Reply to New TJ Lawsuit Filed 3/10/21 by Pacific Legal Foundation

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sure, if you say so.

I hope you will read the news involving hate and harassment if Asian Americans and try a bit harder to watch your language.  Pro tip— if you call a space with lots of Asian Americans toxic, you’re on the wrong path.[/quote]

What happened in Atlanta is disgusting and unconscionable. Trying to use those horrific hate-filled murders to justify shutting down a conversation about how harmful TJ’s culture of hyper competition can be to its students simply because it happens to have a high concentration of Asian-Americans is grossly tone-deaf.

It’s important to note here that we will have accomplished absolutely nothing if the racial composition of the school changes but the culture of comparison doesn’t.[/quote]
Do you have firsthand experience with TJ’s “culture”?  I do and disagree with your depiction.  I also find you deeply in denial of your racism.[/quote]

I've had enough people on these boards show appreciation for my experience with TJ to speak for itself.

I know enough about TJ to know that when our students were first surveyed as part of the Challenge Success initiative back in 2018, the two top words they used to describe it were "toxic" and "competitive". Now, the fifth one was "fun", so that's pretty cool, but it's not like I'm inventing those words out of thin air.

I know enough about TJ to know that the former principal, Dr. Evan Glazer, used to tell 8th graders coming in for Freshmen Preview Night that they'd better make 100% sure that they were in love with STEM as 13 and 14 year olds or else "this might not be the place for you".

I could go on and on, but that's besides the point.

My depiction is, like it or not, spot-on and informed by literally decades of experience. The "TJ parents" on here may have something of a snapshot of what the school looks like now from their conversations with their kids, or perhaps even from volunteering from time to time, but that's nothing compared to being on the ground every day and getting to know dozens of kids in each class. And those parents have no context of the history of the school and what it was like 10, 15, 20 years ago. [i]And that's fine, but you haven't put the time in and you just don't know.[/i]

The problems with TJ in its current state have less to do with its racial composition and more to do with [i]what the old admissions process selected for[/i]. By placing a hard and relatively arbitrary cut-off on exam percentiles - remember, 99th Math, 99th science, and 74th English means you're out of luck - TJ Admissions deeply incentivized families to invest tons of time, money, and effort into beating the exam. And because those exams were graded by percentile score, it's not like you could simply make the grade and be qualified - [i]you had to compete with all of the other students taking those exams to qualify[/i].

The Admissions Office also made it abundantly clear that you had to prove your passion for STEM - which incentivized students and families to drop or put on the back burner any passions they had that were outside of STEM in pursuit of MathCounts, Science Olympiad, Odyssey of the Mind, VEX Robotics, and whatever else filled that bucket. Parents at several schools who had the [b]time and resources[/b] to do so would volunteer to "coach" these teams - and in many cases would select their own kids and the kids in their communities to do it and box out others.

All of this is to say that the core problem is that the Admissions Office provided families with a fairly explicit pathway to TJ that - probably unintentionally - incentivized families to sell out to the admissions process and make every single decision based on "how will this help my TJ application". [b]Selecting for kids and families with that attitude leads to having kids in the school who make every decision based on "how will this help my college application"[/b]. By the way - I know enough about TJ to remember how 8th period transitioned from a chance to relax, hang out with friends, engage in fun activities, and do some healthy volunteerism to what it is now, which is basically an opportunity to enhance a student's LinkedIn profile. Seriously, go take a look at the lists of available activities down through the years and see how it's turned from a needed break in the day to another source of stress and competition for these kids.

These are problems with TJ, not with Asian-Americans. The new process needs to select for exceptional students who want to have a great high school experience and take advantage of all that TJ has to offer, both in STEM and otherwise. It needs to be attractive to those types of students. But when I highlight those problems, because TJ is 70% Asian-American, folks come at me like I'm saying that "Asian-Americans are toxic". That's not what's happening. [b]You don't own TJ enough to claim that a harsh evaluation of TJ is equivalent to a harsh evaluation of Asian-Americans - there are other kids there too who contribute to these issues.[/b]

The atmosphere there is toxic and it pervades everything that goes on there. And some students - bless them - dodge it successfully and have a great experience! But hop on over to tjvents on Facebook and tell me that that's a healthy environment.

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