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I am not, but I went to a public high school with a similar atmosphere as what I hear TJ is like. At least at my school, if you decided to do a lottery for stud

I am not, but I went to a public high school with a similar atmosphere as what I hear TJ is like. At least at my school, if you decided to do a lottery for students from across the city and set 3.5 as a threshold for lottery entrance, the competitiveness of my school in national competitions would have suffered severely. Anecdotally, the people I knew with 3.5-3.6 middle school GPAs were just uncompetitive when doing team tryouts and olympiads and also got lower grades in AP courses compared to straight A students. When college admissions came around they made it into much less prestigious and less competitive schools compared to the straight A students. Anyone can play bridge or watch a rock concert. Not everyone can make the AIME and do math at a college sophomore level when they're a HS freshman. Schools like TJ and my high school should cater to the latter, not the former. The entire point of these schools is to _reward achivement above and beyond the norm_. Yeah, a student with a 3.5 can probably make it through TJ or any other competitive high school's courseload, but the point of these schools is that you put all the best of the best in the same place and network effects happen and push them to even higher levels of achievement _outside the classroom_. By admitting less competitive students (even if the application process isn't perfect) you prevent those levels of achievement from even happening at all.

UncleMeat 5y ago
All I can do is share my experience. I do find it weird how many people who have never interacted with TJ have developed incredibly strong opinions about it (so much so that several of my friends regularly receive hate mail from strangers who don't live in virginia). > the point of these schools is that you put all the best of the best in the same place and network effects happen and push them to even higher levels of achievement _outside the classroom_. This is the difference between you and me. I don't believe that the existing system admits the most meritorious students. Tons of people insist that I hate education and that I want to sabotage the most qualified students. But I don't believe that the test, with its entire cottage industry of prep (my parents were told that they should prepare for TJ when I was five), actually admits a more capable group of students than alternatives. The reason I believe this is that I've seen this happen in earlier education. I went to an accelerated program starting in 3rd grade. It was wildly inequitable. After noticing that there were some schools that literally never sent a student to the accelerated system, my parents looked into it and discovered that the process was clearly not evaluating merit but instead admitting people who understood how to navigate the application structure. Relatively small changes in the process rapidly made things much more balanced geographically and the changes have stuck. Students who enrolled in the accelerated program from the previously absent schools did not fail. I also think that the culture of prep damages people. A ton of my friends who are TJ alumni now share stories (well over a decade later) of how TJ was the most toxic learning ecosystem they have ever been in. These are people who are now faculty members at top universities, founders of successful startups, and more. The bulk of my friends from high school believe that they should have focused less on competitive schooling and spent more time on other things. Replacing bridge and drama with math competitions causes more harm, in my opinion. TJ is also not the only place to get an accelerated education in northern virginia. If a student wants to partial differential equations in high school, most high schools in the area have attachments with George Mason, which enables access to these curricula. In fact, TJ does not offer those courses to high school freshmen, so the students at TJ that want to do what you say are stuck going to Mason anyway. I also think that there are some extremely qualified students who'd be much better served by the IB programs offered at nearby schools. AP is just truly awful, in my opinion. You take smart kids and crush them into rigid curricula rather than letting them explore. All of us got deficient humanities educations at TJ.
- scarmig 5y ago
  > All of us got deficient humanities educations at TJ. Perhaps. For those of us who didn't even receive a mediocre STEM education at our take-all-comers schools and still certainly got a significantly worse humanities education than you, it engenders bitterness and anger that you're arguing for pulling up the rug behind you and preventing the next generation of children from having access to a high quality education. > A ton of my friends who are TJ alumni now share stories (well over a decade later) of how TJ was the most toxic learning ecosystem they have ever been in. Is it more toxic than having classes where kids turn up drunk and threateningly brandish knives?
  - UncleMeat 5y ago
    > Perhaps. For those of us who didn't even receive a mediocre STEM education at our take-all-comers schools and still certainly got a significantly worse humanities education than you, it engenders bitterness and anger that you're arguing for pulling up the rug behind you and preventing the next generation of children from having access to a high quality education. My wife went to a public school in Fairfax County. Her humanities education was much better than the one I received at TJ. I believe that this is the least controversial thing I've said on the topic. The humanities at TJ was just bad. Only two years of history. Curricula rigidly defined by the College Board. No approaches designed to really stretch students, since faculty were told that the humanities were a second class citizen and students should have more work time allocated to STEM. I know at least one teacher who resigned in protest (from what was otherwise a dream job) because of how terribly the humanities were treated. Even if you believe that the only way to get a quality education in northern virginia is to attend TJ (which is just false), the proposed changes do not change the number of people who are able to attend. Different children would attend TJ, yes. But nobody is taking a stick of dynamite to blow up the school. > Is it more toxic than having classes where kids turn up drunk and threateningly brandish knives? I'm not sure you are super familiar with the rest of FCPS. The other public schools offer a large suite of AP or IB classes (depending on the program) that make it very very easy for smart students to avoid what you are describing. If you are actually concerned about this, go complain about the accelerated middle school programs - which are largely designed to stick accelerated programs in the lowest performing schools so they can bring the grades up. TJ also had its fair share of this stuff. I know some people a few years off from me who had class with a kid that would regularly masturbate in class. I know students who were preyed on by teachers.

UncleMeat 5y ago

All I can do is share my experience. I do find it weird how many people who have never interacted with TJ have developed incredibly strong opinions about it (so much so that several of my friends regularly receive hate mail from strangers who don't live in virginia). > the point of these schools is that you put all the best of the best in the same place and network effects happen and push them to even higher levels of achievement _outside the classroom_. This is the difference between you and me. I don't believe that the existing system admits the most meritorious students. Tons of people insist that I hate education and that I want to sabotage the most qualified students. But I don't believe that the test, with its entire cottage industry of prep (my parents were told that they should prepare for TJ when I was five), actually admits a more capable group of students than alternatives. The reason I believe this is that I've seen this happen in earlier education. I went to an accelerated program starting in 3rd grade. It was wildly inequitable. After noticing that there were some schools that literally never sent a student to the accelerated system, my parents looked into it and discovered that the process was clearly not evaluating merit but instead admitting people who understood how to navigate the application structure. Relatively small changes in the process rapidly made things much more balanced geographically and the changes have stuck. Students who enrolled in the accelerated program from the previously absent schools did not fail. I also think that the culture of prep damages people. A ton of my friends who are TJ alumni now share stories (well over a decade later) of how TJ was the most toxic learning ecosystem they have ever been in. These are people who are now faculty members at top universities, founders of successful startups, and more. The bulk of my friends from high school believe that they should have focused less on competitive schooling and spent more time on other things. Replacing bridge and drama with math competitions causes more harm, in my opinion. TJ is also not the only place to get an accelerated education in northern virginia. If a student wants to partial differential equations in high school, most high schools in the area have attachments with George Mason, which enables access to these curricula. In fact, TJ does not offer those courses to high school freshmen, so the students at TJ that want to do what you say are stuck going to Mason anyway. I also think that there are some extremely qualified students who'd be much better served by the IB programs offered at nearby schools. AP is just truly awful, in my opinion. You take smart kids and crush them into rigid curricula rather than letting them explore. All of us got deficient humanities educations at TJ.

scarmig 5y ago
> All of us got deficient humanities educations at TJ. Perhaps. For those of us who didn't even receive a mediocre STEM education at our take-all-comers schools and still certainly got a significantly worse humanities education than you, it engenders bitterness and anger that you're arguing for pulling up the rug behind you and preventing the next generation of children from having access to a high quality education. > A ton of my friends who are TJ alumni now share stories (well over a decade later) of how TJ was the most toxic learning ecosystem they have ever been in. Is it more toxic than having classes where kids turn up drunk and threateningly brandish knives?
- UncleMeat 5y ago
  > Perhaps. For those of us who didn't even receive a mediocre STEM education at our take-all-comers schools and still certainly got a significantly worse humanities education than you, it engenders bitterness and anger that you're arguing for pulling up the rug behind you and preventing the next generation of children from having access to a high quality education. My wife went to a public school in Fairfax County. Her humanities education was much better than the one I received at TJ. I believe that this is the least controversial thing I've said on the topic. The humanities at TJ was just bad. Only two years of history. Curricula rigidly defined by the College Board. No approaches designed to really stretch students, since faculty were told that the humanities were a second class citizen and students should have more work time allocated to STEM. I know at least one teacher who resigned in protest (from what was otherwise a dream job) because of how terribly the humanities were treated. Even if you believe that the only way to get a quality education in northern virginia is to attend TJ (which is just false), the proposed changes do not change the number of people who are able to attend. Different children would attend TJ, yes. But nobody is taking a stick of dynamite to blow up the school. > Is it more toxic than having classes where kids turn up drunk and threateningly brandish knives? I'm not sure you are super familiar with the rest of FCPS. The other public schools offer a large suite of AP or IB classes (depending on the program) that make it very very easy for smart students to avoid what you are describing. If you are actually concerned about this, go complain about the accelerated middle school programs - which are largely designed to stick accelerated programs in the lowest performing schools so they can bring the grades up. TJ also had its fair share of this stuff. I know some people a few years off from me who had class with a kid that would regularly masturbate in class. I know students who were preyed on by teachers.