Reply to Did TJ release the stats of admission by middle school?

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Reply to "Did TJ release the stats of admission by middle school?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=pettifogger][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Or get spanked by the voters (parents) which I highly doubt.[/quote]

If it's really as bad as everyone says it is, then the School Board elections should go overwhelmingly in the conservatives' favor.

My guess is that most parents are not nearly as unhappy as the very small subsegment of folks who comment on this board alongside the very vocal superminority on Twitter.

Not to mention the folks that were nominated for the School Board on that side are so far outside the mainstream of Fairfax County education policy as to be unrecognizable - and that several are running with the express intent of financially kneecapping the public school system....

Prepare to be disappointed. Become a serious party if you intend to create change.[/quote]
I don't know or really care about party affiliation, but if education is a priority, one should be taking a close look at those who actively teach. For instance, Peter Gabor (https://petergabor.org/) is a TJ teacher, majored in math from MIT, has a phD in computer science from Princeton, and taught and is still teaching at TJ for many years. This is promising to see, because we really need more actual teachers running for the school board who have deep content expertise and are actually close to the students and the learning.

WaPo posted all the candidates running here. If folks want to vote for meaningful change, they should be closely studying this.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/10/07/fairfax-county-school-board-election-guide/[/quote]

Agree he is impressive.
But eventually they will come for him.
Maybe not this year, but as standards for TJ admissions relax to deliver the desired equitable outcomes, his standards and rigor of his course will follow by necessity or he will leave. It’s that simple. It’s how they will kill the “elite TJ model”. And it’s a feature, not a bug. Equitable doesn’t mean fair shot—it means same outcome. Equity doesn’t simply elevate the disadvantaged. It dilutes the exceptional. And, by design, it turns everything into mediocre.
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The standards have gone down over the past two decades to accommodate the lower-caliber students who used prep to appear gifted. I'm actually hoping the new process helps reverse the trend by favoring naturally gifted students.[/quote]
Unfortunately the new admissions has resulted in selecting kids who perform academically worse in every measurable way than many students not selected. Do you have any suggestions on how to measure natural giftedness?[/quote]

I get that you prefer a system that is easily gamed but the new process has had the opposite effect. The newest crop of students are performing far better than those admitted under the old system and the school environment is less toxic too.[/quote]
I understand you can’t answer the question. Can you explain how you are measuring their performance you claim is “far better?” Because all the measurements indicate otherwise.[/quote]

You are the one claiming things have gotten worse. I haven't seen a shred of real evidence to that effect just some bitter parents who miss being able to buy their way in. Please show me tangible proof that TJ is worse off now that kids from schools other than the most wealthy have a shot at admission.[/quote]
This years Math and Science SOL scores may be the worst ever at TJ.[/quote]

Science is 100% and math is 99 straight from VDOE. What's the issue? English is 98.5 but that makes a lot of sense assuming some exceptionally gifted ELL kids are now being accepted.[/quote]
You have to drill down and look at the pass advanced rates, which are quite low for a school like TJ.  [/quote]

Lower than previous years? What have the last 10 years looked like. [/quote]
VDOE has previous results here, under the School-Test-By-Test entries. https://www.doe.virginia.gov/data-policy-funding/data-reports/statistics-reports/sol-test-pass-rates-other-results
As a data point, TJ had the following pass advanced rates for the 2016/17, 2017/18,  and 2018/19 school years.
Algebra II: 89, 94, 94
Chemistry: 87, 91, 94
World History II: 85, 82, 78

VDOE shows the following pass advanced rates for the 2020/21, 2021/22 and 2022/23 years:
Algebra II: 63, 53, 58
Chemistry:  - , 52, -
WH II: -, 53, 28

It's a pretty sharp decline.
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The decline is due to changes in the SOL test.  The scoring is completely different than it used to be.[/quote]

DP.  That would explain the across-the-board declines I've seen.  This is the first I've heard about it though.  I know they rescore the SOLs every so often, making them harder or easier (lately only harder).  [/quote]

Yes, changes to the test itself along with the pandemic had an impact on test scores everywhere. Some posters wish to misrepresent this as something else to support their false narrative. [/quote]

Unless you can control for the results and provide a sound defense of your controls, the data is the best evidence.  As a hypothesis, it’s reasonable to posit that placing greater emphasis on short essays will be correlated with a decline in objective performance on standardized subject-matter tests. [/quote]

Test scores are down everywhere and I guess TJ is no different.[/quote]

Yeah, TJ isn't actually a magical school with better teachers. TJ is a function of the community it pulls from. If Langley's average SOL pass advanced rates are 55%, then it's expected that TJ won't be a whole lot better. TJ kids are supposedly the best 100+ Langley/McLean/Chantilly kids aren't they?

You can't blame 55% pass rate on the single digit number of kids being accepted from the no-name middle schools.[/quote]

Of course not, but there are some parents who resent having a fair system that allows all areas of the county a shot at TJ. They preferred the old system where they could simply buy access to the admission test to pretend their kid was gifted.[/quote]

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