So what did the school board do? They scrapped the admissions process altogether, in favor of a "holistic" one [1]. Lesson? Be careful if you're in a minority group that over-achieves your population demographics, because you will be punished for it.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/thomas-jeffer...
And there were programs that successfully increased representation of black and hispanic students at TJ several decades ago - but these programs were halted.
We'll see how it plays out.
"In a bid to ensure geographical diversity, a certain number of seats will be allotted to every middle school in Fairfax County, to be filled by eighth-graders at that school who meet criteria."
Doesn't seem very meritocratic to me. Doing a lottery among everyone with a 3.5 is basically saying select every student that isn't failing. High school GPAs are highly inflated to the point that most people who would be competitive in the current application system have above a 3.9. The geographical diversity quota is de facto a race quota due to redlining and cultural enclaves. I don't know how you can possibly argue that accepting students from all over the district objectively through merit is worse than a geographic quota per middle school.
And what happens when you diversity admit these students who, by the admissions test, are not as competitive? The vast array of clubs and other high school competitions become dominated by the most competitive students, i.e. they're going to look like what TJ looks like now: 70% Asian according to the article. In effect you're tossing unprepared students into the deep end to get screwed for the college application process because they have 0 chance at securing any sort of extracurricular activity for themselves.
The real kicker here is that by the article's quoted data, 70% of the school is Asian. If you really wanted racial diversity in line with the population you'd also be pushing for increased white representation along the lines of a 150% increase in # of white students admitted. But that's not what these activists are talking about, which is how you know their ideas are just politically motivated garbage.
I attended TJ. I remember the test prep and the BS extracurriculars to pad resumes. I am not convinced that a student who has a 3.5 and has taken accelerated courses is unprepared to attend.
Extracurriculars at TJ (at least many years ago) were also tremendously diverse. Sure, somebody who has only taken Algebra 1 in 8th grade is less likely to end up with the top scores in the math olympiads out of the whole school (though who knows, loads of students didn't attend a school that offered algebra 1 in 7th grade so maybe they were brilliant and didn't have the option), but when I attended I did stuff like play bridge, watch rock concert footage, or rehearse a play during 8th period. This does not feel like a meaningful concern.
Are you a TJ grad?
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
The number of unarmed Black civilians killed by police each year is so small that you can fit the entire list of names and details since 2014 (31 total) on a few pages of generously-spaced HTML table rows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unarmed_African_Americ.... This is against approximately 10 million arrests per year and some multiple of that in total police encounters. While it's tragic that the count is nonzero, any rational person should be amazed that the incidence is so vanishingly low, given the uncertainty inherent to policing. It's truly remarkable that it isn't much much higher. I couldn't find statistics about police killings of unarmed White people, but I wouldn't be surprised if the number is higher than 31 since 2014.
The only reason you think there is (or was) an epidemic of police shootings of unarmed Black people is because the media has worked very hard to maximally exploit cherrypicked cases to get you to believe that.
Furthermore, Black communities are often strong advocates of retaining or even increasing police presence:
> A Gallup poll conducted from June 23 to July 6 [2020] surveying more than 36,000 U.S. adults found that 61 percent of Black Americans said they'd like police to spend the same amount of time in their community, while 20 percent answered they'd like to see more police, totaling 81 percent. Just 19 percent of those polled said they wanted police to spend less time in their area.
The reason for this is obvious. Persistent socioeconomic inequality has had the same devastating impact within Black communities as it has had everywhere else in the world: increased criminality.
The only reason you think there is (or was) an epidemic of police shootings of unarmed Black people [...]
This is unfair - note that the comment you are referring to didn't specially mention police unarmed shootings of blacks, the comment was about disportionate policing and killings (which presumably includes, but is not exclusive to shootings of unarmed citizens). I mention this because police shootings are not the only manifestation of institutional racism. There are also unjust arrests, accusations, beatings (remember, Rodney King wasn't shot), convictions, and general mistreatment. You might beat the rap, but you won't beat the ride.
As a relatively well-off, straight-laced black man, I'm not overly afraid of getting shot by police (although I think I got close to catching a bullet once), but I am terrified of a stop going bad in some way, not because of what I observed in the media, but because of my own personal experiences.
I live in a high-crime city in the northeast and as big component of my job is spending time in high-crime parts of cities all over the US (most recently, Chicago South Side, including Altgeld-Murray projects). The only times in my life where I thought my life or safety was in serious jeopardy involved interactions with police.
Furthermore, Black communities are often strong advocates of retaining or even increasing police presence
Absolutely true, and that reflects my feelings as well. But that is not the same as saying black communities trust police.
> I live in a high-crime city in the northeast and as big component of my job is spending time in high-crime parts of cities all over the US (most recently, Chicago South Side, including Altgeld-Murray projects). The only times in my life where I thought my life or safety was in serious jeopardy involved interactions with police.
I understand there's a meme that exists about Black people needing to fear being murdered by the police. The entire point of my post is that, from a statistical point of view, this is almost as irrational as being afraid of terrorism, a plane crash, a shark attack, or being struck by lightning.
I was also focusing very narrowly on the topic of police killings of Black people, as you noted. I want to be very clear that I understand that Black people are victims of racism and socioeconomic inequality in other ways.
That said, I’m black btw, the problems in the black community are not down to any one thing, but certainly the lack of two parent households is a biggie.
I was fortunate to grow up in California with two parents who could afford to send me to a private school.
Even absent more government intervention, just having more stable households will do a lot to fix the inequalities.
I'm Asian and I grew up with parents who hewed rather closely to Asian culture. There are two values they championed essentially above all others, well known to most: devotion to family and the intense pursuit of academic achievement. I do feel like I've been a direct beneficiary of that cultural impulse. Much like yourself, I did my best to leverage educational opportunities and had the stability of a supportive family.
When we talk about culture and the Black community, many people become understandably wary. It's a fine line between invoking culture and being seen to blame Black people for their own problems. Not to mention that, in doing so, it can be easy to lose sight of the richness of Black culture and its extensive contributions to so many aspects of the American experience e.g. in music, sports, entertainment, art, literature, and cuisine.
Perhaps a better way to frame it is that when a particular community has suffered so much injustice and attendant compounded stagnation, it's very hard to find an expedient solution to bring that community to parity that doesn't involve constructing fresh and even revolutionary internal narratives around achievement (and not just academic). Without that sort of effort, it might take many more generations for a combination of government intervention and the natural course of progress to fully remedy the imbalance.
And there's also the problem of exacerbating racial animus in the course of addressing that imbalance.
While I understand the need for it intellectually, I have substantial misgivings about preferential treatment being extended specifically to Black (or Hispanic or Native American) people along racial lines. There is something that feels deeply wrong about attempting to cure racial injustice by inflicting new racial injustices on people whose only fault was being born a particular race at the wrong moment in history, especially when we are purporting to be an enlightened society that has learned its lesson in this regard.
The position is unpopular with many here, but it is my opinion that we should not be devising a society that argues that a boy from an underprivileged neighborhood in Philadelphia is more deserving of opportunity than a girl from a disenfranchised part of the Rust Belt because he's Black and she's White. Rather, we should be saying that they are nearly equally in need of help from society because they are both disadvantaged. While this is not perfectly fair insofar as it does not factor in race, I believe it is a policy position that on balance would help the Black people who are most in need of it without leaving anyone of another race feeling as if (s)he's experiencing undue discrimination.
Unfortunately I believe that quandary is even more fraught than the issue of police killings and therefore at present resistant to the possibility of honest discourse.
I mean, I literally have no answer. Except, possibly, "yes" and "yes", and "the former is on the whole a lesser evil than the latter"?
This makes two assumptions that I would challenge: that affirmative action as it exists at present is benefitting the most socioeconomically vulnerable underrepresented minorities and that the problem you're describing cannot be tackled with race neutral wealth redistribution and other need-aware policymaking.
Also, if you want to go down the racial grievance accounting rabbithole, then the Irish, Japanese, Jews, etc would like a word as well. You're be hard-pressed to find a race that doesn't have some such claim.
There's probably also something to be said for having policies trying to get some geographic rebalancing in place as well. But, what I am trying to say is that redressing recent-past wrongs MAY require slight over-compensation.
To make anything other than sweeping generalisations, I would need numbers. Oh so many numbers.
https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/reports/Research-Rep...
This is an affliction that beleaguers both sides of the aisle.
https://www.axios.com/latinos-killed-by-police-estimate-858f...
Are there some unreported police killings? Almost certainly. Would there be enough to alter the central thrust of the above argument about the shockingly low incidence of police killings of unarmed persons relative to ~10 million arrests per year and some multiple of that in total encounters? Almost certainly not.
EDIT: Poster changed the link and added a comment. The below is a response to the modified comment.
> There is no nationwide effort to classify killings based on whether an individual was armed at the time. It's better to just look at killings because those are significant enough to record.
Sure. You can look at the total number of police killings and not only are the numbers still shockingly low as a percentage of arrests and encounters, but there is also no overt sign of an extraordinary racial bias: https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de....
> Are there some unreported police killings? Almost certainly. Would there be enough to alter the central thrust of the above argument about the shockingly low incidence of police killings of unarmed persons relative to ~10 million arrests per year and some multiple of that in total encounters? Almost certainly not.
Axios is one of the most credible outlets to both the GOP and the Democrats. Then-WH spokesperson Sarah Sanders has praised Axios as a worthy outlet.
The Raza database just looks at newspaper reports for deaths by police. There is no nationwide standard for how police deaths should be recorded.
You are the one suggesting bizarre conspiracy. A nationwide conspiracy of local newspaper outlets reporting deaths.
> A recent report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated approximately 1,200 people were killed by police between June, 2015 and May, 2016. Our database identified 1,104 people killed by police over this time period. While there are undoubtedly police killings that are not included in our database (namely, those that go unreported by the media), these estimates suggest that our database captures 92% of the total number of police killings that have occurred since 2013. We hope these data will be used to provide greater transparency and accountability for police departments as part of the ongoing campaign to end police violence in our communities.
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/aboutthedata
And I will once again reiterate that the suggestion that there are some great number of police killings going undetected in the present highly charged environment is itself a crime against reason.
Asians are remarkably vulnerable to dying by police. They are also extremely under-represented in the police force, unlike black Americans. In the Bay Area, police officers are paid very well. These are stepping stones to middle class membership.
Also, discussions of racism in education may just completely exclude Asians, as if they aren't even worth mentioning even once.
https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...
Are they disproportionately killed & policed? It depends on how you cut the statistics for your narrative. As a % of population vs % of Violent Crime vs % of Homicides etc etc. This is not to say there are no benefits about going into an encounter White.
I'm most concerned about anti-Asian racism because the problem is serious and unacknowledged. Anti-black racism is, at the very least, now acknowledged as a problem. I tend to focus my efforts where others don't.
I took a look at your post history and it seems very bitter about lost opportunities due to "elite" schools being preferred. As a fairly recent grad from a state school I offer my own perspective: private schools like Harvard offer much better support and less cutthroat competition, but if you can rise to the top in state schools then you have the same opportunities as everyone else. Making 300k at Facebook is more than accessible to half the UC's including ones you wouldn't consider elite at all. I know many people working at Big 4 accounting, bulge bracket banks, big tech, startups, VC, etc.
My gpa was only acceptable at my state school too - never heard of anyone getting into a good grad school with a 3.9something in CS out of my institution.
If your GPA was only acceptable then why are you blaming elitism for what you characterize as failures? Is that not a direct result of your own failure to study and succeed? (I'll also add that everyone I know who got into a good grad school aggressively pursued research and had multiple publications in top conferences by the time they applied; the standards are high and I wouldn't consider a 3.9 without research sufficient).
I mean it is happening at Google - look up how much Liz Fong Jones made as an ex-Caltech, ex-MIT engineer. Definitely happens to the MIT to Jane Street crowd and also happens to the people that can get offers at the IPOing startups I can’t even get interviews at. Not like I have the intellect to pass those interviews even if I got them though (I blame my parents for that).
> If your GPA was only acceptable then why are you blaming elitism for what you characterize as failures?
I definitely blame myself too, it’s why I have the dark thoughts whenever I cross a bridge. I should have done research in high school and I should have gotten at least two first author papers to a top conference in undergrad - instead I got 2 2nd author papers to medium tier conferences because I could never come up with any compelling research ideas. All of my work is ultimately meaningless because it just wasn’t enough - it’s extremely depressing.
I'm sorry you feel that way about your past. You should consider seeing a counselor. I've found that a growth mindset is important to ensuring you keep succeeding because there's nobody you can just copy once you've made it this far. Failures shouldn't be depressing but motivating instead. All this "I should have" thought should be "Now I know I should" instead. In your case, "I should have aimed higher" -> "I will aim higher now that I know". I can definitely empathize with you - I played video games all day in high school and only got into CS because of playing video games 5 hours a day and wanting to work with them. I screwed around freshman and sophomore year and destroyed my GPA. I came back and grinded and brought it back up the rest of my years.
Good luck. I'm sure you're more brilliant than you think if you made it to Amazon. If you ever need motivation go read the Reddit threads on people saying how hard it is to make it to Amazon.
That's...interesting, because it's certainly not the way the LinkedIn pages of most folks at Hudson River Trading, 2Sigma, Stripe or Citadel would imply (I did get into Citadel, but for a 2nd tier role). Of course, it would make sense for Netflix, which has a more Amazon-like hiring strategy.
> I've found that a growth mindset is important to ensuring you keep succeeding because there's nobody you can just copy once you've made it this far. Failures shouldn't be depressing but motivating instead.
I've had a lot of people say that, but after being beaten down and called stupid for 25 years it has worn on me.
I think you're: 1. way too hard on yourself. If you broaden your scope just a bit, you'll see that Amazon is an elite engineering organization. 2. buying way too much into phony credentialism. I don't make a big deal out of it, but personally I consider being able to hold my own engineering-wise while having gone to a state school as a badge of honor. 3. giving way too much headspace to comparing yourself with others in envy. There's always someone better, smarter, etc. I find them around me all the time. I choose to see them as mentors and role models, rather than rivals or competitors.
> I should have done research in high school and I should have gotten at least two first author papers to a top conference in undergrad - instead I got 2 2nd author papers to medium tier conferences because I could never come up with any compelling research ideas. All of my work is ultimately meaningless because it just wasn’t enough - it’s extremely depressing.
I don't think you're ever going to be satisfied if this is your definition of success. You should try to find meaning in the work itself, not in the recognition or status that comes from it.
Good luck!
You must have been beaten down by your parents over the last several decades and it has rubbed into you. I get it. Back in the 70s when I grew up, it was worse because they could legit beat me with a belt if they wanted and it was socially acceptable.
You need to understand that you are doing great. You have a job at Amazon that will help you get jobs for the rest of your career. The Amazon name pops on a resume. Stop worrying about others that got into Google or Facebook or Jane Street. All you are doing is reinforcing a circle of self hate. Fuck it.
I failed getting into Google 5 times. I failed getting into Facebook 3 times. I flunked at Amazon twice. Fuck, I haven’t gotten into any FAANG at all. That doesn’t measure your self worth. Who the fuck cares. I think you are probably jealous at all those that got in but stop thinking about it. You can forge your own path and be extremely successful without ever working at a FAANG. I worked at Uber but besides that it was all two-bit startups and shitty companies. and I did okay but you will probably make more from Amazon than I ever did at Uber. But I really made the most money in real estate. I’m semi-retired at this point because of that.
There’s nothing more important in life than being happy. Stop worrying about money. Worry about being happy. Go spend money on shit that makes you happy every now and then. Take vacations. Get a girlfriend and go traveling. Stop worrying about money and worry about proficiency. If you are programming because you think it will bring you money and not because you love it, then your life will be miserable.
Let go of the trauma that your upbringing brought you. It’s toxic and you are suffering for it. I get it. My parents wanted me to be a doctor and when push came to shove I told them no. They were furious for years but I never felt so free in my life. I stopped caring about them and what they said and just moved on.
You’re still young. Don’t waste your life stewing over others that got into better schools or better companies. Take what you have now and leverage it as you move up the ladder. Make smart decisions for your career based on what interests you, not just because of FANG or money. If you are happy and are progressing, money will coke and it will be on your own terms, not your parents and not from killing yourself while working at Jane Street like a slave.
This is curious. What kind of company do you work for? Like a startup, big established company, small company, etc.
I'm also curious about how many YOE you have.
I dropped getting a full degree, instead deciding to go back to the industry and working (I'd spent 3 years in the industry working before I went to Uni, and having money again sounded like an excellent idea).
Now, that was me working myself up, as it were, through a variety of jobs (more on the "run things" than "write things" side, but theres a lot of "write things" involved in running things in a scalable fashion), with a few actual dev jobs along the line.
Would I be able to get my CV in front of someone at Stripe? Honestly, don't know. If all they look at is schools, I suspect my chances are vastly lower than yours. If they look at previous job history? Probably, yes.
At this point, it seems to me that the main blocker for you is depression, it MAY be worth consulting a professional about that.
That's not to say that it's necessarily the most impactful form of institutional racism.
All told, I'd rather get into an inferior school over discriminatory treatment by police for life, with an outside chance of a genuinely horrific situation occuring that'd cost me my life.
But the discrimination against AA applicants is institutional and intentional in a way that police discrimination against blacks is not. For AAs, the solution is simple: stop discriminating against someone just because they're Asian. The question of how to get more equitable policing is endlessly discussed and debated, because it's subtle and relies on personal psychological biases, not policies intentionally constructed to discriminate.
To clarify for those who don't understand your point, Caltech is unique among elite universities for not using affirmative action in undergraduate admissions.