Reply to Cheating Scandal Triggering TJ Change

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Reply to "Cheating Scandal Triggering TJ Change"

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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][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/906227.page

Guys, this is as close to the "scandal" as I can find.  One prep center was doing too good. I can see they prepped similar tests and the students, in their excitement and remember they are 14, boasted that they got the "exact" prep question.

Harvesting past test question isn't cheating.  Guys. [/quote]

DP.  Agree.

Plus:  THIS THREAD WAS STARTED FOUR (4) YEARS AGO !!  But someone bumped it:  WHY??

Seems clear that someone out there has a major grudge against TJ, the Curie test prep center, or both.

To that person:  please who you are and what your motive is here? [/quote]

I've been as big a contributor to this discussion as anyone. My intent in initially bringing the matter to light was to highlight the fact that there had been students getting into TJ for years on largely false pretenses.

What happened at Curie (and folks, please stop arguing that it didn't happen - you're living in an alternate reality) was designed to create imbalances in the TJ Admissions process, and did so successfully.

Worse yet, the flagship course that created these imbalances and provided undeserved advantages:
- were available for the low, low price of $5,000;
- committed students to 16 months of targeted study specifically to crack the TJ exam, which was supposed to be secured;
- appeared based on their published list to be only available to students of South Asian descent.

Did Curie do anything wrong? The answer is probably no. But did they expose a massive flaw in the TJ Admissions process that needed to be rectified, creating conditions that led to the adoption of the new admissions process so reviled by the community that they aim to exclusively serve? Yes, yes they did.

As I've said many times before, I bear no specific ill will towards Curie, except inasmuch as they are part of the very problematic industry that seeks to create imbalances in elite school admissions processes that favor families with resources. All I ever wanted was for FCPS to adjust the TJ Admissions process so that families would not be directly and obviously rewarded for participating in that industry.

[b]And again, I and my people won. Convincingly, resoundingly, and with yet another 12-0 School Board and with the Supreme Court declining to take the case, seemingly permanently.[/b][/quote]

Again, saying you "won" is meaningless.

Your barometer is in part a 12-0 vote from a school board to support a resolution it created itself - with well-known dubious motives - after its members paid a PR firm to tell themselves what a good idea it was.  The school board is a political body, and anyone knows that policies that look like they support equity receive overwhelming popular support, independent of their merit.  Nobody's surprised by a unanimous vote from this echo chamber.

As to the Suproeme Court, realize that we live in America, where stupid, self-defeating ideas are legal, and hypocrisy isn't illegal up to a point.  A failure of the Supreme Court to hear the case should not be interpreted as a success.

What you've accomplished is to push forward an unsatisfactory policy in wait of a better one to replace it.  Yet you're harming the ability to do so by throwing around silly phrases like "we won".[/quote][/quote]

The failure of the supreme court to hear this case highlights the fact that facially neutral laws are not violations of the 14th amendment merely because they were born of racist motives.
It took the voting rights act explicitly outlawing literacy tests and poll taxes, they didn't get outlawed by the civil rights act or the 14th amendment.
It's why racially motivated voter ID laws are perfectly legal, because they are in fact facially neutral.
This new admissions process is basically a modified lottery and is non-discriminatory, almost by definition (it also doesn't filter for merit).

We probably can't win this one in the courts.
We will have to win at the ballot box.[/quote]

It does filter for “merit”.  :roll: [/quote]

30% of the students in FCPS are qualified to apply.  After that it's so subjective that it's basically random.[/quote]

So a lottery for merit students. Sounds good to me. [/quote]

Only 20% of students get into AAP.

Picking TJ admits from a pool of 30% of 8th graders is merit in a very mediocre world.  
So it is a lottery with a very low hurdle for merit.  
We are not anywhere close to picking the best students.[/quote]

Depends on how you define “best”.  [/quote]

No, it doesn't.  Picking randomly from the top 30% of students is not "best" under any reasonable definition.[/quote]

It could be the best allocation of seats for interested kids across the county. [/quote]

It's the best method of increasing urm without express racial discrimination.

If merit has any value at all then you could have this exact same process plus a test so that you at least get the most capable kids from each of the schools.[/quote]

There is certainly room for improvement in the current process, but it’s much better than the last one. [/quote]

Yes, of your primary concern is racial balancing[/quote]

That's illegal in the US. If you can show that's going on you can win a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Good luck![/quote]

Wanting racial balance is not illegal.  Changing a merit based process to a race neutral process that de-emphasizes merit in order to achieve more racial balancing is not illegal.  That's not affirmative action.  No race is getting a preference in the process.  The intent behind the change was race driven but the process itself is not racially discriminatory.[/quote]

Yes, but it is illegal to consider race for selection to these programs in the US. That is why [b]the process is RACE BLIND[/b]. [/quote]

How is it race blind when 80% of the kids still continue to be from just 2 races, batch after batch. And most of the kids in TJ have had elder siblings in TJ. How do so many families have both kids in TJ - what are the chances?Find it hard to believe, but almost all kids in DDs batch seem to have had their elder siblings pass out from TJ. How is that even possible if the admission process was neutral and unbiased ![/quote]

The admissions closely mirrors the applicant pool.  It is so close that it borders on random.
Most of the kids in TJ do not have had elder siblings at TJ, what a silly comment.
However, there is a genetic component to IQ and the part that isn't genetic is largely environmental, so if you have 2 kids with similar genes and similar home environment, why is this result a surprise to anyone?[/quote]

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