I live in DC and read local news. The TJ article was featured in last week's WaPo Metro section. I have a personal interest in the school's academic quality and admissions policy.
>The new policy is race blind.
The old admissions policy was race-blind.
>It has further improved access for economically disadvantaged students and students with other special needs
It has removed standardized literacy and numeracy testing. The test has been replaced with a 7th grade GPA requirement, and opaque "holistic review" which lets county officials paint whatever demographics picture they want. The holistic review is a fig leaf over what many parents suspect to be de facto racial quotas, which are expressly illegal. One group of parents is suing over this: https://pacificlegal.org/case/coalition_for_tj/
What the new process does NOT do is address the root causes which led to low black and Hispanic admissions with the old system, i.e. underperformance on standardized numeracy and literacy tests. A true "class absolutist leftist", which I am not, would address those problems at the root instead of fudging TJ admissions numbers to obscure the issue. Now it looks like the county is preparing more diverse students for success at TJ, which it isn't, because the old race-blind system showed that it wasn't. We've put a thin coat of paint over a bunch of subpar middle schools and support systems.
Under the new policy, TJ will admit more students who are not equipped to succeed in such a rigorous academic environment. In response, either the students or academic standards will suffer. Underequipped students admitted under the new system replace others who in all likelihood would've been better prepared to succeed. This is the problem of affirmative action "mismatch," about which much has already been said: https://harvardpolitics.com/matters-mismatch-debate-affirmat...
>The conservative white racists already lost at TJ because their normal arguments of “meritocracy” failed them, so they aren’t an especially important political player on the topic.
The new process is not perfect and will not address all problems with biased racial outcomes in FCPS education. Many of the activists who support changing the admissions system actually support eliminating TJ entirely and rethinking how access to accelerated education works. Why is there a limit to the number of students who can get these experiences?
However, as somebody who has personal experience working with this for the accelerated programs starting in 3rd grade, it is precisely the same people who complain about policies trying to address inequities earlier in education. This makes the argument that the changing TJ admission policies won't address root issues seem very disingenuous.
If you want to help change inequities in early accelerated education, then there are places where you can help. Since you are local, I'm sure people would love to have you!
I went to TJ. The testing culture there was amazingly toxic and a huge portion of my alumni friends consider our experiences there to be actually traumatic. Not the actual learning, but the testing culture. It has also gotten worse over time, and despite continued high rankings it has become more difficult for graduates to be accepted into top universities. This is true even for institutions like CalTech that famously focus on "traditional" application processes. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement of the TJ test.
I was one of the students whose parents paid many thousands of dollars for test prep, which was structured in the "testing strategies" manner rather than actually teaching any sort of academic material.
I do not believe that the TJ test was actually a proxy for merit and I do not believe that the incoming class will be ill equipped to succeed at an accelerated program.
>The new policy is race blind.
The old admissions policy was race-blind.
>It has further improved access for economically disadvantaged students and students with other special needs
It has removed standardized literacy and numeracy testing. The test has been replaced with a 7th grade GPA requirement, and opaque "holistic review" which lets county officials paint whatever demographics picture they want. The holistic review is a fig leaf over what many parents suspect to be de facto racial quotas, which are expressly illegal. One group of parents is suing over this: https://pacificlegal.org/case/coalition_for_tj/
EDIT: Yes, and I'd have taken merit lottery over holistic review, per previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27569189
What the new process does NOT do is address the root causes which led to low black and Hispanic admissions with the old system, i.e. underperformance on standardized numeracy and literacy tests. A true "class absolutist leftist", which I am not, would address those problems at the root instead of fudging TJ admissions numbers to obscure the issue. Now it looks like the county is preparing more diverse students for success at TJ, which it isn't, because the old race-blind system showed that it wasn't. We've put a thin coat of paint over a bunch of subpar middle schools and support systems.
Under the new policy, TJ will admit more students who are not equipped to succeed in such a rigorous academic environment. In response, either the students or academic standards will suffer. Underequipped students admitted under the new system replace others who in all likelihood would've been better prepared to succeed. This is the problem of affirmative action "mismatch," about which much has already been said: https://harvardpolitics.com/matters-mismatch-debate-affirmat...
>The conservative white racists already lost at TJ because their normal arguments of “meritocracy” failed them, so they aren’t an especially important political player on the topic.
That's quite the laundry list of assumptions.