Reply to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday called for a response from a Virginia school

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"the seats allocated to each middle school are extremely limited (no FCPS middle school has more than a dozen guaranteed seats, see App. at 240a), there are few unallocated seats, and Asian- American applicants from feeder schools are at a marked disadvantage for the limited number of unallocated seats."

so the coalition's logic is both that few seats are allocated and that few seats are unallocated? [/quote]

They are describing the mechanism designed by the board whereby Asian students who were previously eligible to apply, are now unable to apply for a majority of the seat positions. [/quote]

But this is true of every student in the County. That's why this is a specious argument. The students who are at Poe also have a limited number of seats that they can apply to. Same with Hughes, same with Rocky Run, same with Luther Jackson.

This might be the single worst argument that one could make.[/quote]

+1000. The Coalition doesn't have a single argument that doesn't rely on a comparison between the old admissions process and the new one - and the reason is because they know that if the new admissions process is evaluated on its own merits, it holds up.[/quote]

Two reactions:

First, you're reading quite a bit out of the law addressing discrimination for purposes of the equal protection clause if you set aside discriminatory intent.

Second, it's quite odd that the county encouraged AAP students to attend AAP centers, saw that so many Asian kids attend the AAP centers, and then allocated seats to a Governor's school for gifted students by middle school without regard to the base schools to which those students were assigned.  [/quote]

Exactly.  Asians (which is composed of a plethora of many different races by the way) were screwed by the more essay-heavy criteria and eliminating the math test (Asians' strong suit is in maths), allocation of seats by attending school (not base school, so students in AAP which are heavily Asian is also at a disadvantage), and basing grades off of any core courses instead of giving any more weight to more difficult courses (like Algebra II).  I mean could they have tried any harder to put the Asians down?

Just go to the chat rooms and instagram message groups in AAP middle schools.  The Asian students are pissed.  There is genuine resentment fermenting, even for those who are not considering TJ.  You can argue until the sun sets, but it doesn't change the fact that the students feel discriminated against and the adults are stoking hatred by this new process.  These kids will grow up to be your doctors, scientists, and engineers.

It would be another matter to find an intelligent system to nurture and discover/identify talent in other ethnic groups in FCPS.  To the current flock of Asian students, you have simply changed the rules of the game so that they are disadvantaged at every turn.

[/quote]

This is not about screwing 'all' asians, the changes are about screwing 'specific' kids from 'specific' feeder schools with tailor made criteria or point system. The issue gets diluted when you apply this to all asians, which is a pretty broad term. How is fair to give equal weightage these three categories i.e, a single essay (30min), portrait sheet (30min) and the GPA spanning 9 courses and 1.25 years worth of study - first two items is just writing skills more than STEM. GPA is unweighted, so it is actually beneficial to take bare minimum course work than harder courses. There is no teacher input that can identify the talent or kids who clearly stand out from others. This gets even worse for these kids when you consider that they max out at 75% in the point system i.e, max they can score is 900 out of 1200 as 25% or 300 points are allocated to other experience factors. Imagine telling your kid even before the test, "[b]no matter how hard your work, the max you can sore is 75% and pray the god that others won't score more than that![/b]".

The new selection criteria has essentially turned into a [b]lottery[/b] for these feeder schools where 200+ kids with similar looking GPA apply and only a random 20-40 kids get in and we have no clear way of knowing these are 20 smartest kids out 200+ who apply. The only thing that really differentiates them is writing skills, which is hardly STEM and accounts for 2/3 of what then can score. In any case, we may not see it right now, but in 2-3 years, TJ will be watered down and may just look like a Honors/AP class at any base high school.

To be honest, I had to tell the above to my kid who has high hopes for TJ. Things he absolutely loves and can potentially stand out such as math, engineering/design, programming, competitions, being known to teachers etc are NOT really visible to TJ and all his friends (and/or kids he know) at his feeder school have very similar GPA. He is not particularly good at expressing himself in writing which accounts for 600 out of 900 points that are 'available' to him. He doesn't qualify for 'other' 300 so max he can score is 900/1200. So yeah, its unfortunate, but I had to tell him to keep his expectations very low so he won't be disappointed later.

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