Reply to Northam’s “Anti-Asian, Anti-Immigrant” School Initiative

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Getting rid of TJHSST is the right thing to do.  TJ attracts a really elitist, gross set of parents and we'd be better without their kids, who can't help but parrot their parents' attitudes, polluting the educational atmosphere. [/quote]

I certainly understand this perspective but still believe that it's possible to boldly improve the admissions process to improve the caliber of kids and families that arrive.

If the School Board won't take these steps, though, then yes, burn it all down as it does more harm than good in its current form.[/quote] My child is a junior at TJ, takes 4 post-AP classes this year and so much enjoys studying. So much looked forward to these challenging classes that aren’t offered at any other local high school. What harm does this do to you?[/quote]

First of all, it doesn't matter what harm it does to ME, it matters what harm it does to the community. That's called giving a sh!t about other people.

The harm it does to the community is deep and destructive. You have literally thousands of families that are spending thousands of dollars every year on prep courses, placing an incredible amount of pressure on students to be able to get into a school that has extremely limited seating for the amount of interest in it.

Students feel the need to give up on their legitimate passions so that they can maximize their STEM profile, and end up less happy as a result - and many of those students don't even get into TJ after doing all of that. Kids should be able to engage in whatever productive and enjoyable activities they want when they're 10, 11, 12 years old, but right now there are only a few of them that seem to grant access to TJ.

Never mind the issues of access for underrepresented groups - the way the admissions process is currently constructed incentivizes destructive parenting behavior. Parents will always engage in destructive behavior that leads to kids hating their life and resenting their parents' choices, even to the point of suicide - but if the TJ admissions process didn't reward this type of behavior, you'd see far less of it than you do right now.

[/quote] Well, how is this different from the top colleges whose admission rate is even lower than TJ’s? Families also hire expensive counselors and build a specific profile: kids volunteer, start nonprofits, participate in other activities they don’t care about, take SAT prep classes - only to make a presentable college application. Furthermore, most of the top colleges value legacy - at least TJ doesn’t admit kids only because their parents attended TJ. Does it mean that the top colleges also do more harm than good and should be eliminated?[/quote]

There are multiple different avenues into all of the top colleges. Many families in this area - including a lot of those that go to TJ - do not understand this, and that's a big part of why their kids fail to get in at the rate that they probably should. But top colleges take kids with tons of different profiles with tons of different interests, and as such they don't directly incentivize destructive parenting. It helps that kids who are able to legitimately speak passionately about what they do tend to do much better going for elite schools.

Furthermore, the time period that they're evaluating is the student's high school career - where it makes much more sense for students to start streamlining their interests than when they're TEN YEARS OLD.

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