I grew up in Northern Virginia, and went to a GT (gifted and talented) elementary school and middle school. I did not go to TJ, but knew many kids from my middle school who did. The GT program in many was a natural precursor to what TJ was.
One thing that I think the author fails to accurately reflect is how fierce the competitive process to get in to TJ is. And moreover, the culture within middle and elementary schools which this competition breeds. When he states:
"Score high enough on an entrance exam—something hard but totally within your control—and you could attend a school"
This is frankly a far cry from what I actually observed. There was an exam to qualify; however, so many extremely smart and tenacious people attempt to do well on this test, that to outperform all/most of them would make you a prodigy among prodigies. It was not uncommon for parents to pay for tutoring specifically oriented around this exam. I feel like saying that this is "totally within your control", is not literally false, but grossly misleading to the actual situation.
I can't stress enough that the competition to get in to TJ was like the competition to get in to Ivy league colleges. In fact in many ways, the competition around getting in to TJ was not just analogous to the Ivy league competition, but a direct extension of it, as going to TJ would make your college applications more competitive. And naturally this extends back even before TJ, going to placements tests in the 2nd grade to qualify for GT elementary schools. I feel (and can attest with my own experience) that kids at this age have no conceptualization of the long term consequences of these kinds of gateway moments. More often than not, success at these stages is more a reflection of parental coaching (or lack thereof) and familiarity in navigating their children through these gateways.
I grew up in a school with a culture similar to TJ but without an admissions process. I find it sad that people are trying to get into compsci just to get ahead in their career. It's also sad that Asian parents are pressuring and coercing children and teens into high-workload test prep classes, creating a toxic environment optimizing for top colleges with stratospheric admissions criteria, at the expense of mental health. Top college admissions essays select for self-aggrandizement, and they often have stricter requirements for Asian students.
I've heard that Asian (specifically Chinese) parents push for education because it was the only path out of poverty in China and after immigrating to the US, and others saying that in the US, pursuing high-income careers is necessary in the face of racial discrimination in broader society.
Yes, The Chinese college entrance examination has been the only hope for the huge amount of people in poverty(cheat and corruption are surprisingly rare) and the brightest ones get full PHD scholarship in the US. For those people financial safety is absolutely the No.1 concern. I’d say discrimination aside, the huge hope from their family is also a strong motivation.
Btw as someone who went through the preparation of the exam in China(tried 2 times actually), the last year of high school is like a living hell. My teacher was yelling at the class “it’s 6:30am already and the classroom is still not full. Do you fking want to go college?”
I don’t blame her, one point difference in score turns out to be 2000+ people in the regional ranking
Yea I have mixed feelings as well. I watched many smart and talented people develop very well through these programs. However, the inter-competitiveness at such a young age could be pretty destructive, and was largely unacknowledged and unaddressed by parents and faculty. It led to a lot of stratification in the way kids perceived their peers, and themselves.
To give a related example, my elementary school was a designated Gifted and Talented school, colloquially referred to as GT. Kids across the county who tested well enough could opt to attend; however, the school also had students who attended as their default district elementary school. For every grade at 3rd grade and above, some of the classes were designated as GT, and some were designated as, well .... non-GT. How is a 3rd grader supposed to rationalize their class being categorized as non-GT? Are they, as the abbreviation states, neither gifted nor talented?
The school's faculty would normally emphasize referring to non-GT classes as the "Base" classes, but I think the point remains in terms of what impact that has on a 3rd grader's psychology.
I suspect this kind of attitude -- that gifted programs are problematic because they imply some students are not gifted -- is the main reason why the US falls behind many other countries in measures of education quality.
Not everyone is equally good at school! Just like how not everyone is equally good at sports! We should plan around this, not drag everyone down to the lowest common denominator so we can convince ourselves it isn't true.
I don't see how programs like Thomas Jefferson High School will do much in bolstering the overall public education system. The program is ostensibly to give students with demonstrated aptitude, and an interest in STEM a dedicated environment to excel in. However, to what extent it fulfills on these goals, I would say is debatable.
But as for the general quality of US public education, I would think that to whatever extent TJ succeeds at its goal, they'd be irrelevant simply by magnitude. TJ, whilst a high performing high school, is one high school among many high schools, in a county among many counties, in a state among many states. Regardless of TJ's individual performance, they're averaged out when looking at aggregated numbers. If the goal is to generally increase US education quality, I would think programs like TJ, which are by nature exclusive, won't be successful.
Had the same reaction when I read that line. It's the same as saying scoring in the top 1% percentile is within your control. And how are kids even suppose to know about these schools at a young age? I would assume it's the parents that needs to be knowledgeable and push their children to those admission exams.
The author certainly seems to have a tormented school career. It's to be reminded that when in that situation, survival and escapism often takes priority than figuring out the best high school to go to.
I did some "gifted student" programs in middle school and high school, although not the specific one discussed in the article. This was my experience:
> And how are kids even suppose to know about these schools at a young age? I would assume it's the parents that needs to be knowledgeable and push their children to those admission exams.
Middle schools want to feed as many of their students to these programs as possible. When Johns Hopkins held an SAT for eighth graders, the teachers distributed flyers home and I heard about it on the morning announcements every day for two weeks. (If Virginia's middle schools aren't making students aware of their high school opportunities, that is very easy to fix.)
> It's the same as saying scoring in the top 1% percentile is within your control.
A topic of active debate within educational circles is whether we should tell students that intelligence is innate or that hard work/"grit" is the most important thing. There's some evidence that the "grit" story leads to better outcomes, so that's what educational establishments prefer to tell students.
It's likely, then, that "you can score in the top percentile with enough hard work and determination" is the official position of the school district. And who knows, it might even be true!
At my middle school, you could enroll in an afterschool prep class for TJHSST, run by the school. (And a large fraction of the GT students did!)
If you live in Fairfax County [where the school is located], it would be almost impossible to not have heard about TJHSST if you were in middle school.
I think the exam for TJ was relatively well known; but one thing I'd be interested in seeing is how much of kids attending TJ also attended a GT middle school, and how many also attended a GT elementary school. I have no numbers, but having gone through these systems myself, it seems like a lot to maybe even most. It become like a conveyer belt, and parents who understand the long term ramifications of these programs try to get their children on as early as possible.
Here is an interesting page I found on the history of the GT program for Fairfax Country Public Schools at elementary and middle school level:
http://www.fcag.org/gtfcps.html
These are the names of some of the previous tests:
- Gifted Behaviors Rating Scale form
- Naglieri Non-Verbal Abilities Test
- OLSAT
Obviously we can't go back in time, but it would be interesting to know what kids at the testing eligible age thoughts/knowledge/understanding where around these tests.
One thing that I think the author fails to accurately reflect is how fierce the competitive process to get in to TJ is. And moreover, the culture within middle and elementary schools which this competition breeds. When he states:
"Score high enough on an entrance exam—something hard but totally within your control—and you could attend a school"
This is frankly a far cry from what I actually observed. There was an exam to qualify; however, so many extremely smart and tenacious people attempt to do well on this test, that to outperform all/most of them would make you a prodigy among prodigies. It was not uncommon for parents to pay for tutoring specifically oriented around this exam. I feel like saying that this is "totally within your control", is not literally false, but grossly misleading to the actual situation.
I can't stress enough that the competition to get in to TJ was like the competition to get in to Ivy league colleges. In fact in many ways, the competition around getting in to TJ was not just analogous to the Ivy league competition, but a direct extension of it, as going to TJ would make your college applications more competitive. And naturally this extends back even before TJ, going to placements tests in the 2nd grade to qualify for GT elementary schools. I feel (and can attest with my own experience) that kids at this age have no conceptualization of the long term consequences of these kinds of gateway moments. More often than not, success at these stages is more a reflection of parental coaching (or lack thereof) and familiarity in navigating their children through these gateways.