I’ve got no issue with programs that help “gifted” kids thrive, provided that the programs are available to a relatively representative swath of the community. It becomes an issue, though, when almost all the kids benefiting from such programs happen to come from wealthier families, relative to the rest of the district. In Fairfax County, about 34% of the students qualify for free or discounted lunch, and at some schools the number is close to 100%. According to a post above, the number is only 2% at TJ. Surely some of these less wealthy kids must have some potential. After all, we are talking about public education, not publicly funded private education.
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No argument there. I have no doubt that there are lot of students with the capacity to handle the work that never get the opportunity.
I will never understand why public k-12 education isn’t more of a priority in this country.
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If TJ admits some fixed percentage of students from each middle school, regardless of how well they perform academically, at least some of them will be significantly less academically “qualified” than others because of the disparity in our middle schools, wouldn’t you agree? Putting a group of students with disparate academic background in the same class of 500 will have one of the following two outcomes: either the academic rigor has to be lowered and the pace slowed so every student can be accommodated, in which case some students will be bored to death and it defeats the purpose of the school in the first place, or the rigor and pace are maintained but those less academically “qualified” students will likely struggle and fail. It isn’t a desirable outcome in either case.
I wasn’t talking about taking money out of other programs. We may need to fundamentally change how we fund public K-12 education.
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That isn’t the case for most other public magnet schools like TJ (with similar admission criteria). For example, at Stuyvesant, nearly 40% of its students qualify for free lunch, and another 10% for reduced-priced lunch.
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Note, however, that NYC public schools have over 70% overall eligible for free or reduced price lunch, so Stuyvesant students at 40-50% are still less poor than the overall district.
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Except TJ’s program wasn’t admitting a percentage of students from each middle school “regardless of how they perform academically.” The plan filled 450 out of the 550 available spots from the “top 1.5%” from each middle school, based in large part on academic performance.
If a public school like TJ can’t manage to function properly while making a place for the top 1.5% of 8th graders from each middle school, then the school has failed, not the students.
Most? I’d be interested in the seeing data backing up this claim, beyond the one example. I’d be particularly interested in seeing data from districts that, like Fairfax, have a nasty history of school segregation and discrimination.
(There was no Fairfax public high school for black students until 1954, and the public schools were not integrated until the mid-1960s. That’s not ancient history. Grandparents of some current Fairfax students attended segregated high schools, if they were allowed to attend high school at all.)
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Fairfax already offers solid options for the top 1.5% of middle schoolers by offering regular public schools. Not all public schools have to be available to everyone-that is the concept of a magnet. Some focus on foreign language, some for performing arts or music or whatever. TJ is for kids in the top one half of one percent, or possibly even one-tenth of one percent, in math ability and interest.
I dont think Fairfax of 70 years ago remotely resembles it today or has any relevance to the question.
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Unfortunately, the “top 1.5%” from some of the middle schools are likely to be near the bottom percentiles of some other middle schools. That’s a failure of the public K-12 education system as a whole, not TJ itself.
If Fairfax school district was still actively segregating and discriminating (before it changed its admission criteria), its top school wouldn’t have 70% Asian Americans, would it?
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The focus on relative ranking (“top 1.5%”) suggests that the prevailing mindset is that a school like TJ is a more of status reward for “winning” a competitive process, rather than an educational program for those whose educational needs are not met by other high schools. The students who would not (for example) be well served by a high school offering up to “regular advanced” courses (e.g. AP calculus which students generally take in 12th grade) would be those who could benefit from the special program (whether it is a special school like TJ, or the opportunity to take more advanced courses at a nearby college). The number of these students is not necessarily 1.5% of those in a school or the district. Since it appears that TJ admission is intensely competitive, leaving out many who could benefit from it, that suggests that it is too small, as well as intensifying the scarcity / competitive / cutthroat / zero-sum mindset among the students and parents.
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The top one-tenth of one percent? Wow. If true, then that is even more exclusive than I thought. But is this really “top one-tenth of one percent” of math ability and interest? Are all these kids really blessed with an innate math superpower? Or does what you call the “top one-tenth of one percent” (or whatever the percent) primarily consist of students from wealthier areas who by the fortune of their circumstance, training, and culture had earlier and better training in math and science? My guess is that it is the latter, but maybe I am wrong.
Can you or someone else help me understand how Fairfax County can accurately identify the “top one-tenth of one percent” of math superstars from a pool of 12 year olds who, up until that point, have had drastically different formal educational opportunities and outside math/science training? Does a 12 year old who has been training to get into JT from pre-school really have a greater math “ability” than the top 1.5% kid who hasn’t yet had the same training?
Really? So if we overlayed a map of areas most adversely impacted by segregation and other racist policies, we’d find no correlation to disparate income levels and quality of education across the county today? Or do you think that if if we did find a correlation, it would be just a coincidence?
So the top 1.5% at one district school will be near the bottom at another middle school in the same district? Again, I’d be curious to see the data backing up such a bold claim. And what exactly do you mean by “near the bottom percentiles of some other middle schools.” Are we talking innate math ability here? Potential? Or are we just talking about earlier exposure to a more advance curriculum inside and outside of class? My guess is that any differences are explained by the latter.
Remember, these are 12 year olds. Do you think that those who haven’t haven’t had Algebra II by then, they somehow have less potential to succeed in math?
I don’t follow.
- Are you suggesting that because many Asian Americans get accepted to TJ, then the slavery, segregation, and exclusion directed at African American communities for hundreds of years in Fairfax County is somehow no longer relevant to the situation of African Americans in Fairfax County?
- Are you suggesting that there are really no residual effects from hundreds of years of racism and segregation against African Americans in Fairfax County?
- Something else?
I’d like to understand your point, but, frankly, your statement makes no sense to me, so I must be missing something.
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That sounds like an applied math problem😀
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No wonder I can’t figure it out.
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Of course. Fairfax is a large school district with 23 middle schools.
It’s both nature and nurture. Regardless, if a student hasn’t been exposed to the basic materials in STEM, s/he isn’t likely to be able to keep pace, as all STEM subjects/knowledge, unlike in some other fields, are hierarchical.
You claimed that Fairfax school district had a long history of racism. My point is that Asian Americans were subject to the same racism of exclusion historically. That obviously had changed dramatically prior to the current controversy.
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Again, do you have any data backing your claim that the top 1.5% at some of these schools would be near the bottom at other schools in the district?
I disagree with your assumption that the top 1.5% of STEM students in these schools haven’t been exposed to basic material in STEM, but, again, I am willing to consider data to the contrary.
While Asian Americans have been (and still are) subject to discrimination and exclusion, this does not erase the vestiges of the hundreds of years of de facto and de jury policies aimed at segregating and oppressing African Americans in Fairfax County. Neighborhoods, school boundaries, and wealth distribution all have roots from these past practices.
In comparison, according to census data, in 1950 there were around 70 Asian Americans living in Fairfax County. No doubt they suffered discrimination, but I am not sure the vestiges are quite on the same scale. Again, I am willing to consider facts to the contrary.
Do you really think it is reasonable to equate the experience of the relatively wealthy and often highly educated Asian Americans who have moved to Fairfax County in the past few decades with the descendants of African Americans who were enslaved in Fairfax County for hundreds of years, and then were segregated and denied education for another hundred years. Do you really think that the vestiges of slavery and segregation no longer impact the distribution of wealth in Fairfax, or impact other basic services, including the quality of quality of education?
[ETA: The census data indicates there were also 35 “Indians” in Fairfax County in 1950. I assume this refers to Native Americans, but if not then there were around 105 Asian Americans in Fairfax Cty in 1950, not 70.]
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No one denies that African Americans suffered great historical discrimination in Fairfax county and elsewhere, but this case isn’t about African Americans, is it? According to the judge, the intent of the change in admission criteria was for “racial balancing” because the school board members thought there were too many Asian Americans at TJ. It seems to be very similar to what San Francisco school board was trying to do at Lowell high school in San Francisco, which was also rebuffed by the court and overwhelmingly rejected by the voters there recently.
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From the article you cited in the OP:
The Fairfax school board voted to revise admissions at Thomas Jefferson in 2020, a move meant to boost diversity at the school, which has long enrolled single-digit percentages of Black and Hispanic students.
Likewise, according to the judge’s opinion:
"The Board’s policy was designed to increase Black and Hispanic enrollment, which would, by necessity, decrease the representation of Asian-Americans at TJ.”
So, yes, it is about African Americans. More specifically, it is about what the School Board can and cannot do to increase enrollment of underrepresented minorities.
As you allude in a prior post, those NBA players must have had culture, training, and an earlier exposure to basketball concepts inside and outside of school.
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Of course people have different skills and interests. I’ve never claimed otherwise. I just don’t buy into the notion that there is a strong correlation between innate math talent, on the one hand, and the wealth of one’s parents, or color of one’s skin, or early educational opportunities, on the other.
Nope. But the top 1.5% of 12 year old math students in just about any middle school could greatly benefit from a school like TJ provided they were interested in such an education. Further, the quality of education wouldn’t be “degraded” by enrolling such students.
IMO, it is a bridge too far to compare the students at TJ to NBA players. We are talking about 12 year olds applying to high school, and 12 year olds need not have been drilling math year round for 6 years to develop the skills or interest necessary to succeed at a place like TJ.
But since you mentioned it, almost a million kids play high school basketball, so there are literally tens of thousands of "basketball schools.” But I don’t know of any publicly sanctioned basketball “magnet” high schools, yet basketball talent is still developed.
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It is not a given that the top 1.5% (or top (any number)%) of 12 year old math students happens to be the number who will benefit from a school like TJ that offers math courses beyond the “regular advanced” level (and not “degrade” the school). The number may be a greater or lesser percentage of the total in each school or the district. Indeed, it is likely significantly greater than 1.5% district-wide, given the scarcity / competitive / cutthroat / zero-sum mindset that is on display here. If TJ were larger, or additional programs for the beyond “regular advanced” math students were added to accommodate all students who will benefit from them on a non-competitive basis, there would not be much of a controversy.
I used that number because that was the plan, but I think that the percentage who could benefit (and not “degrade” the quality of school) is very likely greater than 1.5%, even on a school-by-school basis. I am really surprised that posters are arguing otherwise. To me it suggests that perhaps the parents of “advanced” math students are much like the parents of young athletes, young musicians, etc. in that many significantly overestimate the uniqueness of their own child’s “gift,” while simultaneously underestimating the talent of others.
Maybe, but I suspect that if the school expanded there would still be plenty of parents who would complain if the group that they identify with was not given a high enough percentage of the new spots. In other words, I doubt that expansion would change what you call “the scarcity / competitive / cutthroat / zero-sum mindset that is on display here.” It would just move the goalposts a bit.
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