Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 12:25     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Anonymous wrote:Highly gifted Black, Latinx, and low income students haven’t had a TJ education either, and as the previous poster mentioned, TJ is not the end all be all.


The elephant in the room is, it's because they don't want a TJ education.
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 12:22     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Did the townhall yesterday explain what is "holistic review" to determine who can get into the lottery pool?
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 12:16     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Highly gifted Black, Latinx, and low income students haven’t had a TJ education either, and as the previous poster mentioned, TJ is not the end all be all.
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 12:16     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There is no doubt TJ Admissions need to be reset and diversity issues addressed ASAP. But what was disappointing was the callous response from Dr Braband to the question of the lottery potentially excluding truly deserving students. His response was essentially that everyone thinks their own kid is truly gifted and deserving of admission. And not getting into TJ is “not the end of the world”. Well if that is the case then what is the brouhaha all about? And there are truly gifted kids (not necessarily mine) that will be left out. It was sad to see an educator endorsing collateral damage. The end should never justify the means especially when the platform is one of fairness and equity. I was hoping they would consider some avenues for the truly gifted but the insouciance of the Superintendent on the issue was telling

I don't see anything wrong with what he said. Way too many think their kids are gifted... and there are gifted kids all over FCPS who made it without going to TJ


AAP is different from TJ

AAP is oversaturated. That needs to go back to the actual top 1-2% and then TJ pulls directly from that

Agree it's about being white. Who benefits from lower AAP standards whites, top 20% vs top 1-2%

Who benefits from TJ lottery process whites. Whites are making the cutoff but being outranked by asians. There are very few black and hispanic folks making the testing cutoff and therefore there will still be very few making it into the lottery pool
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 12:14     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There is no doubt TJ Admissions need to be reset and diversity issues addressed ASAP. But what was disappointing was the callous response from Dr Braband to the question of the lottery potentially excluding truly deserving students. His response was essentially that everyone thinks their own kid is truly gifted and deserving of admission. And not getting into TJ is “not the end of the world”. Well if that is the case then what is the brouhaha all about? And there are truly gifted kids (not necessarily mine) that will be left out. It was sad to see an educator endorsing collateral damage. The end should never justify the means especially when the platform is one of fairness and equity. I was hoping they would consider some avenues for the truly gifted but the insouciance of the Superintendent on the issue was telling


They just want to pander to blacks and screw over Asians.


No, pander to whites through the guise of pandering to blacks, with the purpose of screwing over Asians.


I’m white but this is like, very obviously what’s afoot. How do people not get it?


Maybe because the main proponents of reform to TJ admissions on the School Board are Ricardy Anderson and Karen Keys Gamarra, who are both Black.

And it's part of the 2020 education agenda of the Fairfax NAACP that's advanced by Sean Perryman, who is Black, and Sujatha Hampton, whose children are Black.

So maybe your post is more like pander to Asians through the guise of pretending that only whites want to change TJ admissions, with the purpose of screwing over URMs and low-income kids.


I agree this has excellent optics. There will be more black and hispanic students, but it will also mean way fewer asian students and way more white students. Win-win situation, except for asians who don't win. Somebody's gotta hold the bag.
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 12:11     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Anonymous wrote:There is no doubt TJ Admissions need to be reset and diversity issues addressed ASAP. But what was disappointing was the callous response from Dr Braband to the question of the lottery potentially excluding truly deserving students. His response was essentially that everyone thinks their own kid is truly gifted and deserving of admission. And not getting into TJ is “not the end of the world”. Well if that is the case then what is the brouhaha all about? And there are truly gifted kids (not necessarily mine) that will be left out. It was sad to see an educator endorsing collateral damage. The end should never justify the means especially when the platform is one of fairness and equity. I was hoping they would consider some avenues for the truly gifted but the insouciance of the Superintendent on the issue was telling

I don't see anything wrong with what he said. Way too many think their kids are gifted... and there are gifted kids all over FCPS who made it without going to TJ
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 12:08     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There is no doubt TJ Admissions need to be reset and diversity issues addressed ASAP. But what was disappointing was the callous response from Dr Braband to the question of the lottery potentially excluding truly deserving students. His response was essentially that everyone thinks their own kid is truly gifted and deserving of admission. And not getting into TJ is “not the end of the world”. Well if that is the case then what is the brouhaha all about? And there are truly gifted kids (not necessarily mine) that will be left out. It was sad to see an educator endorsing collateral damage. The end should never justify the means especially when the platform is one of fairness and equity. I was hoping they would consider some avenues for the truly gifted but the insouciance of the Superintendent on the issue was telling


They just want to pander to blacks and screw over Asians.


No, pander to whites through the guise of pandering to blacks, with the purpose of screwing over Asians.


I’m white but this is like, very obviously what’s afoot. How do people not get it?


+1. As an alumna from the early 00s, I find it weird that all the documents only talk about the diversity problem going back a decade. People have been griping about diversity at TJ for at least 20 years. What happened in the twenty-teens? Oh right, the white admissions tanked.

I really don't care all that much about how the admissions process works, honestly. But I do think it's absurd that the truly gifted might be denied a chance to go.


I find it absurd that the defense of the status quo at TJ is largely to acknowledge that only a small subset of the students there truly need an alternative to their assigned high school.

For this we have so much drama, year after year? When other schools are overcrowded?

Turn TJ back into a neighborhood school and let this very small cohort that supposedly really needs something more do dual enrollment at George Mason.
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 12:02     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There is no doubt TJ Admissions need to be reset and diversity issues addressed ASAP. But what was disappointing was the callous response from Dr Braband to the question of the lottery potentially excluding truly deserving students. His response was essentially that everyone thinks their own kid is truly gifted and deserving of admission. And not getting into TJ is “not the end of the world”. Well if that is the case then what is the brouhaha all about? And there are truly gifted kids (not necessarily mine) that will be left out. It was sad to see an educator endorsing collateral damage. The end should never justify the means especially when the platform is one of fairness and equity. I was hoping they would consider some avenues for the truly gifted but the insouciance of the Superintendent on the issue was telling


They just want to pander to blacks and screw over Asians.


No, pander to whites through the guise of pandering to blacks, with the purpose of screwing over Asians.


I’m white but this is like, very obviously what’s afoot. How do people not get it?


Maybe because the main proponents of reform to TJ admissions on the School Board are Ricardy Anderson and Karen Keys Gamarra, who are both Black.

And it's part of the 2020 education agenda of the Fairfax NAACP that's advanced by Sean Perryman, who is Black, and Sujatha Hampton, whose children are Black.

So maybe your post is more like pander to Asians through the guise of pretending that only whites want to change TJ admissions, with the purpose of screwing over URMs and low-income kids.
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 11:56     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
It’s representation and diversity over merit. The people of NOVA are getting what they voted for.
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 11:46     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There is no doubt TJ Admissions need to be reset and diversity issues addressed ASAP. But what was disappointing was the callous response from Dr Braband to the question of the lottery potentially excluding truly deserving students. His response was essentially that everyone thinks their own kid is truly gifted and deserving of admission. And not getting into TJ is “not the end of the world”. Well if that is the case then what is the brouhaha all about? And there are truly gifted kids (not necessarily mine) that will be left out. It was sad to see an educator endorsing collateral damage. The end should never justify the means especially when the platform is one of fairness and equity. I was hoping they would consider some avenues for the truly gifted but the insouciance of the Superintendent on the issue was telling


They just want to pander to blacks and screw over Asians.


No, pander to whites through the guise of pandering to blacks, with the purpose of screwing over Asians.


I’m white but this is like, very obviously what’s afoot. How do people not get it?


Can you explain this? I am white. I have kids in FCPS. I would not really want them to go to TJ - too much stress, too far away, etc. Honestly, I don't know any white parents who want to send their kids to TJ.

What does this have to do with white people? I'm not arguing - I am literally trying to understand. Thanks.


Not this PP, but a DP who agrees. The reasoning is that African American, Hispanic, and other non-Asian minority group admissions have stayed stable over time. Asian admission have risen as white admissions have gone down. Why is it that the complaints didn't cause any real change before (except things like upping the number of admissions from 400 to 440), but now they are? It seems suspect.


This doesn't really make sense to me. It is clearly due to the BLM movement across the world. The school board is now entirely made up of very liberal democrats and NOVA in general has become very liberal.

I don't really think this is a white people thing.




I hear the argument. But the thing is, there's been uproar about TJ admissions and diversity for a long time around here. Maybe it is just that diversity is now the cause du jour among the party running the school board and that northern VA is no longer even remotely purple (definitely not the red it was decades ago). Maybe it's just wokeness taking over. I could see that, I guess.
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 11:43     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Anonymous wrote:Profoundly gifted kids will need to be homeschooled or Davidson Academy


This is truly sad. These kids are not good fit for private schools who cannot accommodate super advance kids. Think of the lost opportunities ...
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 11:23     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Profoundly gifted kids will need to be homeschooled or Davidson Academy
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 11:20     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:There is no doubt TJ Admissions need to be reset and diversity issues addressed ASAP. But what was disappointing was the callous response from Dr Braband to the question of the lottery potentially excluding truly deserving students. His response was essentially that everyone thinks their own kid is truly gifted and deserving of admission. And not getting into TJ is “not the end of the world”. Well if that is the case then what is the brouhaha all about? And there are truly gifted kids (not necessarily mine) that will be left out. It was sad to see an educator endorsing collateral damage. The end should never justify the means especially when the platform is one of fairness and equity. I was hoping they would consider some avenues for the truly gifted but the insouciance of the Superintendent on the issue was telling


Very true OP.

But this is what was voted in. This is what is to be expected when the party platform is not about education but about pandering and ideology.


as long as TJ has limited slots, there will be collateral damage.
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 11:17     Subject: Re:TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
This is similar to what has been happening in AAP admissions for only a few years. Pushing kids in, at certain locations especially, to achieve diversity and certain quotas. If a child that deserves to be in doesn't get in, oh well, it doesn't really matter anyway - that is the response you get from admin. Teachers are not happy about it either.
Anonymous
Post 09/24/2020 11:17     Subject: TJ townhall/inequity vis-a-vis truly gifted
Anonymous wrote:There is no doubt TJ Admissions need to be reset and diversity issues addressed ASAP. But what was disappointing was the callous response from Dr Braband to the question of the lottery potentially excluding truly deserving students. His response was essentially that everyone thinks their own kid is truly gifted and deserving of admission. And not getting into TJ is “not the end of the world”. Well if that is the case then what is the brouhaha all about? And there are truly gifted kids (not necessarily mine) that will be left out. It was sad to see an educator endorsing collateral damage. The end should never justify the means especially when the platform is one of fairness and equity. I was hoping they would consider some avenues for the truly gifted but the insouciance of the Superintendent on the issue was telling


Very true OP.

But this is what was voted in. This is what is to be expected when the party platform is not about education but about pandering and ideology.