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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]All this identity politics just dilutes achievement. 
 Look at Ariana DeBose who won the Oscar yesterday.  She was perfectly deserving as an outstanding actor.  Yes, she is a person of color and that is a point of note.  But going crazy for the first Latina Black openly queer Oscar winner is just seeking an Identity when none is needed.

That is the world we live in.  Either a have or have not in terms of identity.  If you are a “have” you have to constantly apologize for your privilege. If you are a “have-not”, you have to sort of agree that your achievements come with the affirmative action asterisk - like someone stepped out of your way to let you make it.  What BS
[/quote]

Neither of those things are true. We celebrate when barriers are broken because it is a positive for society when those barriers are broken.

People with privilege don't have to apologize for their privilege. They simply are asked to acknowledge it - more often than not it isn't the existence of a positive but rather the absence of a negative.

It's a privilege for the overwhelming majority of students historically at TJ to have parents who prioritized TJ as early as they did. The student did nothing to earn that privilege in most cases. That's a privilege that I had that I acknowledge. I don't apologize for it, but I do realize that there's a decent possibility that I got in over someone more deserving because of it - and that's more of an asterisk to me than anything happening because of a lowering of barriers.

And "have-nots" don't have to tacitly agree that they are the beneficiaries of affirmative action. If it's done properly, there is no way to know whether or not affirmative action is or is not at play in any given situation.

And in the case of TJ, the intent is not to lower any standards, but to remove standards (exams and teacher recommendations) that no longer did the job they were intended to do. I do think they went too far - removing the exam was appropriate, but the right thing to do would have been to reimagine rather than remove the teacher recommendations. There was also no need for the "underrepresented schools" experience factor - simply having the 1.5% allocated seats should have been adequate along with the other EFs.[/quote]

Of course we need to celebrate when barriers are broken. The first black President.  The first Latina justice.  But when you only define the world in terms of identities, you will soon be celebrating the first Black Latina Queer who grew up in a one-person household.  Then you will parse it further.   Because you cannot see beyond identity.  You will champion Will Smith's son over a white Appalachian miner's son because you internal calibration tells scores black over white no matter what.

And that is the problem here.  In your thinking, all Asians prep.  And there fore you will penalize all Asians.  So you come up with a system that prioritizes a kid who preps but lives in South County over a kid in McLean who has never prepped.  And you will defend your system as "progress"

That inequity is lost on you equity warriors.  You can justify the McLean kid as collateral damage in your war for social justice (like the kids our drones mistakenly bombed and killed in our noble "war on terror").  In your calculus equity is only about racial identity.  Shame on you and your ilk.  [/quote]

Literally nothing that you said is true after the first three sentences.[/quote]

It's true they feel grievance and this drives their strange worldview.[/quote]

what is gospel to one is strange to the other.  Learn to appreciate others' perspective instead of calling it strange.  That is the issue with the Equity warriors.  Their god is holier than everyone else's.  For them everyone else is just "strange"[/quote]

The difference is that those of us who believe in admissions reform understand and appreciate your perspective. We simply disagree about what's best for the academic community in question, and our viewpoint is informed by experience.[/quote]

That is the manifesto of a "benevolent" dictatorship.  Folks who ripped kids from indigenous families and placed them with white families did it out of good intent - "their viewpoint was informed by their experience"

Calling others weird because they think differently from you is bigotry.  Justifying it on the basis of alleged "experience" is conceited bigotry.  If you cannot be empathetic to those that bear the impact of your "change" then you are driving no transformation.  You are a partisan hack disguised as a reformer.  Get off your pedestal of omniscience and listen to those that are impacted.  Or just face consequences when votes are counted.[/quote]

Your thesaurus is impressive, but your logic is not.

We ARE empathetic to those wo bear the impact. We are hoping that these changes will significantly improve the lives of countless 10-13 year olds in Northern Virginia by keeping thousands of dollars in their parents' pockets and hundreds of hours of time back into their lives to be healthy and well-rounded kids before they go on to change the STEM world. It's a relatively small number of them who will be impacted by not attending TJ (probably less than 100 per year), and in most cases they will still have outstanding options to get a phenomenal high school education and will probably improve their college prospects in the process.

We know this because we've seen it happen for dozens of years. No one would reasonably expect you to understand the reality of this situation because you probably haven't been through it. But that's OKAY. [/quote]

Logic fails in the face political hyperbole.  When you are helping "countless 10-13 year olds"; keeping "thousands of dollars in parents' pockets"; giving "hundreds of hours back"; impacted kids will have "outstanding options" for a "phenomenal" high school education - you and I are on very different pages.  You have seen this movie over "dozens of years" and therefore you know more than me - an impacted parent.  The failed McAuliffe ruse about parents not knowing what is right for their kids. Look where that took him.

You are a politician that will not veer off your script.  I will give you that.  I did not care for Bush 43's policies but I admired him for his steadfastness and intransigence in the face of evidence on Iraq.  I place you in the same category.  Kudos.  Dont worry about understanding my logic - you are far too intoxicated with your ideology to grasp it.   [/quote]

What McAuliffe said - stupidly but correctly - is that "parents shouldn't be telling schools what to teach their kids". And by any reasonable interpretation, that is objectively a correct statement. While I understand the desire for each individual parent to have influence on what their student is taught, those same parents in most cases wouldn't welcome a parent that they disagreed with also having that same influence. The way we decide these things is at the ballot box when you vote for the School Board and they run on their respective priorities. You and I are likely in agreement that many members of the present School Board need to go, if for no other reason than the sloppiness of their work.

I'm no politician, but what I am is a person who knows that they're talking about with respect to TJ. I've seen the damage that has been done to students countless times, in ways that would be inappropriate to bring up in a context like this one but that - trust me - you would never want to see for your own children. And I've also seen the brilliance of what the environment can provide when students and parents approach it with the right mindset. And yes, when you've seen it as long as I have, you learn that there is a "right" and a "wrong" way to approach TJ because the results are too consistent.[/quote]

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