Reply to Coalition4TJ’s request to block TJ admissions process DENIED 6-3 by Supreme Court

Forum Index » Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)

Reply to "Coalition4TJ’s request to block TJ admissions process DENIED 6-3 by Supreme Court"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]TJ will be dumbed down gradually and it may not become obvious until 4-5 years. It will not be hyper competitive anymore and will consist of much broader range of skill levels instead of extreme academic focus. This is because the new selection process, irrespective of diversity changes, made it much more difficult to identify the STEM talent pool. The TJ cohort will not be much different from any other Honors or AP class at base school and not like what it is now which is probably several steps above.

For example, unweighted GPA that actually make it a disadvantage to take tougher courses (all together only 25% weight), science essay that tests writing skills more than STEM (25% weight) and portrait sheet that only tests writing kills (25% weight) with NO teacher input nor any other items that can put spot light on the student will make it difficult to differentiate students especially from Level IV feeder schools who mostly have similar GPA, but vastly different writing abilities. So, the process may essentially boil down to lottery. Also, since majority of the highly competitive kids especially from feeder schools will completely lose out the other 25% weightage, very few of them will make the final cut.

On the whole, I think the new selection process is likely better for mental health of students and feel the need to sacrifice a lot of personal enjoyments to stay competitive at TJ. However, ranking and overall quality could suffer, which may be ok in the long run. Also, getting selected into TJ will no longer a be a big deal as we will continue see quite a few very smart kids not get in. I am telling my kid the same i.e., except for few electives/labs, he will not really miss out much by going to base HS as he is anyway planning to take mostly honors classes.

[/quote]

TJ is not about being "smart" it's about STEM. [/quote]

If you say so - then why not just stop all the BS process that claims merit bases selection and just opt for lottery based selection among those who meet the minimum criteria. Then I agree that TJ is all about the interest in STEM and not about being smart. Honestly, I will be fine with it, no question of discrimination and it will be fair for everybody. What do you say???? 
[/quote]

TJ admissions should be done by lottery.  Many other cities/states do it this way.  For example, Houston Magnet schools, Debakey and Carnegie Vanguard, are ranked 29th and 44th in the nation. and are done by lottery.  The old system relied too much on kids being trained for the tests to get into TJ.  If it really was a fair system, you would have seen more of an even distribution across the region as opposed to middle schools in McLean, Oakton, and Chantilly being the main feeder schools.

In addition for the students who do not get into TJ, [b]a catalog of online advanced classes should be provided for students who would like to take some more of the advanced classes TJ teaches[/b].   [/quote]

If the TJ courses are available to all the kids, then TJ doesn't really matter anymore. If so, base HS could actually be beneficial to kids in both ways as they to get all the courses with out having to take a hit while applying for colleges[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics