Reply to student admissions and TJ lawsuit

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
 Short of returning to the old system that is systemically unfair to kids who do not have the money or knowledge or ability (having to care for siblings/work/do something for the family) to attend STEM extras or take extra math or take Prep classes, nothing will make that particular crowd happy.

Any person or any race can take honors classes and Algebra and maintain a specific GPA.  You can argue that it is not rigorous enough to attend TJ and we can disagree on that but it is a baseline criteria that everyone has an opportunity to achieve, regardless of race, ethnicity, or economic status.

People who are so interested in TJ can choose to send their kids to their base MS and not the Center. That doesn't guarantee anything because we are discussing 7-12 seats per year and the extra qualifiers probably come into play when there are multiple people who fall into that top 1.5% and that will decrease the chance of an Asian or White candidate at those schools.

[/quote]
Just wanted to address a few points: 
If kids are too busy caring for siblings/work/whatever to be able to do any STEM extracurriculars, then how are they possibly going to handle the rigorous load at TJ?  These kids are being set up to fail at TJ, unless TJ waters down its requirements.

A 3.5 GPA, 3 honors classes, and Algebra in 8th is a very low bar.  About half of the FCPS population would be considered TJ eligible.  The bar should be significantly higher for admission into an elite high school that is intended to serve kids who can't have their needs met at their base school.  If a kid can't maintain at least a 3.8 GPA in the super watered down FCPS classes, they will get destroyed at TJ.  Every single FCPS kid has the opportunity to take Algebra in 7th.  Those who don't either lack the aptitude or lack the motivation to make it happen.  Every single FCPS middle school has some STEM extracurriculars.  If a kid is too burdened to show any interest in STEM by participating in any of those, then they're either not particularly interested in STEM, not particularly motivated, or too overburdened to possibly be successful at TJ.

It's absurd to penalize people for sending their kids to the AAP center.  Seeking out the most rigorous course load should be an asset and not a hindrance for TJ admissions.  FCPS should have used zoned middle school and not attending middle school for the top 1.5%.  They would still achieve geographic diversity without penalizing kids for taking more rigorous classes.  The fact that FCPS failed to allocate the seats this way means that either the entire process was rushed and poorly conceived, or they deliberately were seeking objectively less qualified kids to meet their diversity goals.

Really, though, having a merit based process that results in fewer Asians is fine.  The 1.5% seat allocation would have been reasonable if done by zoned school, even if it resulted in fewer Asians.  Adjusting the seats specifically to meet demographic targets is racist.  Likewise, having SB members make racist statements against Asians while doing this adjustment is quite racist.  [/quote]

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