Entirely possible its “too small to serve all [Fairfax Co.] students…” but each year TJ finds space to accept ~80 students from the neighboring county…
The unprecedented degree of economic inequality is likely responsible for the competitive/scarcity mindset you note
There’s natural talent and then there’s personal interest. The two do not necessarily coincide.
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Very true. It was the same with music - strong natural aptitude but little interest. I made him keep with it for a few years but gave in eventually as his heart wasn’t in it.
It’s so tiresome when a user doesn’t understand the legal definition of free speech when they make the free speech argument. Oh, and I deleted your post.
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https://www.fcps.edu/registration/thomas-jefferson-admissions/eligibility-requirements lists the areas participating in TJHSST.
Perhaps someone with local knowledge can say if this is a contract between the other areas and TJHSST / Fairfax County Public Schools for TJHSST to provide the advanced level education for students in those other areas.
Of course, TJHSST may still be too small if highly competitive admissions leaves out many students who could use and benefit from its more advanced curricular offerings that are not generally available in other schools.
Maybe it would lose its uniqueness if they made it bigger, or they’d have to take away resources from another magnet (school of the arts, IB, AP schools) if they made it bigger or opened a second similar school (GW?, Kennedy Science school?). Even Fairfax county has budget limits. Not every science and math student wants to go to TJ. Some want better athletic teams, art and music, writing programs.
I suspect they do have a contractual obligation to take those 80 students from another district. We have a few schools here, School of the Arts and Expeditionary Learning, that have agreements with other districts. The schools actually have their own school boards (BOCES) and were formed that way before charter schools were as common as they are now. The money for those students (state and federal) followed the students to the schools (still does) and were an important factor in getting the schools up and running. They take most of their students from Denver but a certain number from other districts.
"Not every science and math student wants to go to TJ. "
There is probably lots of self selection at TJ, probably from early on in the lead up to applying. My kids both became engineers but showed no interest in high school in available magnet schools. They preferred to stay in their local high school with their friends, competitive sports opportunities, etc. Not sure that’s that uncommon.
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TJ isn’t a good fit for everyone. What’s wrong if more students from one demographic group see TJ as a good fit than another? The majority of its graduates matriculated at “local” colleges in VA, MD and DC, like most other high schools. Those few who went on to MIT (or a similar college) would probably end up there anyway if they had attended a different high school. What TJ provided to its students is an opportunity to study with and be challenged by their academic peers. Because of its admission criteria, its students are assumed to have met a certain higher minimum academic standard so course materials can be taught more rigorously and at faster pace, and more advanced topics can be introduced to meet the demand of those have exhausted the regular high school curriculum. That presumably is what current and former TJ students value.
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I wasn’t really referring to that, but that the school district may not want to make TJ even bigger or put all its resources into another school like TJ. I don’t know how many applications there are for the 550 spots.
Say they have 1000 applications and all are qualified. It would make sense to say they should just open another school or double the size of this one. Well, where do those resources come from? They’d not only be pulling $$$ from another program but some of the brain power too. I’m sure the other high schools want to offer some high level math classes too, some great science labs, some competitive Olympiad teams. Students who don’t go to TJ will still want to maximize their STEM classes so will benefit all those non-STEM focused kids at the other high schools by making those schools strong in STEM too (as well as the arts, sports, foreign languages, etc.)
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A bit off topic, but NC has a similar school to TJ, NCSSM, but it is limited to 11th/12th graders only. Each year they accept approx 350 kids from across the state based on a competitive application. The state felt there were more kids qualified/interested in attendance and this year will open a new campus in the western part of the state with room for 100-150 additional kids.
Based on what we have seen over the years, NCSSM does a reasonable job in accepting the best students but each year there is typically a superstar kid that is denied. (Admissions is competitive but based on your Congressional District. This process is necessary due to funding, etc and while reasonable, it does result in huge difference in math/science ability within the school) Hopefully, the new campus will be a success and kids that have strong ability and love of STEM will continue to thrive.
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There’s clearly a demand and need for more schools like TJ (and magnet schools in general). However, it doesn’t seem to make sense to me that the way to expand access is to degrade what made schools like TJ so desirable for many. Why shouldn’t we as citizens/residents of the country/state/county be willing to fund more schools like TJ?
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Will the 450 extra “super advanced” students be numerous enough at any one school for the school to offer “super advanced” courses for them? I.e. if there are 2 “super advanced” students in math, but 30 or 60 “regular advanced” students in math (taking calculus in 12th grade), it is likely that the school will allocate a teacher for calculus, but not anything beyond.
Isn’t the point of schools like TJ to allow the “super advanced” students to be present in enough numbers for it to be worth having courses and teachers allocated to “super advanced” courses that otherwise would not be offered due to too little demand in any one regular school? If so, then shouldn’t the total capacity of such schools be increased to match the actual number of “super advanced” students in the area?
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You and many others seem to be assuming that changing how students are chosen for a school like TJ will necessarily “degrade” what makes these schools so desirable. But if there is truly a large surplus of students who meet the qualifications to handle the curriculum, then there are plenty of mechanisms to choose students other than simply taking the n highest scorers on an entry exam.
That’d be great if the funding sources were available, but the reality is that the money would likely have to come from elsewhere in the education budget.
Does it make sense to take money out of other programs to further benefit students who are already very well situated to succeed in school, relative to the other kids in the district? If it is true that only 2% of these kids qualify for free or discounted lunches, and if by the end of eighth grade they already developed their “innate” math superpowers, then maybe taxpayer money would be better spent on those who actually need a boost.
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So there shouldn’t be a cut off? What if just 50 more students wanted to go to TJ? Not enough to add more classes or another teacher, so everyone just has to squeeze over and share the resources? If there are 200 more, do you start another school, pull the calc teacher from another hs (because that school may not have enough calc students to fill a class anymore), cut the music program to pay for another math section? And what if the student who wants to go to TJ is pretty good, but not outstanding? He (or his parents) thinks he’s outstanding but he just didn’t make the cut. He could keep up at TJ but could do just as well at a regular (Fairfax regular, which is probably quite high) high school? In or out?
We had one of the oldest and best IB programs at a nearby high school. They were very strict and those in the IB program could ONLY take IB course - no AP, no electives in the main high school (IB program was in a separate wing of a not so great public high school), no marching band, no ceramics if you just wanted to take it. Nope, all IB all the time. But school politics got involved and those pesky federal laws and the district decided they had to let people who wanted to take an AP course do that, but they also had to let someone who wanted to take an IB class take that. No more separate but equal. Basically now they have a very mediocre IB program, very watered down. That’s what the law said they had to do. They had to accept some SPED, some other special needs kids to the program. It is not so simple as saying “We have 550 places and we’re accepting the top 550 students.”
I went to a pretty top hs. Although it was a while ago, the school didn’t offer AP classes at all (I think even now they only offer a few even though it is one of the biggest hs in the state). Why? There was a university about 6 blocks away and students who wanted (needed) calc or some advanced science class could just go take the class at the university.
What federal laws were these?
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I have always had a really hard time with this argument, at least re: gifted programs. I realize that the public school mandate is not to help kids maximize their potential, but rather to get as many kids over a minimum threshold of adequate education, whatever that is. And that a lot of the reason for that is budgetary. Or maybe the budget is driven by the limited mandate. Whatever.
It is a leap of faith that gifted kids will thrive in school if their educational needs aren’t met. That they will be just fine if schools shift attention away from them to focus on the “more needy.” Plenty check out or have behavior problems that can derail not just their own education, but disrupt classrooms as a whole. If you think of gifted kids on the other end of the continuum from special ed students, is it so irrational to spend taxpayer money on programming on both ends of the continuum?
I know, this doesn’t address how schools identify where kids are on the continuum or pay for a robust curriculum, or deliver it. I don’t have an answer to that.
In a perfect world, there’s endless funding for something as important as education and we maximize every kid’s potential. I just bristle at the assumption that it is in our collective best interest to underserve high achieving students. Categorizing students and pitting categories against each other diverts attention from the real problem- the choice not to adequately fund public schools to begin with.
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Where there has been an attempt to define a “Free Appropriate Public Education” is in the laws governing education for disabled students (Section 504). That states:
“ The “appropriate” component means that this education must be designed to meet the individual educational needs of the student as determined through appropriate evaluation and placement procedures”
So it’s all about maximizing individual potential. There’s no reason why this shouldn’t be the principal under which all public education operates.
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I am very familiar with FAPE. It’s really not about maximizing potential, in how it ends up playing out in court cases. And anyway, it only applies to special ed. Not gifted programs or general ed.
Eta: a decent explanation of FAPE: https://www.smartkidswithld.org/getting-help/know-your-childs-rights/childs-rights-appropriate-education-child-ld/
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The cutoff should be based on the ability of the students to make use of and benefit educationally from the more advanced course offerings than what typical high schools offer to “regular advanced” students. In other words, it should be an educational good, not a status good subject to intense competition that will result in exclusion of some who could benefit from it.
If the student will not be able to make use of the more advanced curricular offerings, then the regular school with up to “regular advanced” offerings will do fine for that student.
Yes, this can be a better arrangement than a special high school, since a university (or even a community college) can offer a substantial selection of more advanced (or just different) courses to advanced high school students. But not every high school is next to a university or community college that it can have this kind of arrangement with.