handle these numbers. And you're spot on that they'll realize quickly that they need to add daily late buses.

Additionally, they'll need to relax significantly on the policy that was borne of the renovation where everyone needs to be out of the building by 4:30 unless they're with a sports team or some other EC. There will be kids who need to stay after for whatever reason, maybe for extra help in a class or something, and those kids will need to wait for their parents to be done with their 9-5. TJ used to have an extremely vibrant after-school hangout culture that did wonders for student health and morale - bringing that back would be a huge plus.[/quote]

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