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Joined: Jul 2010
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I told the hubby this story and he said it's like if there's a highschool track team and they told the fastest runner in the front "Stop! Let all these other people pass first. Ok now you can go". They wouldn't do that. Val I love your idea of helping disadvantaged kids by making the free lunches better. If it's eat fresh healthy vegetables or starve they'd be a lifelong change for the better. Lucounu ITA if the school's so great they should make copies of the school, not change it.
Youth lives by personality, age lives by calculation. -- Aristotle on a calendar
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What really ought to be done is to replicate whatever instructional models are being used at that school and other successful schools, and promote excellence in teaching instead of tenure. Then these sorts of issues would never arise. Well...it's possible that the difference is that the kids who got in under the old model might have been smarter. Of course, but some of the remedial students might also have depressed achievement because of lack of opportunity before getting in. replicating a model won't change the fact that only a small number of people have highish or better IQs. IMO, we'd do better to ensure that free school breakfasts and lunches have high nutritional content (substitute fresh fish, fruits and raw or steamed vegetables for pink slime hamburgers and french fries, for example, and get rid of soda in school). The criteria for entry to TJ under the old regime didn't include intelligence scores, as I understand it, but achievement. While it's fine to set schools up to serve high-achieving children, an exclusive focus on high achievers who have been given every opportunity before entry, while excluding children who show promise but may need some remediation to rectify years of poor schooling due to their parents' low income, perpetuates injustice and inequality in the school system. The first op-ed piece, so eager to return to the old ways, even notes that a lot of Chinese wealthy parents seek ways to move to the area so their children can get in. This isn't just innate ability of the children at work. I'm surprised to see this; this idea underlies the philosophy that gifted kids are elitist products of pushy parents Nah. It's just a realization that being given lots of advantages from birth can have an effect on achievement. I'm also thinking that schools like TJ are simply doing things better than inner-city Title I schools, and could probably benefit lots of the children from poorer schools who happen not to be well served. Wealthy intellectual giants surely deserve a fair shake, but so does everyone. What you wrote is something of a myth. Is it? Sure, plenty of money may be wasted on inefficient attempts to improve test scores due to NCLB, but that doesn't mean that there are no better methods. Maybe schools like TJ are simply superb, and even children with low achievement would benefit from it. I'm guessing that there are some pretty terrible math teachers sucking up paychecks in Title I districts. I live in a Title I district (for math) where a person I consider to be incompetent has been hired as the district math consultant. His first move was to take a good number of weeks, IIRC about two months, at the start of every school year to have the chilren focus on math drills to memorize math facts better, taking away from the time devoted to conceptual math instruction. Do you think a highly gifted child would perform to his utmost abilities under this program? For example, I ran a program that devoted a lot of its funding to a project to get disadvantaged students ready for college. The people in charge of that project were talented and enthusiastic and worked hard. I'll take your word for it, but that doesn't mean they were doing the best job possible, or that the students in that program were just like the remedial TJ students either. I'm guessing that relaxing the entry criteria at TJ a bit has resulted in entry for some students who need extra instruction with the goal of hopefully filling gaps not afflicting the average TJ student, not that those new admittees are poor prospects for getting into college at all. And honestly, I think I could take lots of disadvantaged but motivated children and get them ready college, given three years, in the absence of severe developmental problems. I don't have a shred of proof, though I've tutored before with good results. I see "inclusiveness" of this type as dragging the school down because almost a third of the student body doesn't belong there. They certainly didn't belong there under the old admission criteria, but now they're there; and I think that whether they belong depends not on whether some other excluded child could have gotten benefit there, but whether they can. That's what I'm mainly curious about: how much TJ is benefitting the new admittees. As you point out, there are kids who deserved to go to that school and can't because their slots were taken by remedial-level students in the name of diversity. Why do our schools take the position that it's okay to definitely harm gifted kids on the off chance that we might help some other students? And why do we let them do it? Some of those children who "deserve" to go there apparently deserve it only because their wealthy parents moved to the area just for that purpose. This is economic advantage directly resulting in educational advantage, and it's unfair. Measures should be taken to increase fairness. This new admission policy is an attempt to do that, to spread the impact of a wonderful working school with proven results a little bit to other ethnic and economic groups, in the hopes that it will work. I don't see it as harmful to devote a percentage of the admissions at such a hugely successful school to this experiment, especially since those wealthy giants aren't going to be exactly disadvantaged elsewhere, and so many of them are excluded already.
Striving to increase my rate of flow, and fight forum gloopiness.
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Right. That is one of the links I posted. That is part of why I say the question is about whether or not TJ is currently a STEM school for gifted students or a high school for gifted students. No one is saying that the students who are getting in aren't gifted, or that they need remediation at the basic/below basic level. Just that the math scores aren't what they used to be. JonLaw, yeah, you're probably right. Momof1, I found the following in the Washington Post. It's written by a man who teaches physics at the school: Make no mistake, admission to the new Jefferson is still highly competitive. But Jefferson students are now selected using an admissions process that is highly random, subjective, and devoid of measures that distinguish students with high aptitude in STEM. This process...is more about memory, language skill, motivation to be successful in college admissions, test prep and just plain luck than the best available indicators of promise as a future scientist, engineer or mathematician.
Jefferson’s teachers are in the process of adapting to the new spectrum of students, but a fundamental shift has occurred. The old Jefferson was never a route to increased STEM achievement in the general school population. Rather, it was created to nurture promising STEM students at just the point where such students come into their real power — where their brains are literally fired up and ready to go. The regional commitment to the old Jefferson, tenuous from the start, has finally been overwhelmed by other agendas. A genuine success has been followed by political failure to embrace and sustain it.
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While it's fine to set schools up to serve high-achieving children, an exclusive focus on high achievers who have been given every opportunity before entry, while excluding children who show promise but may need some remediation to rectify years of poor schooling due to their parents' low income, perpetuates injustice and inequality in the school system Uh, if you are focused on achievement, you are focusing on something money can generally buy. So, a school that is for high-achieving students is going to be filled with people who got advantages in life, generally associated with large amounts of money and parental involvement. Achievement isn't potential achievement, it's actual prior achievement.
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Uh, if you are focused on achievement, you are focusing on something money can generally buy. Uh, yeap. The point is to broaden the entry criteria so some previously disadvantaged children can get some of the advantages without having to be reborn to rich mommies and daddies. If one looks not just at achievement-- because looking just at prior achievement might give the little ones of rich mommies and daddies much more of an edge than their ultimate ability to achieve in life might merit-- but at some factors indicating potential to achieve, some of the little ones with poor mommies and daddies can be given more of a chance to reap the full benefits of your tax dollar.
Striving to increase my rate of flow, and fight forum gloopiness.
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I'm guessing that there are some pretty terrible math teachers sucking up paychecks in Title I districts. I live in a Title I district (for math) where a person I consider to be incompetent has been hired as the district math consultant. His first move was to take a good number of weeks, IIRC about two months, at the start of every school year to have the chilren focus on math drills to memorize math facts better, taking away from the time devoted to conceptual math instruction. Do you think a highly gifted child would perform to his utmost abilities under this program? Of course not. But why should we react to bad Title I schools by sacrificing the needs of gifted students? What's the point of watering down entry requirements at the few public schools in this country that provide a stimulating, challenging environment for them? The system should force the crappy schools to change, not force the good schools to pick up their slack. As you said, changing the tenure system would help. But the reality is that most kids just aren't smart enough for a school like the old Thomas Jefferson. Changing the entry requirements won't change this. As I mentioned, IMO, the best way to help disadvantaged kids would be to give them free nutritious food at school twice a day starting in kindergarten. Ensuring that they have highly capable teachers would also go a long way, but the unions won't allow it.
Last edited by Val; 06/01/12 11:10 AM.
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In the short term, I'm not so worried about the plight of intellectual giants from wealthy families as I am about promoting more educational opportunity across the board. I don't see it as a tragedy that a few wealthy kids don't get instant ins to prestigious universities and may have to do so more on their own merits without elite-school cred-- and if they're capable of getting into TJ under a merit-based system, I'm sure that any who should succeed will succeed at getting into a good university. Are you under the mistaken impression that TJ is some expensive private school? It's a Virginia state-chartered magnet school. The cost of running the school is shared by several school districts in the area, including my own. Edit: I see now that you don't mean to imply that the rich are directly buying their way in, but rather doing so indirectly.
Last edited by DAD22; 06/01/12 11:13 AM.
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But the reality is that most kids just aren't smart enough for a school like the old Thomas Jefferson. Changing the entry requirements won't change this. As I mentioned, IMO, the best way to help disadvantaged kids would be to give them free nutritious food at school twice a day starting in kindergarten. Ensuring that they have highly capable teachers would also go a long way, but the unions won't allow it. Where is the assumption that the new admission requirements are leading to students who are less smart? My understanding is that there are thousands of students in the cachement area who are more than qualified for admissions. While I applaud efforts to increase the quality of school lunch programs, I really don't think that it is the surefire way to improving student achievement. Similarly, in Virginia, there are no collectively bargained union contracts, so blaming this on "the union" is an irrelevant argument. I do think that improving math and science instruction for all students starting in kindergarten is a good first step. My understanding is that Fairfax County has a fair amount of tracking occurring under the guise of "gifted services" that may very well prevent such high-quality instruction from filtering down to the masses.
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Where is the assumption that the new admission requirements are leading to students who are less smart? I inferred it from the high rate of remediation. Relatively low intelligence is an elephant in the room in US education. No one wants to admit that some students aren't very smart, so we find other ways to explain differences in ability. It's the teaching methods or bad schools or socioeconomic status or whatever. We'll do almost anything to avoid saying that some students just aren't smart enough to take a rigorous physics course or go to a traditional college (and that there are lots of other ways to be a productive person). Just last night at DS's 8th grade promotion ceremony, a speaker announced cheerfully that every student is capable of doing anything s/he wants, whether it's being famous or being a scientist, or whatever. Everyone! This is not true. (As for the unions, I'm not trying to blame unions for everything. No way. And VA teacher unions may not have the same type of bargaining clout that other states do, but this doesn't change the fact that teacher's unions in this country do a lot of harm by retaining mediocre and poor teachers).
Last edited by Val; 06/01/12 12:25 PM.
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(As for the unions, I'm not trying to blame unions for everything. No way. And VA teacher unions may not have the same type of bargaining clout that other states do, but this doesn't change the fact that teacher's unions in this country do a lot of harm by retaining mediocre and poor teachers). Given the recent changes in wage and working conditions, it's a wonder that we can retain even mediocre teachers. These days, it seems that a career in education is a sucker's bet. Wages are stagnant, hours are up, hiring standards (and the expenses to acquire them) are up, benefits are being gutted, classrooms are being micromanaged, inspiring passion has given way to teaching to the test, extracurricular budgets are being slashed... and on and on.
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