What happens when these kids fail? How is that fair? How about we fix the education system to do something incredible, like educate. The kids getting in to TJ are doing it because they are outliers intellectually and their parents spend hours supplementing education. Also, these parents are not tolerant of behavioral shenanigans. Imagine a world where all parents were so dedicated to the expectations of learning and behaving. In the end, every child has the opportunity, not every child will meet the standard for this outcome. Equally opportunity does not mean equal outcome. This is why I am not a model or football player.
Seems like you are really getting ahead of the game and assuming they will fail. It doesn’t seem fair that a kid needs a family to spend hours supplementing their education. Some families are more capable of providing this than others.
Ps. Never abdícate your parental responsibility to the government. It is your JOB as a parent to educate your children. I found your comment regarding fairness of expecting parents to parent sad. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to spend extra reading time with my special needs daughter, who will not get into TJ either, and that is truly okay.
I have a fantastic idea! Picture this, John: we let every child in the community regardless of color, background or ethnicity, apply to this school. Each of those applicants must meet a set of objective criteria such as GPA. Those who meet the objective standards may attend the school, and no one will ask or care about race, color, background, etc. Pretty fair, right? Everyone judged exactly the same way.
You assume they'll be allowed to fail. If members of preferred racial categories can't do the work, the responsible educators will be disciplined for their racism and the demanded work reduced and/or simplified until the students in question make acceptable progress.
This is similar to affirmative action at work in Ivy League college admissions. When you admit based on demographics and not merit, you set up students to fail. If you accept them at colleges more suited to their abilities, you set them up to succeed. The point of intervention is not at acceptance into TJ, it's in working much earlier with younger students setting them up to achieve admittance. They won't thrive if they haven't earned it. They will fail and be demoralized as well as lower the bar in the process. So many people think only short term.
of course the next step after quotas in admission would be to question why the next admittees performed so poorly. Obviously systemic racism, which in order to produce equity, requires that the curriculum be changed and standards lowered.
But when we set up poorly-prepared kids to fail, the Grievance Studies departments in universities get a nice supply of students who can't cut it in STEM or the more rigorous social sciences and humanities disciplines. We wouldn't want woke college administrators, some of the most privileged people in America, to lose their gravy train, would we?
TJ gives kids the education, connections, and opportunities to succeed. Why can’t we intervene at TJ which seems like a more addressable problem and also easier in the process?
Very divisive issue but the truth is our society is not fair. In a perfect world, merit based acceptance works, but there are elements of our society that don't have the resources to prepare for the test to gain acceptance. Those of us who have been gritty and fortunate enough to overcome obstacles to succeed should not use our personal stories as a narrative to further this belief that only merit counts in our disjointed society. Rather we should use our trials and tribulations to create more opportunity to the under served.
incomes above $200,000. Twenty-two percent of Asian or Pacific Islander families, 14 percent of black
families, and 9 percent of Hispanic families had incomes above $200,000.
The poverty rates for whites (3 percent) and Asians or Pacific Islanders (6 percent) were at or
below the rate for the county (6 percent), but the rates for blacks (10 percent), Hispanics (11 percent),
and immigrants (9 percent) were above the county rate. So the number of African american family earning more than 200,000 dollars is aroung 14 percent. while for the asians it is 22 percent and poverty wise it is 10 and 6 percent respectively. So people are creating false narrative about lack of resources to push their own crooked agenda when the stats shows there are not much difference in terms of availability of resources
TJ is not a private school. It's paid for with tax dollars. As a PUBLIC school, the PUBLIC, by and through elected officials in the General Assembly and the Fairfax County School Board, decides how TJ admissions are determined. If you want a say in how admissions are handled. pay for your kid to go to a private school. It's that simple.
As a public school, TJ has to work to have a more representative student body of the demographics of the tax base. Right now, a majority of the kids come from two prosperous areas of the county and that's it. So something had to be done - and if the school's ranking slips, it is what it is. These rankings are really subjective anyways. I remember when the school slipped from 1 to 4 and I thought the sky was falling from parents and administrators at the school! Let's focus on creating a more diverse atmosphere in STEM. It will be good for the country!
You appear to be saying that you oppose allowing demanding public schools for those kids who are up to meeting those demands. You also seem to be saying that parents properly have no say in how public schools are run, and that any parents who do want such a say must abandon public schools for private. Am I misunderstanding you?
This paper describes how the mismatch of underprepared students with elite schools harms minorities. The author is a member of the US civil Rights Commission
John who comments repeatedly below is arguing that standards must be lowered so more blacks can qualify for admission. He doesn’t see that he is the racist here. His assumption is that blacks can’t pass the exams. What about the 6 black students who were admitted based on merit? Isn’t their achievement being undermined by his arguments?
If TJ falls like other public schools, will people still wanna go? The reason TJ is so attractive to people because it's excellence. Without that, nobody wanna go any more!
First, thank you for writing this article. People need to understand the extent of what is going on throughout our country.
Second, before I continue, I wish to state explicitly that I fully support merit-based admissions to any school. While I do not have children, I can sense the alarm that parents have over this issue. Good parents have poured their souls into their children and it is only natural to want the best for them so I commend you for what you are doing.
However, the obvious needs to be examined in depth: The suburbs surrounding TJ have been deeply liberal for years. I would venture that the majority of parents who have had children at TJ have reliably voted for progressive initiatives election after election. Many of these families are as traditional as they come: nuclear, the parents tend to stay married, many mothers are stay at home, the kids are disciplined, and there is an all out emphasis on academics and extracurricular activities. But they vote progressive.
What is happening at TJs is simply the next logical, obvious step for progressivism. This didn’t happen overnight. We did not go to bed last night with a 100% commitment to merit and then wake up this morning suddenly realizing the world now supports race based admissions. No. This has been coming for years. And when white parents expressed alarm so long ago they were called racist and accused of wanting to preserve white supremacy. The incessant focus on race and gender and everything else other than raw talent has been gaining steam for years. That camel pushed its nose under the tent decades ago and progressives backed it 100%. Except now, it has come for them and it is striking at what they love most: their precious children.
Asra - I recall attending university in the 1980s and even then, it was abundantly clear that we were supposed to “value and open our minds” to different types of intelligence that came from “different lived experiences” due to race. I recall having to sit through sessions in our residence hall that required us to talk about racism and its effects. Even then there were several special programs at the university that were for black students only. They were given special access to professors and summer internships at one of the large companies in town.
Everyone in the country knows this has been going on.
For several years now, some brave Asian American students have taken Harvard to task because of their admissions process. What an Asian American high schooler must score on his SAT to get into Harvard is . . . different shall we say than what a black student has to have to be accepted at Harvard.
I think a lot of people thought the STEM subjects would magically be exempt from this diversity, equity and inclusion effort. That, obviously, was magical thinking. Is there anyone out there who is not concerned what sort of doctors or engineers we are going to be letting loose on society in the very near term?
Asra - I support you in your effort fully. I just wonder why it has taken this long for so many people, so many progressives really because a lot of us on the right have been alarmed about this for decades but were told to sit down and shut up because we were obviously racist, to fully wake up to the insatiable, voracious monster that is the diversity, equity and inclusion effort?
I wish you and the other TJ parents the best Asra. You are going to need it.
What happens when these kids fail? How is that fair? How about we fix the education system to do something incredible, like educate. The kids getting in to TJ are doing it because they are outliers intellectually and their parents spend hours supplementing education. Also, these parents are not tolerant of behavioral shenanigans. Imagine a world where all parents were so dedicated to the expectations of learning and behaving. In the end, every child has the opportunity, not every child will meet the standard for this outcome. Equally opportunity does not mean equal outcome. This is why I am not a model or football player.
Seems like you are really getting ahead of the game and assuming they will fail. It doesn’t seem fair that a kid needs a family to spend hours supplementing their education. Some families are more capable of providing this than others.
Ps. Never abdícate your parental responsibility to the government. It is your JOB as a parent to educate your children. I found your comment regarding fairness of expecting parents to parent sad. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to spend extra reading time with my special needs daughter, who will not get into TJ either, and that is truly okay.
I have a fantastic idea! Picture this, John: we let every child in the community regardless of color, background or ethnicity, apply to this school. Each of those applicants must meet a set of objective criteria such as GPA. Those who meet the objective standards may attend the school, and no one will ask or care about race, color, background, etc. Pretty fair, right? Everyone judged exactly the same way.
You assume they'll be allowed to fail. If members of preferred racial categories can't do the work, the responsible educators will be disciplined for their racism and the demanded work reduced and/or simplified until the students in question make acceptable progress.
I agree with this, but at some point the failure will catch up to the failed student up to a complete collapse of society.
Can we sue TJ like they did to Yale?
This is similar to affirmative action at work in Ivy League college admissions. When you admit based on demographics and not merit, you set up students to fail. If you accept them at colleges more suited to their abilities, you set them up to succeed. The point of intervention is not at acceptance into TJ, it's in working much earlier with younger students setting them up to achieve admittance. They won't thrive if they haven't earned it. They will fail and be demoralized as well as lower the bar in the process. So many people think only short term.
of course the next step after quotas in admission would be to question why the next admittees performed so poorly. Obviously systemic racism, which in order to produce equity, requires that the curriculum be changed and standards lowered.
But when we set up poorly-prepared kids to fail, the Grievance Studies departments in universities get a nice supply of students who can't cut it in STEM or the more rigorous social sciences and humanities disciplines. We wouldn't want woke college administrators, some of the most privileged people in America, to lose their gravy train, would we?
TJ gives kids the education, connections, and opportunities to succeed. Why can’t we intervene at TJ which seems like a more addressable problem and also easier in the process?
Very divisive issue but the truth is our society is not fair. In a perfect world, merit based acceptance works, but there are elements of our society that don't have the resources to prepare for the test to gain acceptance. Those of us who have been gritty and fortunate enough to overcome obstacles to succeed should not use our personal stories as a narrative to further this belief that only merit counts in our disjointed society. Rather we should use our trials and tribulations to create more opportunity to the under served.
Great research. Please keep up the good work. But how they are saying that African americans lack resources in Farifax county? https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/95396/2017_12_28_a_racial_equity_profile_for_fairfax_county_finalized_2.pdf . From the census data there is not much difference between the asian americans and african americans in terms of poverty and affordability. White families were more likely to have higher incomes. One in three white families had annual
incomes above $200,000. Twenty-two percent of Asian or Pacific Islander families, 14 percent of black
families, and 9 percent of Hispanic families had incomes above $200,000.
The poverty rates for whites (3 percent) and Asians or Pacific Islanders (6 percent) were at or
below the rate for the county (6 percent), but the rates for blacks (10 percent), Hispanics (11 percent),
and immigrants (9 percent) were above the county rate. So the number of African american family earning more than 200,000 dollars is aroung 14 percent. while for the asians it is 22 percent and poverty wise it is 10 and 6 percent respectively. So people are creating false narrative about lack of resources to push their own crooked agenda when the stats shows there are not much difference in terms of availability of resources
The answer is leave TJ as it is and create a Magnet STEM school especially for the URMs.
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2020/08/keeping-asian-americans-their-place-joseph-mussomeli.html
Those wacktivists need to be told to take their reverse racism and shove it.
TJ is not a private school. It's paid for with tax dollars. As a PUBLIC school, the PUBLIC, by and through elected officials in the General Assembly and the Fairfax County School Board, decides how TJ admissions are determined. If you want a say in how admissions are handled. pay for your kid to go to a private school. It's that simple.
As a public school, TJ has to work to have a more representative student body of the demographics of the tax base. Right now, a majority of the kids come from two prosperous areas of the county and that's it. So something had to be done - and if the school's ranking slips, it is what it is. These rankings are really subjective anyways. I remember when the school slipped from 1 to 4 and I thought the sky was falling from parents and administrators at the school! Let's focus on creating a more diverse atmosphere in STEM. It will be good for the country!
You appear to be saying that you oppose allowing demanding public schools for those kids who are up to meeting those demands. You also seem to be saying that parents properly have no say in how public schools are run, and that any parents who do want such a say must abandon public schools for private. Am I misunderstanding you?
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2890328
This paper describes how the mismatch of underprepared students with elite schools harms minorities. The author is a member of the US civil Rights Commission
John who comments repeatedly below is arguing that standards must be lowered so more blacks can qualify for admission. He doesn’t see that he is the racist here. His assumption is that blacks can’t pass the exams. What about the 6 black students who were admitted based on merit? Isn’t their achievement being undermined by his arguments?
It takes a blackface-wearing Democrat to resegregate Virginia schools all over again!
If TJ falls like other public schools, will people still wanna go? The reason TJ is so attractive to people because it's excellence. Without that, nobody wanna go any more!
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, August 13, 2020
Justice Department Finds Yale Illegally Discriminates Against Asians and Whites in Undergraduate Admissions in Violation of Federal Civil-Rights Laws
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-finds-yale-illegally-discriminates-against-asians-and-whites-undergraduate
Asra, has your TJ student read this? Does he/she agree with you?
Asra -
First, thank you for writing this article. People need to understand the extent of what is going on throughout our country.
Second, before I continue, I wish to state explicitly that I fully support merit-based admissions to any school. While I do not have children, I can sense the alarm that parents have over this issue. Good parents have poured their souls into their children and it is only natural to want the best for them so I commend you for what you are doing.
However, the obvious needs to be examined in depth: The suburbs surrounding TJ have been deeply liberal for years. I would venture that the majority of parents who have had children at TJ have reliably voted for progressive initiatives election after election. Many of these families are as traditional as they come: nuclear, the parents tend to stay married, many mothers are stay at home, the kids are disciplined, and there is an all out emphasis on academics and extracurricular activities. But they vote progressive.
What is happening at TJs is simply the next logical, obvious step for progressivism. This didn’t happen overnight. We did not go to bed last night with a 100% commitment to merit and then wake up this morning suddenly realizing the world now supports race based admissions. No. This has been coming for years. And when white parents expressed alarm so long ago they were called racist and accused of wanting to preserve white supremacy. The incessant focus on race and gender and everything else other than raw talent has been gaining steam for years. That camel pushed its nose under the tent decades ago and progressives backed it 100%. Except now, it has come for them and it is striking at what they love most: their precious children.
Asra - I recall attending university in the 1980s and even then, it was abundantly clear that we were supposed to “value and open our minds” to different types of intelligence that came from “different lived experiences” due to race. I recall having to sit through sessions in our residence hall that required us to talk about racism and its effects. Even then there were several special programs at the university that were for black students only. They were given special access to professors and summer internships at one of the large companies in town.
Everyone in the country knows this has been going on.
For several years now, some brave Asian American students have taken Harvard to task because of their admissions process. What an Asian American high schooler must score on his SAT to get into Harvard is . . . different shall we say than what a black student has to have to be accepted at Harvard.
I think a lot of people thought the STEM subjects would magically be exempt from this diversity, equity and inclusion effort. That, obviously, was magical thinking. Is there anyone out there who is not concerned what sort of doctors or engineers we are going to be letting loose on society in the very near term?
Asra - I support you in your effort fully. I just wonder why it has taken this long for so many people, so many progressives really because a lot of us on the right have been alarmed about this for decades but were told to sit down and shut up because we were obviously racist, to fully wake up to the insatiable, voracious monster that is the diversity, equity and inclusion effort?
I wish you and the other TJ parents the best Asra. You are going to need it.