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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]

Do *you* think the demographics at TJ were an issue before? 
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Still waiting to hear from PP... 
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PP here.  I think it's complicated.  Demographics in and of themselves shouldn't be an issue that needs to be solved by artificially changing admissions standards.  These demographics pretty strongly reveal that the academic pipeline for URM and lower income students needs to be fixed.  I hope FCPS does something to  improve the lower performing ES and MS schools and provide more enrichment and mentorship to these students, so they could get admitted on their own merit and not from "experience factors" or a very pared down application.  [/quote]

Frequently these two solutions:

1) improving admissions standards to account for imbalances in opportunities and resources
2) "fixing the pipeline" by providing additional resources and attention to areas of need prior to the admissions process

... are posed as a binary choice - we should do one or the other. Worse yet, frequently advocates of focusing all of our attention on choice #2 don't actually do anything or advocate for any actual attention to be paid to those areas - and indeed sometimes go on to advocate AGAINST those resources being diverted once they realize that they're being diverted from areas of privilege.

It's not a binary choice. We should do both things, recognizing - as other elite institutions have - that standardized testing is an extremely flawed metric with which to select an incoming class and that legitimate diversity is a worthwhile aim that significantly improves the academic environment....

... while [b]simultaneously[/b] recognizing that investments need to be made to ensure that all groups have access, if they so desire, to genuinely enriching educational opportunities to further access to desired outcomes.

The zero-sum attitude that many folks have with respect to opportunities like TJ makes comprehending this idea impossible - which is how you get a lot of the nonsense that you see on this forum [i]pretending[/i] to advocate for equity but [i]actually[/i] kicking the can as far down the road as possible so that their own children and their opportunities are unaffected. Understandable, but still disgusting and disingenuous.[/quote]

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