Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look there is a list of names from the classes of 2022, 2023 and 2024 that prepped at Curie. Curie has these up in their Facebook page. FCPS has the list. It’s likely the list will go into the college admission databases and come back to haunt the students from 2022-2024 for years to come.

I don't think the students at TJ who attended Curie necessarily knew that they were being fed material they shouldn't have seen. These behaviors are institutionally endorsed. If you're 12-13 years old and adults are telling you that doing the Curie class is a successful way to work hard and possibly get into TJ, why would you suspect they are giving you material they shouldn't know about? Why should it be a child's job to know the adults are wrong? And why should they be punished, even if they realize it after the fact?

Even if Curie cheated, and some direct evidence comes out, I would not expect anyone will do anything against those kids, nor should they. The KIDS are not the cheaters here -- at worst, Curie got an illegal copy of the Quant and the parents knew. More likely, Curie got some questions by asking the kids, and the parents just know that Curie 'gets kids in'.

If Curie got some test questions by asking students, that's unethical but not illegal. If people have a problem with the business model, then we should remove standardized testing from the TJ admissions process because it's an untrustworthy metric. We provide a carrot for companies like Curie -- TJ admissions will come your way! Every test is teachable. Why blame these kids?

The problem with removing all standardized tests is that students do need a strong mathematical background to succeed at the school. As much as these companies "prep" students, they also prepare them academically for a very demanding curriculum. It's not the only way to be successful at TJ, but students who are "smart enough" and "hard working" succeed due to their (and their parents) diligence. Teachers at TJ rely on the fact that all the kids can "learn quickly" even when in actuality many of them are taking a parallel class while they are at TJ to learn the material. The question is whether TJ admissions should be based on "diligence" and "parents working hard with their kids". This is up for debate, but please let's not assume the kids are cheaters.

Kids who were able to do what Curie does with just their own self-study take a lot less time to learn new material when they get to TJ. These are kids who are actively involved in a lot of activities that help them learn whatever is these schools are teaching -- and sometimes quite a lot more.

If TJ goes to a lottery or a distribution based on regions, the school itself needs to address how it will teach the material to students who don't have years of preparatory work, and/or take classes on the side.

This is one of the most well-thought-out posts on this topic. Pretty much agree with everything you said here.

And, importantly, if success at TJ requires a parallel class on the side to keep up with the accelerated math, that's a MAJOR problem and needs to be addressed.

I totally agree. You can't really blame students. I am not sure if we can really blame parents either. It is bad if you intentionally cheat or screw over someone. But, if you take advantage of the resources available to improve yourself, then it may be a fair game. My family comes from math background with academic focus and we spend a good amount of time teaching math to my kids and naturally they were exposed to math from early age and do relatively well in school. One one of my good friends is an english teacher who coaches debate teams and her husband is an engineer. Theirs kids do a lot better in language arts and their is english is definitely superior to my kids. There are parents who send kids to Kumon, Mathnasium, 1 on 1 tutoring and other enrichment. You can purchase books/material or take prep classes for any standardized test (from cogat to lsat), but not every parent can afford it. This may apply to other areas such as music, sports, though to lesser extent.

So, the question, is this really fair to other kids and parents who do have means or resources to do it? The answer depends on who you ask. Should every parent stop teaching their kids and/or send to any after school activities (academic or no-academic), just so that it will be fair to other kids with out means? You can even take it to next level and say advanced countries may have unfair advantage over poor countries where education takes back seat compared to day to day survival. I remember one of my really smart school friend had to drop out of high school and take a job to support the family and you see so many of these cases.

As an opposite argument, is it really fair to my my kids if I refuse to teach them or provide other enrichment even though I have means to do it? I can't even say I will not buy them their first car because my parents couldn't do it for me. The bottom line is, you can't really stop enrichment. It is job of teachers, school system or government to recognize and promote the natural talent and no parental support. Also, no matter how much prepping you do, you can't really force kids to learn something unless they are genuinely interested in it - at least I couldn't. The max you do is to channel their interests in a certain direction if one area of interest is taking away too much time with out any obvious improvement - but this is a big may be and some times you need to let kids figure out on their own.

The irony here is, some of the parents who complain TJ admissions are unfair are the same ones who pushed their kids into AAP either by providing them cogat/nnat practice, buy books, try to get them into the pool with ton of support material/recommendation letters, spend money on WISC, appeals etc. How many non-academic focus parents can do this? This forum is supposed to provide information to parents with genuine questions of kids education, but most of the discussion here is just rant, complaints and bragging.

Anonymous wrote:Do people really care about this? It is not like people who systematically prep and are good students are going on and move to leading roles. They are usually the working bees.

Let these people prep, get in good schools and be good working bees - the world needs all kinds.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look there is a list of names from the classes of 2022, 2023 and 2024 that prepped at Curie. Curie has these up in their Facebook page. FCPS has the list. It’s likely the list will go into the college admission databases and come back to haunt the students from 2022-2024 for years to come.

I don't think the students at TJ who attended Curie necessarily knew that they were being fed material they shouldn't have seen. These behaviors are institutionally endorsed. If you're 12-13 years old and adults are telling you that doing the Curie class is a successful way to work hard and possibly get into TJ, why would you suspect they are giving you material they shouldn't know about? Why should it be a child's job to know the adults are wrong? And why should they be punished, even if they realize it after the fact?

Even if Curie cheated, and some direct evidence comes out, I would not expect anyone will do anything against those kids, nor should they. The KIDS are not the cheaters here -- at worst, Curie got an illegal copy of the Quant and the parents knew. More likely, Curie got some questions by asking the kids, and the parents just know that Curie 'gets kids in'.

If Curie got some test questions by asking students, that's unethical but not illegal. If people have a problem with the business model, then we should remove standardized testing from the TJ admissions process because it's an untrustworthy metric. We provide a carrot for companies like Curie -- TJ admissions will come your way! Every test is teachable. Why blame these kids?

The problem with removing all standardized tests is that students do need a strong mathematical background to succeed at the school. As much as these companies "prep" students, they also prepare them academically for a very demanding curriculum. It's not the only way to be successful at TJ, but students who are "smart enough" and "hard working" succeed due to their (and their parents) diligence. Teachers at TJ rely on the fact that all the kids can "learn quickly" even when in actuality many of them are taking a parallel class while they are at TJ to learn the material. The question is whether TJ admissions should be based on "diligence" and "parents working hard with their kids". This is up for debate, but please let's not assume the kids are cheaters.

Kids who were able to do what Curie does with just their own self-study take a lot less time to learn new material when they get to TJ. These are kids who are actively involved in a lot of activities that help them learn whatever is these schools are teaching -- and sometimes quite a lot more.

If TJ goes to a lottery or a distribution based on regions, the school itself needs to address how it will teach the material to students who don't have years of preparatory work, and/or take classes on the side.

This is one of the most well-thought-out posts on this topic. Pretty much agree with everything you said here.

And, importantly, if success at TJ requires a parallel class on the side to keep up with the accelerated math, that's a MAJOR problem and needs to be addressed.

I totally agree. You can't really blame students. I am not sure if we can really blame parents either. It is bad if you intentionally cheat or screw over someone. But, if you take advantage of the resources available to improve yourself, then it may be a fair game. My family comes from math background with academic focus and we spend a good amount of time teaching math to my kids and naturally they were exposed to math from early age and do relatively well in school. One one of my good friends is an english teacher who coaches debate teams and her husband is an engineer. Theirs kids do a lot better in language arts and their is english is definitely superior to my kids. There are parents who send kids to Kumon, Mathnasium, 1 on 1 tutoring and other enrichment. You can purchase books/material or take prep classes for any standardized test (from cogat to lsat), but not every parent can afford it. This may apply to other areas such as music, sports, though to lesser extent.

So, the question, is this really fair to other kids and parents who do have means or resources to do it? The answer depends on who you ask. Should every parent stop teaching their kids and/or send to any after school activities (academic or no-academic), just so that it will be fair to other kids with out means? You can even take it to next level and say advanced countries may have unfair advantage over poor countries where education takes back seat compared to day to day survival. I remember one of my really smart school friend had to drop out of high school and take a job to support the family and you see so many of these cases.

As an opposite argument, is it really fair to my my kids if I refuse to teach them or provide other enrichment even though I have means to do it? I can't even say I will not buy them their first car because my parents couldn't do it for me. The bottom line is, you can't really stop enrichment. It is job of teachers, school system or government to recognize and promote the natural talent and no parental support. Also, no matter how much prepping you do, you can't really force kids to learn something unless they are genuinely interested in it - at least I couldn't. The max you do is to channel their interests in a certain direction if one area of interest is taking away too much time with out any obvious improvement - but this is a big may be and some times you need to let kids figure out on their own.

The irony here is, some of the parents who complain TJ admissions are unfair are the same ones who pushed their kids into AAP either by providing them cogat/nnat practice, buy books, try to get them into the pool with ton of support material/recommendation letters, spend money on WISC, appeals etc. How many non-academic focus parents can do this? This forum is supposed to provide information to parents with genuine questions of kids education, but most of the discussion here is just rant, complaints and bragging.

Anonymous wrote:
The problem with removing all standardized tests is that students do need a strong mathematical background to succeed at the school. As much as these companies "prep" students, they also prepare them academically for a very demanding curriculum. It's not the only way to be successful at TJ, but students who are "smart enough" and "hard working" succeed due to their (and their parents) diligence. Teachers at TJ rely on the fact that all the kids can "learn quickly" even when in actuality many of them are taking a parallel class while they are at TJ to learn the material. The question is whether TJ admissions should be based on "diligence" and "parents working hard with their kids". This is up for debate, but please let's not assume the kids are cheaters.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look there is a list of names from the classes of 2022, 2023 and 2024 that prepped at Curie. Curie has these up in their Facebook page. FCPS has the list. It’s likely the list will go into the college admission databases and come back to haunt the students from 2022-2024 for years to come.

I don't think the students at TJ who attended Curie necessarily knew that they were being fed material they shouldn't have seen. These behaviors are institutionally endorsed. If you're 12-13 years old and adults are telling you that doing the Curie class is a successful way to work hard and possibly get into TJ, why would you suspect they are giving you material they shouldn't know about? Why should it be a child's job to know the adults are wrong? And why should they be punished, even if they realize it after the fact?

Even if Curie cheated, and some direct evidence comes out, I would not expect anyone will do anything against those kids, nor should they. The KIDS are not the cheaters here -- at worst, Curie got an illegal copy of the Quant and the parents knew. More likely, Curie got some questions by asking the kids, and the parents just know that Curie 'gets kids in'.

If Curie got some test questions by asking students, that's unethical but not illegal. If people have a problem with the business model, then we should remove standardized testing from the TJ admissions process because it's an untrustworthy metric. We provide a carrot for companies like Curie -- TJ admissions will come your way! Every test is teachable. Why blame these kids?

The problem with removing all standardized tests is that students do need a strong mathematical background to succeed at the school. As much as these companies "prep" students, they also prepare them academically for a very demanding curriculum. It's not the only way to be successful at TJ, but students who are "smart enough" and "hard working" succeed due to their (and their parents) diligence. Teachers at TJ rely on the fact that all the kids can "learn quickly" even when in actuality many of them are taking a parallel class while they are at TJ to learn the material. The question is whether TJ admissions should be based on "diligence" and "parents working hard with their kids". This is up for debate, but please let's not assume the kids are cheaters.

Kids who were able to do what Curie does with just their own self-study take a lot less time to learn new material when they get to TJ. These are kids who are actively involved in a lot of activities that help them learn whatever is these schools are teaching -- and sometimes quite a lot more.

If TJ goes to a lottery or a distribution based on regions, the school itself needs to address how it will teach the material to students who don't have years of preparatory work, and/or take classes on the side.

This is one of the most well-thought-out posts on this topic. Pretty much agree with everything you said here.

And, importantly, if success at TJ requires a parallel class on the side to keep up with the accelerated math, that's a MAJOR problem and needs to be addressed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look there is a list of names from the classes of 2022, 2023 and 2024 that prepped at Curie. Curie has these up in their Facebook page. FCPS has the list. It’s likely the list will go into the college admission databases and come back to haunt the students from 2022-2024 for years to come.

I don't think the students at TJ who attended Curie necessarily knew that they were being fed material they shouldn't have seen. These behaviors are institutionally endorsed. If you're 12-13 years old and adults are telling you that doing the Curie class is a successful way to work hard and possibly get into TJ, why would you suspect they are giving you material they shouldn't know about? Why should it be a child's job to know the adults are wrong? And why should they be punished, even if they realize it after the fact?

Even if Curie cheated, and some direct evidence comes out, I would not expect anyone will do anything against those kids, nor should they. The KIDS are not the cheaters here -- at worst, Curie got an illegal copy of the Quant and the parents knew. More likely, Curie got some questions by asking the kids, and the parents just know that Curie 'gets kids in'.

If Curie got some test questions by asking students, that's unethical but not illegal. If people have a problem with the business model, then we should remove standardized testing from the TJ admissions process because it's an untrustworthy metric. We provide a carrot for companies like Curie -- TJ admissions will come your way! Every test is teachable. Why blame these kids?

The problem with removing all standardized tests is that students do need a strong mathematical background to succeed at the school. As much as these companies "prep" students, they also prepare them academically for a very demanding curriculum. It's not the only way to be successful at TJ, but students who are "smart enough" and "hard working" succeed due to their (and their parents) diligence. Teachers at TJ rely on the fact that all the kids can "learn quickly" even when in actuality many of them are taking a parallel class while they are at TJ to learn the material. The question is whether TJ admissions should be based on "diligence" and "parents working hard with their kids". This is up for debate, but please let's not assume the kids are cheaters.

Kids who were able to do what Curie does with just their own self-study take a lot less time to learn new material when they get to TJ. These are kids who are actively involved in a lot of activities that help them learn whatever is these schools are teaching -- and sometimes quite a lot more.

If TJ goes to a lottery or a distribution based on regions, the school itself needs to address how it will teach the material to students who don't have years of preparatory work, and/or take classes on the side.

Anonymous wrote:

TJ families do not have much choice in the cheating matter. Since such a high number and percentage of the students cheat (and their parents either don’t know or don’t care) it’s either sink or cheat. Of course there are a few who don’t cheat. That’s the minority. The majority cheat. Saying that cheating happens at any school doesn’t change that at TJ it’s rampant and accepted. TJ has an ugly culture that dies need reform. Not going to happen though.
TJ parent.

It's true that TJ families have little choice in the cheating matter -- the kids know who are the big cheaters, and sometimes they bring it up to the cheaters or to teachers/counselors, but for the most part the main thing we can do is talk to our kids about integrity and why it's valuable. Better to go to a college you earned and gain the trust of a teacher because you earned it, than to go to a more prestigious one because you're a cheat. There was a survey done on cheating a few years ago, which kids answered anonymously. Unless TJ kids were less likely to share their behaviors anonymously, TJ kids were quite similar to other schools in the amount of cheating that goes on.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curie has around 1000+ kids taking the TJ classes every year at the multiple centers they have. Ashburn alone has over 400 kids. These classes are super crowded and kids jam-packed. It's not a wonder that 10-15% of the kids got in. They only tell you who got in but never give out how many attempted.

I agree, probably all the kids that came in from Carson and neighboring Middle schools went to Curie. If you looked t at the zip code pool of these kids it will probably show Carson Middle school and historically Carson MS kids makes a good portion of the admitted class each year at TJ.


" I have no child in Craosn or Curie "

Anonymous wrote:Look there is a list of names from the classes of 2022, 2023 and 2024 that prepped at Curie. Curie has these up in their Facebook page. FCPS has the list. It’s likely the list will go into the college admission databases and come back to haunt the students from 2022-2024 for years to come.

TJ families do not have much choice in the cheating matter. Since such a high number and percentage of the students cheat (and their parents either don’t know or don’t care) it’s either sink or cheat. Of course there are a few who don’t cheat. That’s the minority. The majority cheat. Saying that cheating happens at any school doesn’t change that at TJ it’s rampant and accepted. TJ has an ugly culture that dies need reform. Not going to happen though.
TJ parent.

Anonymous wrote:If Curie actually had 1,000 students taking this class, that is insane. That would $4.3 million dollar just from this course alone. They offer other courses as well.

How do you explain that the admitted list of 133 has only Indian names? If it really was so popular, then how did they keep out other Asians? How did they jump from 51 slots two years ago to 133 this year?

The school board and FCPS needs to launch an independent outside investigation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curie has around 1000+ kids taking the TJ classes every year at the multiple centers they have. Ashburn alone has over 400 kids. These classes are super crowded and kids jam-packed. It's not a wonder that 10-15% of the kids got in. They only tell you who got in but never give out how many attempted.

I agree, probably all the kids that came in from Carson and neighboring Middle schools went to Curie. If you looked t at the zip code pool of these kids it will probably show Carson Middle school and historically Carson MS kids makes a good portion of the admitted class each year at TJ.
u

" I have no child in Craosn or Curie "

Nope! The list only has Indian names. It was not only Carson students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Curie has around 1000+ kids taking the TJ classes every year at the multiple centers they have. Ashburn alone has over 400 kids. These classes are super crowded and kids jam-packed. It's not a wonder that 10-15% of the kids got in. They only tell you who got in but never give out how many attempted.

The fact that you have 1000 kids taking a $4200 course to help them get into TJ is an enormous problem no matter how successful it is.

The admissions process should not favor families who are able to pay this amount for students to have any kind of privileged access. This is true regardless of whether or not they were cheating. It's a public high school and ability to pay for access shouldn't be a part of the equation, period.

What about parents who pay thousands for SAT preparation and AP prep so their DC can have better college options. That is unfair for chiuldren coming from families with limited resources too.

Preparing for tests seems to be a problem for only Asian students.