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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It's amazing that people bought into the idea that a question and answer test for kids was uncrackable.

Ultimately the majority of the changes made to the admission process don't reflect a reaction to test prep for the QQ (1 of 3 tests in a multi-round process). This is just a distraction based on a handful of Facebook posts.[/quote]

But, why crack the test? Is it to give an unfair advantage to kids whose parents can pay these businesses?
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There is a market, and there will be solutions.  Capitalism.  Same way why people smuggle drugs or sell socks.

Some say Capitalism is immoral, that sounds like they are against capitalism.  Instead, we should say Capitalism is devoid of morality.  Supply and demand, like a machine. [/quote]

So obtaining information by unethical means and selling it to families that can afford it so that their children will have an unfairly obtained advantage over other children from less well off and/or well educated families is okay because… capitalism.

All righty then. We now know what we need to know about the situation here. 
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it's unethical only because an ill-worded NDA that students have no choice but to sign.  It's unethical because the company boasted the exam is un-preppable.  HOLD MY BEER. 
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No, they didn’t “boast” that it was unpreppable. They produced an exam that was meant to be secure and took actions to make and keep it secure. It was an exam that gave the admissions office more information about the students because it showed how the students handled types of questions that they were unlikely to have seen before.

Apparently there are people in this world with no integrity who can’t stand the idea of their kids having to take a test on an even playing field with other kids so they figured out a way to “crack” the test so kids from well off families wouldn’t have to worry about competing with less well off kids who may be more intelligent than they are.

Adults should stay out of this process and let the school do its job. [/quote]

This is exactly correct except for one thing - "let the school do its job". TJ doesn't have any say in either the development or the execution of the admissions process. FCPS does. And I'll repeat what I said earlier - the Quant-Q did its job for one year and we saw a significant increase in the number of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students in the first year of its implementation.

Its entire purpose what exactly what PP said - to evaluate how students would approach problems that they were unlikely to have seen before. I have seen several versions of the exam, and I can tell you that it is wonderful for achieving this purpose - but also that it would be a staggeringly easy exam for students who [b]had been shown how to do the problems beforehand[/b].

Most exams evaluate how well you can apply a method for solving a problem and the idea behind the QQ was to evaluate your ability to [b]generate[/b] a method to solving a problem - that's the reason why it was intended to be secured. And Curie (and the books that are available on Amazon, and probably some other prep companies) destroyed what should have been an ideal exam for sussing out which students actually belong at TJ. I wish there were a way to go back to it - I was that impressed by it.

But we can't, because the golden goose has been slaughtered.

[b]A bit of advice for TJ-aspirant families:[/b] the harder you work to crack the process for your kid, the more you incentivize FCPS to increase the apparent randomness and opacity of the process.[/quote]

Yes, you are right- I was writing quickly and should have said, “Outside adults should stay out of the process and let the admissions office do their job.”

You make excellent points about the use of the test to get a better idea of which kids really would benefit the most from TJ. It’s too bad that people who are only out for themselves and apparently have little in the way of integrity interfere in the process in a negative way. 
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