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Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)
Reply to "Teacher “recommendation”/input necessary for AAP admissions, but not allowed for TJ admissions"
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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]They sort of tossed the baby out with the bath water. This is one piece of the old system I agree needs re-added as they would help ensure the absolute top kids from a given school are the ones selected for that school. [/quote] A test could do that better than recommendations.[/quote] We’ll agree to disagree. I’d agree if so many families in the area weren’t prepping for the test. But since they do, a teacher who has observed the kids day in day out is my preference Vs a test some prep for and some don’t. [/quote] People prep for the SAT and peer reviewed studies show that the SAT score is about the best predictor we have of academic performance at the high end of academic achievement. https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/SAT_ACT_on_Grades.pdf So on the one hand I have peer reviewed research and on the other hand, you've got your gut feelings and preferences (which coincidentally favor white kids).[/quote] The difference being EVERYONE prepares for the SAT. That is the process. It is far from universal for 7th and 8th grade kids to take weekend or evening prep classes to try to get an edge on a magnet entrance test. [b]Nor should it be.[/b][/quote] That is your opinion. I think it is perfectly reasonable for 8th graders to spend extra time, even a LOT of extra time on extracurricular academics. [b]You basically want your values and standards to be everyone's values and standards[/b] and would rather see merit be ignored than measured in a way that rewards behavior that you don't like. You don't want to subject your kid to academic competition at the tender age of 13. You think 8th grade is too early to be studying hard. I think 8th grade is late in the game. They will all be studying for the SAT at 15 or 16. Having the best and brightest students study for the PSAT at 13 is not inhumane.[/quote] :D Pot meet kettle! Yes of course it is my opinion. Where did I say otherwise. In my opinion they should be evaluating how good the kids do in school not how much EC academic prepping their parents are willing to make them do. Other people disagree as you do clearly but it’s just opinion either way. Moreover your approach is the more controlling one - For kids to be able to compete it ends up forcing them into the EC academic rat race. My way just focuses on what they are doing in school (including if they are in higher math classes) and so keeps the door open to more kids. Teach recc’s would still help differentiate the tippy top kids from the others and yes I think teachers can tell. [/quote] No they can't. Study after study tells us about teacher bias in recommendations. Peer reviewed research tells us that standardized test scores are the gold standard in predicting academic performance. I am not opposed to teach recommendations but you simply can't dismiss test scores. So once again I have peer reviewed research and you've got your gut feelings and preferences (which coincidentally favor white kids)[/quote] I’m mot arguing against using tests. They should use tests - grades from class plus SOLs. Account for the math level the kid is taking. I’m just against the outside of school tests being used as it has been clearly documented that some families make their kids take academic ECs to prep for them and in my view that skews results. [/quote] +1 No outside tests. All kids get SOL “prep” already. [/quote]Why spend six, maybe seven figures developing and maintaining a new test? The PSAT already works just fine, and it’s good practice for the SAT. Your local library has everything you need to study for it, and they’ll need those skills eventually regardless of which school they attend. I don’t think that’s too high a bar. People are overrating how much prep you need for the PSAT. If you don’t have the bandwidth to take a few practice tests then maybe TJ isn’t for you.[/quote] No need for a new test at all. Just keep the SOLs. They will add some insight into content mastery. PSAT or other external test adds too much of a hurdle. [/quote] DP. Why do you think PSAT would be too much of a hurdle? It's hardly a hurdle at all since it requires very little prep of any kind. If they universally administered it in 8th grade, they would probably unearth a few gifted kids in lower SES schools who didn't have TJ on their radar at all. Anecdotally, I would have been that kid. My parents and teachers viewed me as a regular above average kid. School even kicked me out of the gifted program in 6th grade because I had a bad day on the ITBS test used. I took the SAT in 8th grade, along with many classmates, and I was the kid who got a 1300+ (before renorming, so this was like 98th percentile of high schoolers) as an 8th grader taking it completely blindly. My DD easily will be a NMSF and put in almost no prep. She just spent a few hours total looking at a cheap book from amazon. Several classmates did extensive prep. Their scores aren't high enough even for commended. PSAT and SAT don't seem like they ought to be a good filter for talent, but somehow they are. [/quote] Point is why would we need the PSAT? They already take the SOL - why not just use that? [/quote] The test prep industry would start prepping for the SOL. We have no evidence that the SOL is resistant to prep. We do know that the PSAT is about as resistant to prep as any test possibly can be, and we know that there are a lot of free prep materials. I'm also not sure that I would want schools to focus even more on focused prep for the SOLs rather than teaching the content. That being said, now that there are 4 years of data with the new admissions process, it should be pretty easy for FCPS to investigate any common threads among the kids who washed out of TJ or are in the bottom 1/4 of the class. If they can find a decent correlation between the 7th and 8th grade SOL scores and tendency to struggle at TJ, then using SOL scores would make sense.[/quote] SOLs are a great place to start if we want to add any metrics. Agree that they should look at SOL scores of kids already there to assess how useful they may be. All kids already take SOLs. All kids already receive many hours of “prep”. SOLs would be the most fair option. [/quote] It seems like a good place to start.[/quote]
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