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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

If that's your view, pay for private. There is no legal requirement for a public schools to embrace any kids of a race for admission

Not sure what you mean by embrace but public institutions must adhere to the 14th amendment. I believe affirmative action and any any other such race-conscious policy to be unconstitutional, past supreme court precedent notwithstanding.

Lotteries are a perfectly legal way to assign spots in magnet schools.

Not if it was implemented with racist intent. I don't know how many more times this has to be said. The racist intent is the issue, not the specific admissions mechanism.

How could a lottery have been implemented with racist intent? It’s pretty clear that there is no intent behind that choice; it’s basically the only viable way to seat a class this year. It’s not like the SB wanted to do a lottery in the first place. It’s either that, or no TJ class until the SB is entirely replaced.

It should be noted that there is no world where this happens.

The PP keeps harping on "racist intent". Anything the SB does other than going to the old way of doing things (which, it's too late for this year anyway) is tainted, according to them. So, the answer would then be to seat no one, until the SB is sorted out. Not saying that would happen, just that it's the logical end, if the SB's hands are tied in pretty much every other way.

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

If that's your view, pay for private. There is no legal requirement for a public schools to embrace any kids of a race for admission

Not sure what you mean by embrace but public institutions must adhere to the 14th amendment. I believe affirmative action and any any other such race-conscious policy to be unconstitutional, past supreme court precedent notwithstanding.

Lotteries are a perfectly legal way to assign spots in magnet schools.

Not if it was implemented with racist intent. I don't know how many more times this has to be said. The racist intent is the issue, not the specific admissions mechanism.

How could a lottery have been implemented with racist intent? It’s pretty clear that there is no intent behind that choice; it’s basically the only viable way to seat a class this year. It’s not like the SB wanted to do a lottery in the first place. It’s either that, or no TJ class until the SB is entirely replaced.

It should be noted that there is no world where this happens.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

If that's your view, pay for private. There is no legal requirement for a public schools to embrace any kids of a race for admission

Not sure what you mean by embrace but public institutions must adhere to the 14th amendment. I believe affirmative action and any any other such race-conscious policy to be unconstitutional, past supreme court precedent notwithstanding.

Lotteries are a perfectly legal way to assign spots in magnet schools.

Not if it was implemented with racist intent. I don't know how many more times this has to be said. The racist intent is the issue, not the specific admissions mechanism.

How could a lottery have been implemented with racist intent? It’s pretty clear that there is no intent behind that choice; it’s basically the only viable way to seat a class this year. It’s not like the SB wanted to do a lottery in the first place. It’s either that, or no TJ class until the SB is entirely replaced.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

If that's your view, pay for private. There is no legal requirement for a public schools to embrace any kids of a race for admission

Not sure what you mean by embrace but public institutions must adhere to the 14th amendment. I believe affirmative action and any any other such race-conscious policy to be unconstitutional, past supreme court precedent notwithstanding.

Lotteries are a perfectly legal way to assign spots in magnet schools.

Not if it was implemented with racist intent. I don't know how many more times this has to be said. The racist intent is the issue, not the specific admissions mechanism.

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

If that's your view, pay for private. There is no legal requirement for a public schools to embrace any kids of a race for admission

Not sure what you mean by embrace but public institutions must adhere to the 14th amendment. I believe affirmative action and any any other such race-conscious policy to be unconstitutional, past supreme court precedent notwithstanding.

Lotteries are a perfectly legal way to assign spots in magnet schools.

Not if it was implemented with racist intent. I don't know how many more times this has to be said. The racist intent is the issue, not the specific admissions mechanism.

You can say it all you want to, that doesn't make it true. The experience factors are easy to attack, a lottery is an accepted method used by districts throughout the country

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

That's completely false! Plenty of prepped kids still got into TJ under the new admissions process - it simply appears that fewer of them did than previously. They weren't enjoined from applying - nor from being admitted! - because they took prep courses. Curie claimed 92 kids in the Class of 2025 - significantly less than the 133 in the previous year, but certainly not zero.

Honest question - how did Curie get 92 seats in the class of 2025?

It doesn’t make sense that the new process is preppable.

I genuinely think that that number has more to do with their market saturation than anything else. Most of those kids probably didn't get in because of Curie, but rather they got in and also happened to have been at Curie.

+1 Self-selected group of highly motivated students around other highly motivated students raises the achievements of all of those students. True of everything in life, especially sports.

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

If that's your view, pay for private. There is no legal requirement for a public schools to embrace any kids of a race for admission

Not sure what you mean by embrace but public institutions must adhere to the 14th amendment. I believe affirmative action and any any other such race-conscious policy to be unconstitutional, past supreme court precedent notwithstanding.

Lotteries are a perfectly legal way to assign spots in magnet schools.

Not if it was implemented with racist intent. I don't know how many more times this has to be said. The racist intent is the issue, not the specific admissions mechanism.

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

If that's your view, pay for private. There is no legal requirement for a public schools to embrace any kids of a race for admission

Not sure what you mean by embrace but public institutions must adhere to the 14th amendment. I believe affirmative action and any any other such race-conscious policy to be unconstitutional, past supreme court precedent notwithstanding.

Lotteries are a perfectly legal way to assign spots in magnet schools.

Not if it was implemented with racist intent. I don't know how many more times this has to be said. The racist intent is the issue, not the specific admissions mechanism.

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

They can provide all of the resources in the world to their children. They just shouldn't expect increased access to taxpayer-funded educational opportunities as a consequence.

I am not sure how you are defining "increased access" in your mind, but if the access is based on open competition of merit, then all is fair.

"Increased access" would involve supporting an admissions process that resulted in less than one percent of admitted students coming from economically disadvantaged backgrounds....

.... against the backdrop of a ubiquitous nine-figure TJ prep complex that costs thousands of dollars for entry and claims overwhelmingly effective results.

That's circular logic. You are criticizing an application process for providing "increased access" to Asians and using the result of the process as the proof of so-called increased access. You, too, would have only been accepted into TJ based on "experience factors".

Nope. My point is not about the previous process providing increased access to Asians. It's about the previous process providing increased access to families that had the resources and motivation to mold their children's entire childhood around the TJ admissions process.

There isn't anything circular about my logic. The application fee was a problem. The exam that worked well for a year until the prep companies caught up to it was a problem. And the results were in the numbers.

On what objective and legally defensible basis you make the argument “ It's about the previous process providing increased access to families that had the resources and motivation to mold their children's entire childhood around the TJ admissions process.”. You would never make tag sweeping statement on hearsay, would you? And we dongg TJ stereotype, do we?

Not pp, but the class data in prior definitely showed that family resources were a prerequisite for admission to TJ.

Did the docs conclude that parents “molded children’s entire childhood around the TJ process”

Ahh that's not germane to the question before the SC right now.

Then we are in agreement. There is a PP who believes this is the basis of defending the constitutionality of the new process that is front of the court. Hyperbole wins rap contests not constitutional cases.

Good grief, you're talking about me so I'm going to step in and clarify. There are two separate points that are at issue for me and I was discussing one and not the other.

1) Is the new admissions process constitutional? I argue that it is and I believe that Judge Heytens is correct that the only relevant question is regarding the current process and whether or not it is fair to applicants. Heytens argues that it doesn't really matter what the previous process was and correctly asserts that the Coalition's entire case rests on comparing the results of the previous process - which had much more obvious disparate racial impacts than the new process does - and the results of the new process. The Coalition wants to focus on the motivations for the change while the real question should be simply about whether or not the new process is constitutional on its own. And it is, by any reasonable standard.

2) What type of admissions process would best serve TJ's academic environment moving forward? I don't think that the new admissions process as it is currently constituted is a finished product and I do see some significant flaws, though I see it as a tremendous step forward over the previous process. I would:

- Introduce a re-engineered teacher recommendation form that allowed teachers to compare students to the others in their respective classes with respect to their contributions to the overall academic environment
- Reduce the percentage of allocated seats from each middle school from 1.5% to 1%
- Allow admissions committee to give some additional consideration to students in highly advanced math classes as part of evaluating the student's entire profile
- Ask students directly in their essays which single accomplishment they take the most pride in in BOTH STEM and non-STEM areas
- Eliminate the numerical rubric system in favor of a truly holistic evaluation

As the PP you are responding to, I am actually in agreement with most things you have said. Except for one major thing. If the new process was not ready for primetime (in your words, "a finished product") then what was the hurry to launch? Kids are not a sandbox for politically motivated school board members to do social experimentation. They could have waited, sought better expert advice, done better engagement and invested in change management. Their approach was leverage their absolute majority to use brute force to impose a half-baked process to earn political glory. They should be held accountable. I agree an eventual solution will likely result in fewer Asians and that is fine with me. But brute force bullying should be countered. And that is the sole reason I applaud C4TJ. They speak for the bullied

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

That's completely false! Plenty of prepped kids still got into TJ under the new admissions process - it simply appears that fewer of them did than previously. They weren't enjoined from applying - nor from being admitted! - because they took prep courses. Curie claimed 92 kids in the Class of 2025 - significantly less than the 133 in the previous year, but certainly not zero.

Honest question - how did Curie get 92 seats in the class of 2025?

It doesn’t make sense that the new process is preppable.

I genuinely think that that number has more to do with their market saturation than anything else. Most of those kids probably didn't get in because of Curie, but rather they got in and also happened to have been at Curie.

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

If that's your view, pay for private. There is no legal requirement for a public schools to embrace any kids of a race for admission

Not sure what you mean by embrace but public institutions must adhere to the 14th amendment. I believe affirmative action and any any other such race-conscious policy to be unconstitutional, past supreme court precedent notwithstanding.

Lotteries are a perfectly legal way to assign spots in magnet schools.

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

If that's your view, pay for private. There is no legal requirement for a public schools to embrace any kids of a race for admission

Not sure what you mean by embrace but public institutions must adhere to the 14th amendment. I believe affirmative action and any any other such race-conscious policy to be unconstitutional, past supreme court precedent notwithstanding.

Lotteries are a perfectly legal way to assign spots in magnet schools.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

That's completely false! Plenty of prepped kids still got into TJ under the new admissions process - it simply appears that fewer of them did than previously. They weren't enjoined from applying - nor from being admitted! - because they took prep courses. Curie claimed 92 kids in the Class of 2025 - significantly less than the 133 in the previous year, but certainly not zero.

Honest question - how did Curie get 92 seats in the class of 2025?

It doesn’t make sense that the new process is preppable.

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

Why should they be rewarded for their parents' resources?

Why should they be penalized?

How is ignoring the benefits of the resources penalizing them?

Ignoring the benefit of resources was the status quo. The board is giving preference to kids with less resources, thus penalizing kids with resources.

The status quo was rewarding the resume padding and prepping

Still not a justification to penalize kids for having parents that provide resources for them.

It's a reason to discount their effects

You are going to have to provide a rational justification for that counter-intuitive thought. Given that human civilization progression has been one where children do better than their parents by leveraging the additional resources provided by their parents, it's natural and logical to not penalize children for the resources they receive from their parents.

DP but I'll jump in here. The previous admissions process provided an enormous advantage to parents who prioritized crafting their kid's childhood completely around TJ admissions from a very young age.

What that means is that students who didn't have the good fortune to be born into a family with parents who prioritized TJ were penalized for the circumstances of their birth in the admissions process.

Reducing or eliminating that advantage is not penalizing those students who had the good fortune to be born into a family that prioritizes educational prestige.

I don't see how you can type that non ironically. How is "reducing" and "eliminating" not "penalizing"?

Because we're talking about an unearned advantage. Reducing these advantages is more or less akin to forcing all runners to start a race from the same point, rather than continuing to allow some kids to start the race 50 yards ahead because their parents put them there.

The resources are provided by parents - they earned them and can allocate those resources as they see fit since we live in a free society. The children did not take those advantages from someone else, they are passive beneficiaries of those advantages. Your analogy fails. High school is the race and being admitted is being allowed to line up, and the current policy penalizes certain kids by not allowing them to line up simply because they trained for the race.

If that's your view, pay for private. There is no legal requirement for a public schools to embrace any kids of a race for admission

Not sure what you mean by embrace but public institutions must adhere to the 14th amendment. I believe affirmative action and any any other such race-conscious policy to be unconstitutional, past supreme court precedent notwithstanding.

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Anonymous wrote:The appeals hasn’t even ruled yet. No way the Supreme Court takes this stupid case.

This!

Well I think the SC is taking the question of whether they can do the admissions policy for this year while they sort out the whole thing through the courts, right?

Wednesday is April 13. It's way too late already, despite what the dissent said. Maybe they are on to next year's incoming class?

They can do a lottery very quickly. If they really want to tweak coalition for TJ, they can automatically enter every rising freshman in the county and create a waitlist for those who decline.

Keep dreaming.

my dream would be for them to just close the school

That's obvious, hon.

Sorry.

It gets closer every day. A school that becomes a right wing darling reliant on a very left wing school board is not long for this world.

Makes me sad, but here we are.

DP, but I would rather have them close the school than see FCPS spend so much time, money, and attention litigation over the composition of a single high school.

It's obscene that FCPS has over 200 schools and one school commands so much focus because the School Board was so clumsy and inartful when it decided to change the admissions process. Enough already.

They could have chosen to done things differently. Instead of implementing racist policies, they could have responded with more outreach and educational resources at schools that serve URM student population. Instead by went full racist, completely unbashful about their intentions, unreceptive to feedback and criticism from parents. They chose to make this into a big issue because they wanted the glory of remaking what is the top high school in the entire United States. They wanted that badge of honor on their progressive resume, a crowning achievement of performative intersectional justice for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's no surprise then that they dedicated their resources towards this cause. The level of effort they have expended to defend their racist practice shows you just how much they have invested in this endeavor.

No one asked the school board to be racist. They just couldn't help it. They decided to do this themselves, with no one else to blame.

I agree with you but it does reach a point where it's time to just put an end to the bickering. Let TJ return to use as a neighborhood school or have it serve as a full-time Academy program offering specialized, challenging courses available only at TJ to students who attend their base schools for their other classes, but both sides need to realize how they are degrading FCPS by allowing so much attention to be focused on a single school to the exclusion of other schools.

The Coalition for TJ and the TJAAG are both full of preening narcissists equally wedded to their own visions of what TJ should be (and completely disinterested in the other 97% of FCPS kids). And this ridiculous, utterly incompetent School Board that set the stage for this to happen needs to be sent packing next year - every last one of them.

I don't see why that's the preferable outcome versus having TJ continue to be a school where applicants are evaluated based on merit against standardized assessments. Sure there are preening narcissists, but just because a preening narcissist likes the taste of a banana, doesn't change the fact that bananas are delicious and healthy. There is a place in our society for merit-based identification and advancement of young scholars. There may be other goals that we as a society want to achieve and we can have those as additional programs. Let TJ remain doing what it has done so well as to earn the top rank among the nation's high schools.

Please outline the path for that to happen expeditiously and in a manner that, you know, actually allows the idiots on this School Board to pay some attention to the other 97% of kids in FCPS.

It's not my job to outline that path. I'm merely defending that TJ should stay on its prior non-racist path that caused it to become the #1 HS in the US. That the other problems are difficult is no excuse to implement racist policies for TJ. Any time the board spent fiddling with TJ could have been used for the other 97% of FCPS kids instead.

But your “mere defense” leaves the earlier point - which is that TJ admissions has become an unproductive waste of FCPS time, energy, and resources that harms other school communities - wholly unaddressed. It’s apparently time to wind it down or change TJ to a less controversial Academy program.

IMO, a less wasteful, but still selective method would be to take X% of the highest GPA from each school (because opportunities and options vary by school), and choose from among them by lottery. If they want to be a bit more selective, have like 3 letters of support submitted by 2 STEM/1 non-STEM teacher, and use that as guidance. Parents/kids can opt out if they don't want to be submitted for consideration.

I still don't see the justification as to why the original TJ policy needed to be changed. The underrepresentation of blacks/Latinos is caused by a resource gap and not a learning ability gap, so the solution is to increase resources rather than use some method to lower the entrance standard. We combat covid by delivering shots in arms, not by cherry picking who we test to get the desired infection rate.

That's been tried for decades with no results, but people who support that status quo love it because it pushes any changes down the road a few more years.

Failure at something is no excuse to engage in racist behaviors.

Of course, we just need a new plan that will take years to judge, and then a new plan after that, and maybe a few more. In the meantime, TJ can remain unsullied by poor kids

Now you are just giving up all pretense of being rational and logical, and appealing to emotion instead. Go ahead and wallow in your sorrow. Sad face.

When people are screaming that a school going form 75% to 55% of a population that comprises 20% of students is racist, logic is out the window.

You don’t get it, do you? Ends don’t justify the means - not in modern societies.

The process to get from 75% to 55% has to be above reproach. The FCPS process is not. And needs to be done away even if it yields a class that exactly represents the demographics of the county. If you don’t understand that and are stuck on the outcome then you don’t understand the issue that is being litigated.

Every day that goes by without the current admissions process being affirmed is one step closer to the Class of 2026 being selected by lottery. It would be wise for FCPS to make it known that this is their intent if the Supreme Court vacates the Fourth Circuit stay.

Any further action by the current board *except* for restoring original TJ process will be tainted with racist intent and challenged in court.

It does seem a little ironic that thus coalition for TJ demanding that the majority of the TJ spots go to one group in the name of fairness.

That's not what they are arguing for at all. You are just making stuff up. The coalition is asking for a non-racist admissions policy and let the student demographics be what they are as a result of natural competition.

"Natural competition" that is significantly aided - unquestionably - by parents leveraging their resources as heavily as possible to put their thumbs on the scales.

Why is it a problem for parents to provide resources to their children? Isn't this the entire goal of being a parent, to provide resources to children? Why should children with resources be penalized?

They can provide all of the resources in the world to their children. They just shouldn't expect increased access to taxpayer-funded educational opportunities as a consequence.

I am not sure how you are defining "increased access" in your mind, but if the access is based on open competition of merit, then all is fair.

"Increased access" would involve supporting an admissions process that resulted in less than one percent of admitted students coming from economically disadvantaged backgrounds....

.... against the backdrop of a ubiquitous nine-figure TJ prep complex that costs thousands of dollars for entry and claims overwhelmingly effective results.

That's circular logic. You are criticizing an application process for providing "increased access" to Asians and using the result of the process as the proof of so-called increased access. You, too, would have only been accepted into TJ based on "experience factors".

Nope. My point is not about the previous process providing increased access to Asians. It's about the previous process providing increased access to families that had the resources and motivation to mold their children's entire childhood around the TJ admissions process.

There isn't anything circular about my logic. The application fee was a problem. The exam that worked well for a year until the prep companies caught up to it was a problem. And the results were in the numbers.

On what objective and legally defensible basis you make the argument “ It's about the previous process providing increased access to families that had the resources and motivation to mold their children's entire childhood around the TJ admissions process.”. You would never make tag sweeping statement on hearsay, would you? And we dongg TJ stereotype, do we?

Not pp, but the class data in prior definitely showed that family resources were a prerequisite for admission to TJ.

Did the docs conclude that parents “molded children’s entire childhood around the TJ process”

Ahh that's not germane to the question before the SC right now.

Then we are in agreement. There is a PP who believes this is the basis of defending the constitutionality of the new process that is front of the court. Hyperbole wins rap contests not constitutional cases.

Good grief, you're talking about me so I'm going to step in and clarify. There are two separate points that are at issue for me and I was discussing one and not the other.

1) Is the new admissions process constitutional? I argue that it is and I believe that Judge Heytens is correct that the only relevant question is regarding the current process and whether or not it is fair to applicants. Heytens argues that it doesn't really matter what the previous process was and correctly asserts that the Coalition's entire case rests on comparing the results of the previous process - which had much more obvious disparate racial impacts than the new process does - and the results of the new process. The Coalition wants to focus on the motivations for the change while the real question should be simply about whether or not the new process is constitutional on its own. And it is, by any reasonable standard.

2) What type of admissions process would best serve TJ's academic environment moving forward? I don't think that the new admissions process as it is currently constituted is a finished product and I do see some significant flaws, though I see it as a tremendous step forward over the previous process. I would:

- Introduce a re-engineered teacher recommendation form that allowed teachers to compare students to the others in their respective classes with respect to their contributions to the overall academic environment
- Reduce the percentage of allocated seats from each middle school from 1.5% to 1%
- Allow admissions committee to give some additional consideration to students in highly advanced math classes as part of evaluating the student's entire profile
- Ask students directly in their essays which single accomplishment they take the most pride in in BOTH STEM and non-STEM areas
- Eliminate the numerical rubric system in favor of a truly holistic evaluation

As the PP you are responding to, I am actually in agreement with most things you have said. Except for one major thing. If the new process was not ready for primetime (in your words, "a finished product") then what was the hurry to launch? Kids are not a sandbox for politically motivated school board members to do social experimentation. They could have waited, sought better expert advice, done better engagement and invested in change management. Their approach was leverage their absolute majority to use brute force to impose a half-baked process to earn political glory. They should be held accountable. I agree an eventual solution will likely result in fewer Asians and that is fine with me. But brute force bullying should be countered. And that is the sole reason I applaud C4TJ. They speak for the bullied