Reply to TJ admissions decision - repercussions for Class of 2026

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]In addition, 20% of the FCPS teachers must be Asian to properly reflect the student population. 20% of the County employees must be Asians to reflect the demographics of the County. 
20% of the County contracts and grants must go to Asians and Asian groups. It is not equitable that virtually 0% goes to Asians and Asian groups.
[/quote]

Let's not forget all the sport teams need to have 20% asian representation. It doesn't matter if there are better qualified athletes. Asian students deserve 20% of the spots in the name of equity :D [/quote]

Why? The goal of an athletic team is to win games. There is no goal that TJ has that is expressly competitive in nature. The fact that it has been adjudged one of the top high schools in the country doesn't make that its goal.

Its goal is to educate talented students with an eye towards preparing them for a STEM or STEM-adjacent career. I would almost argue that the STEM community writ large would be better served by TJ taking really bright kids who are not sure what they want to do when they grow up and inspiring them to pursue STEM, rather than just taking kids whose parents have already decided that they will be doctors or engineers and giving them cool toys to play with for four years... especially when those kids are probably going to get to play with those cool toys in the form of summer internships anyway.[/quote]

Oh boy, so many assumptions here! First, as a PP mentioned, team sports' main goals is to develop sportsmanship, encourage fitness,... Just as you said that TJ's original goal was not to become a top high school, sport teams were not originally created with the goal of winning games. Also, assuming that asian kids aren't as strong as others in some sports, would it not be good to allow them to participate? This will certainly benefit stronger athletes ie teach them empathy, the benefits of diversity and all that good stuff that many are saying TJ would benefit from if its students were more diverse. Lastly, why would you think that admitting asians in sport teams will cause the teams to become weaker? Maybe it's about time you look into your own prejudice and give some of these asian kids a chance to prove themselves just as you are advocating for the other minority groups to be given a chance to prove themselves academcally.[/quote]

Lots to unpack here. Obviously there are a significant number of goals when it comes to scholastic sports that go above and beyond winning games, but the tryout process is designed to select players that will help the team win games. Asian students have an opportunity in those tryout process to show that they will be contributing members of the teams just like anyone else has, but coaches select players with an eye towards who will help them win games. And that's the key difference that people don't seem to understand. There are intramural opportunities for students to achieve many of the same ancillary goals that were mentioned earlier regarding physical fitness and camaraderie, but when it comes to interscholastic sports, the goal is to compete and win. If there are Asian players who can help teams win, I promise you coaches will select them - and they do in many sports.

That sort of goal does not exist with respect to the TJ admissions process. And that's fundamentally why the analogy doesn't work. You're trying to create equivalence where there is none.[/quote]

If the "coaches select players with an eye towards who will help them win games" then they are not upholding the county mission statement for team sports. Maybe the selection process also needs an intervention from the school board like it did with TJ. I know Asian kids are more than welcome to try out, just like URM are welcome to apply for admission to TJ, but if one believes in diversity, then they can't pick and choose which departments benefit from diversity and which ones can do away with it. Why aren't you willing to lower the quality of a sport team but willing the lower the quality of a high school? (just for the sake of arguments, I am assuming like many PPs above that lowering admission standards will lower a sport team's strength as well as a high school academic strength). [/quote]

Say what you want about upholding the mission statement, but a good way for a coach to get fired is to lose too many games.

But again - you're trying to create an equivalence between sports and academics, and there simply isn't one.

There is no end of peer-reviewed research that confirms that legitimate experiential diversity in the academic environment benefits students across a wide range of metrics. That is a generally accepted truth in academia - so much so that citation in this case would be akin to proving that 2+2=4. There is no such research that legitimate experiential diversity improves sports performance metrics. And besides, the best way to create more diversity in scholastic athletic teams is to have a more diverse student body to choose from anyways. TJ's athletic teams are a heck of a lot more Asian than they were 15 years ago, that's for sure.[/quote]

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