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Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)
Reply to "Reflections on the "TJ Papers""
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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=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=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] Then why are we having this argument about removing a test that focused on advanced math techniques and discussing the number of students who need “remedial” math? It is totally fine to let in students who demonstrate STEM ability but not acceleration in math. Even desirable. [b]Of course students who are math geniuses should also be admitted.[/b] But I am not sure math acceleration is the way to identify that talent. [/quote] The problem now is that the math geniuses are not being identified and admitted. The current admissions process is so sparse that all above average kids look more or less the same. Removing the Quant test is just another way that the math geniuses were not identified. The number of students who need "remedial" math would be fine [b]if those kids demonstrated high level STEM ability in other areas[/b]. They did not do so. There was nothing in the application to allow them to do so. Again, no one has suggested looking at math acceleration as the only factor in identifying extreme math talent. Math acceleration + grades in these higher level math classes + teacher recommendations + math awards/achievements in math extracurriculars is what you'd use to identify extreme math talent. I'd be very suspicious of a kid who was highly accelerated and got As, but had no notable math achievements and a meh teacher recommendation. [/quote] Previous poster doesn’t understand the point of the Quant-Q or why the prep programs basically made it a pointless exam.[/quote] My DC is in the class of 2022. DC didn’t do one second of preparation and I certainly did not pay for a prep class. Plus sometime I feel that the prep class angle is over played. Those showing a desire to put in extra work in whatever it is (sports trainers, tutors, outside classes/camps in a particular subject, street play, etc) should count for something. When it comes to education we should be intervening in the early years not creating policy to adjust for our inability to create a more diverse student body from early on.[/quote] It's a red herring. Sure some kids "prepped". [b]But the vast majority of students under previous admission system were simply just smart kids.[/b] TJ produces hundreds of national merit semi-finalists. They represents top students in STEM nationally. They went on to perform well in colleges and grad schools. You can't "prep" that. If the "prep" was so easy to do, the rich white parents wouldn't have paid hundreds of thousands to cheat on SATs as varsity blues showed.[/quote] The bolded is correct - but there were also hundreds of other kids who were every bit as smart - or smarter - [b]who got leapfrogged because they were competing with kids who walked into an exam designed to test your native problem-solving ability [/b]with techniques that were handed to them at a cost of $5K or more to their family. And it was a timed exam where being able to figure out the problems quickly was of tremendous advantage.[/quote] FCPS is 100% to blame for that. They knew that was exactly going to happen, [b]but they didn't care to provide that prep to those kids who didn't have the money, awareness, or even access to information.[/b] Where were the after school prep programs to help teach them problem solving skills? Were any practice materials even handed out at school? If they wanted to actually help, they would have put $$ instead of empty words. Let's face it, FCPS doesn't give a hoot about minority students applying to TJ.[/quote] The admissions process provided links to free prep for the two ACT exams, but the makers of the Quant-Q force anyone who sees it to sign an NDA. So no, FCPS could not provide any sort of free practice materials or prep to the end of improving performance on the Quant-Q. And besides, the purpose of that exam is to test how well and quickly student can identify a complex problem that they haven't seen before and develop a solution for it. When the prep programs got hold of the questions from their previous students, they then charged huge amounts of money to parents so that they could teach students how to solve those problems - making the Quant-Q a pointless exam. If you go into the Quant-Q already knowing how to solve the types of problems that are on the Quant-Q, it ceases to have any value. It's designed for students to have to struggle with it. [/quote] Whre is the proof? [/quote] The proof is in the form of students who posted on a forum called TJ Vents on Facebook back in August of 2020. They are members of the Class of 2023 and 2024 whose names appeared on Curie's lists of successful TJ applicants who confirmed in the comment thread of a related post that they were surprised to see questions on the Quant-Q when they took it that they had seen before in their classes at Curie. The original post was the first public expression of Curie's impact on the TJ admissions process, which was a well-known secret among TJ's South Asian community until a student posted the original anonymous vent. [/quote] Dat ain't no proof. GTFO.[/quote] I mean, the students at TJ accept it as proof. They believe their colleagues and actually congratulated them on their bravery.[/quote] This is fake news. If there was any truth this it would have come up in the lawsuit. FCPS never raised this as a reason the admissions process was changed. Nowhere in the record, the briefs, the TJ papers, etc. does anybody every state they believe Curie had acquired the Quant-Q questions or questions that showed up on the actual TJ test. [/quote] Denial. It’s not just a river in Egypt.[/quote] I will never understand why FCPS did not pursue the Curie cheating scandal. They had first and last names. They had kids stating that they saw the test ahead of time. I wonder if there was some kind of pay-to-play going on internally within FCPS and they did not want to embarrass/expose their own staff? Or possibly the company that they fired threatened to sue if they embarrassed them? Whatever the reasons, the FCPS lawyers clearly gave terrible advice during the admissions “reform” process. [/quote] The reality is that there wasn’t anything to prosecute. Curie exploited an apparent gap in the process to tremendous profit. And it worked. In the process, they made it obvious that change was necessary. If you think FCPS and TJ Admissions didn’t know about their 133 kids in 2024, you’re naïve.[/quote] Many prep companies pay some admittees to top universities as well as TJ in this case to say they got in because of ABC prep Co. This is a well know fact. Almost always inflated, exaggerated and not very reliable since we will never know. It is called [b]marketing [/b]folks. Nothing burger and happens all the time. Probably, Curie paid some if not most of the TJ students listed on FB to say they got in because of Curie. Move on and stop wasting time on this issue. [/quote] More non-falsifiable speculation that conveniently serves a helpful narrative. Even if true, the fact that they used the names of TJ students to try to create a market that suggests that your best chance of getting into TJ is to spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours on this private company is incredibly problematic. And there is absolutely zero evidence to support that claim anyway. Curie’s existence and apparent success suggests a pay-to-play dynamic in the admissions process of a public school. That’s REALLY bad.[/quote] Unfortunately for you, almost all prep companies engage in this type of marketing behavior not just TJ related prep companies. Time to stop wasting people's time on these threads and go investigate your self if you are so obsessed. Hire a private investigator or go talk to other prep companies and find out but stop wasting other people's time. [/quote] Nah. I’ll just amplify the publicly available information - which speaks for itself and doesn’t really require further investigation - until there’s no further conversation about using testing metrics that are so easily manipulated by wealthy and motivated applicants.[/quote] Just understand that more you do what you do, more FREE advertisements you give to Curie. You are promoting the exact behavior you say you are obsessively against. [/quote] Nah. I don’t really care if Curie has success financially. I just want what they do to have significantly less impact on the TJ admissions process. And so far, I’m winning. We’ll see what comes of the lawsuit, but right now I’m happy.[/quote] Yeah. Blissfully ignorant.[/quote] Nah. They lost nearly half of their share at TJ year over year, from 28% of the Class of 2024 to about 16% of the Class of 2025. The fact that they continued to have that much of the incoming class despite coming off of their best year ever tells me that the effectiveness of the program at getting kids into TJ waned significantly.[/quote] I think you're looking at it wrong though. There will always be prep companies stepping up to extract money from unsuspecting (trusting?) individuals, that's just business. [0012] Exemplary methods, apparatus, and products for detecting coolant leaks in a server system in accordance with the present invention are described with reference to the accompanying drawings, beginning with Figure 1. Figure 1 sets forth a diagram of a controller 110 configured for detecting coolant leaks in a server system according to embodiments of the present invention. Additionally, make sure the test is not worth the whole enchilada, but an additional data point. Ideally it would serve as a very low bar filter for getting students past the first round, so choose reasonable low scores. On the other hand, having a high ceiling would also allow it to be used as another data point in the final round. Important note: In order to maintain equity, FCPS should be publishing all past tests and practice material on their website so all can access it. That is how you remove the prep company pay to play impact; not by keeping the test a secret as they so stupidly did in the past.[/quote] DP. This is impossible. You are saying that because Test A was preppable and Test B was preppable, that a school district/test company needs to make Test Z that is unpreppable. That doesn't exist. (Actually, there is a test that I know of that is considered to be very accurate with prepping, the LSAT and to some extent but less directly, the MCAT.) As well wish for a pony as for an unpreppable test. Or give students the LSAT...[/quote] DP. I don't think they need a Test Z that is unpreppable. They need one where the prep would simply be learning the math or science quite well. [b]TJ could write what is essentially a very hard Honors Algebra I final exam[/b] to separate the kids who truly have A+ mastery of the content from those who got watered down As. They could do the same with science. Among the numerous 4.0 gpa applicants, it could help identify the kids who earned their 4.0s vs. the kids who only got them due to grade inflation. [/quote] Can't do an Alg1 final if the requirement for eligibility is to be presently enrolled in Alg1. Would have to be based on the first quarter of Alg1, like it was previously.[/quote] Okay, then. Surely, someone at TJ could write a very rigorous pre-Algebra test the would differentiate between the kids with a very solid foundation and those who got watered down As. [/quote] I honestly wouldn't have a problem with this, as long as: a) the exam were administered during the school day, just like the AMC, so as to ensure maximum participation b) the exam were scored on a pass-fail basis with a reasonably high but still accessible cut-off point c) once used to determine baseline suitability, the score was thrown out and never used again to differentiate students But the reality of the situation is that if you use a non-standardized, non-vetted math exam of any kind for a public school, you open yourself up to challenges of bias that have even greater validity than any of the current challenges. And additionally, you'd still see massive, extensive prep designed to ensure that students who might be relatively workaday end up "passing", or if you count the score, significantly exceeding their actual capabilities.[/quote] Admitting really hard working and driven students that study into a rigorous high school that expects you to be gifted and a high achiever seems fine to me even if these kids may be exceeding their actual capabilities compared to a lazy version of a slightly brighter student. It has worked extremely well in the past (there is a reason it's the number 1 high school in the US) - you just don't like racial makeup of the student body.[/quote] It's the number 1 high school in the country because you have ranking services that use exam scores as a metric and the school's old admissions process disallowed students who weren't exceptional test takers from advancing in the process. The TJ exam didn't do a great job of predicting future success at TJ, any more than the SAT or PSAT predicts success in college or in life. But success on the TJ exam does predict success on the SAT, so that's where the ranking comes from.[/quote] The TJ exam in and of itself may not predict success at TJ, but the holistic review of a fairly comprehensive packet certainly did. It's kind of funny that the same people who seem to think that TJ admissions officers can absolutely detect brilliance from the current generic essays seem to have no faith that the same people could detect brilliance through a more comprehensive packet with test scores, teacher recommendations, more elaborate essays, lists of achievements, and so on. Make up your minds on just how psychic or how incompetent these TJ selection panels are. [/quote] I agree with you for the most part. I have been advocating for more comprehensive materials and would like to see something more fleshed out, as long as the admissions committee is specifically looking for different types of exceptional students from different backgrounds. It's really the exam that was the confounding factor, which is why I support the current process, however flawed, moreso than the previous one. But I am adamant in my belief that the eventual process should include more inputs.[/quote] PP. This is where we disagree. I support the previous process, however flawed, moreso than the current one. The previous process absolutely did detect and admit those 200-ish kids who are head and shoulders above the FCPS population, truly gifted, and very much in need of a school like TJ. The current process has no way to identify these kids. I'd prefer to have the kids who need TJ to be admitted, even if the bottom half of the class is filled with privileged, prep kids. You'd rather sacrifice the kids who need TJ so you can round out the bottom half of the class with demographics that you find more palatable, even if those kids would be very well served at their base school. Ultimately, when they revamp the admissions to have a more comprehensive process, we'll end up in the same place. [/quote] Decades of experience at TJ suggests that the real number is more like 75-100 truly exceptional kids at TJ, with a look at the rest of the county suggesting that many were missed each year. We get into trouble when we suggest that the old admissions process was particularly great at finding the exceptional kids - or at least, any moreso than the current process is. I think we would agree that we have a long way to go to get to correct. But we no matter what process we eventually land on, we should all be able to agree - because it's not something that's really up for debate by reasonable individuals - that we have a great chance of success in unearthing those talents from ALL demographics if they feel as though they are welcome at the school. And they weren't previously, and they are now.[/quote] MCPS had even bigger changes to its magnet admissions a few years back a group that makes up about 15% of the county, percentage of seats declined from 70% to 62%R of the program so they brought a lawsuit. The result is they now have a lottery and they number of seats is more like 30%. This is where you are headed.[/quote] That the racists would rather destroy an institution when they are not allowed to practice racism is a problem with the racists, rather than those complaining about racism. The solution here is to get the racists voted out of office. But given that it's Maryland dominated by progressive politics, I'm not keeping my hopes up. [/quote] Agree, the racists want a system they can easily game with prep and hate a level playing field.[/quote] Level playing field is an excuse, if that is the case still the same winners will win[/quote]
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