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ClaireMarie,
Great post. Right on the money. Genes matter, so does environment. Parents who care the most about education tend to have the kids who do well in school. duh.
I agree that the accusation that NoVa High Schools are robbed of top talent by TJ is pure bunk.
There are many high quality and smart kids who attend McLean HS and Langley HS even if they were admitted to TJ b/c they prefer to stay within their neighborhood and go through HS with their friends, instead of trekking 2-3 hours round trip to TJ.
If the GU admissions officer thinks so highly of Whitman, than what does he make of the fact that Montgomery County DOES indeed have a county magnet school called Montgomery Blair HS?
Montgomery Blair would probably rank favorably with TJ if MB wasn't also a neighborhood school.
Nysmith sends more students to TJ every year. It's very good. Potomac is also a good school. Some Longfellow students turn down TJ to attend Potomac. Flint Hill is also good.
Yes, the majority of TJ students come from middle schools with GT centers, Longfellow, Kilmer, Carson, and Frost are the top. I think Nysmith is the top private school. This year's class is 45% Asian. TJ admission stats for this school year can be found here: FCPS - News Releases
You can ask more questions at the website associated with FCAG - Home , many TJ parents post there and private school parents too. The owner of that site has two kids at TJ, and one who graduated from there and is now at Cal Tech on full scholarship. She knows EVERYTHING about every school that feeds to TJ, including the private schools. Post your question on her forum: FCAG : Fairfax County Association of the Gifted
The Washington Post, Jay Matthews, made a post about 1/2 year ago showing which MS in this area had the most students going to TJ.
Longfellow and Carson were up there, 1 and 2 (40+%).
Very low (single digits) from Thoreau and Cooper. Kilmer was in the 20's.
Cooper may not be a GT center, but it's got very high standardized testing results. Also, kids who go to Cooper may elect to go to Langley even if they get admitted to TJ.
The interesting stat would be to find out how many kids getting into TJ actually attend. Is this the "yield" that admin officers talk about?
BTW, Haycock is not in a "low income" area. It has a Falls Church postal code but is considered part of McLean.
I agree that Haycock is not in a low-income area. But the neighborhoods surrounding Haycock include some (relatively, for the McLean area) affordable townhouses and pretty small and modest frame single-family homes. If you look at the GT centers for each pyramid, they are rarely located in the schools serving the most affluent neighborhoods. (Which is ironic, since those schools usually have a disproportionate number of GT-eligible students.) But, for whatever reason -- perhaps to pump up the SOL and other test scores of the lower-income schools? -- FCPS has chosen to put the GT centers in the more modest neighborhoods.
And I think that most kids getting into TJ end up attending there. It's not like applying to college, where students accepted at Yale are also being wooed by Harvard and Princeton. Most of the TJ applicants (and their parents) evidently believe that their neighborhood high school is not the best option; otherwise, they would not have bothered with the whole grueling application process. TJ is regarded as the Holy Grail by ambitious and high-achieving students and their parents. No other school even comes close.
I agree that Haycock is not in a low-income area. But the neighborhoods surrounding Haycock include some (relatively, for the McLean area) affordable townhouses and pretty small and modest frame single-family homes. If you look at the GT centers for each pyramid, they are rarely located in the schools serving the most affluent neighborhoods. (Which is ironic, since those schools usually have a disproportionate number of GT-eligible students.) But, for whatever reason -- perhaps to pump up the SOL and other test scores of the lower-income schools? -- FCPS has chosen to put the GT centers in the more modest neighborhoods.
And I think that most kids getting into TJ end up attending there. It's not like applying to college, where students accepted at Yale are also being wooed by Harvard and Princeton. Most of the TJ applicants (and their parents) evidently believe that their neighborhood high school is not the best option; otherwise, they would not have bothered with the whole grueling application process. TJ is regarded as the Holy Grail by ambitious and high-achieving students and their parents. No other school even comes close.
Haycock is pretty much so maxed out now that they are sending GT kids to Churchill Road.
Churchill Road is located nearby Langley HS, and isn't a "low income" area either. Both the Churchill Road and Haycock areas have modest homes that were built long ago and may eventually be torn down for larger homes. If brand new, more expensive communities existed in those areas, I'm sure they would sell too.
Even if I go by your theory that they created GT centers in "low income" areas to boost the test scores, it wouldn't make sense since the standardized test scores at those schools are so very high (eg. around 99%) for the subjects tested.
GT students making up maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of the population can't be responsible for boosting scores near 100%. It doesn't work mathematically. We have to give credit to the teachers and the students that perform irregardless of their family's income.
By your definition, they are better served putting GT programs in schools closer to Bailey's Crossroads instead of Haycock and Churchill Road.
TJ is the holy grail for very smart kids, but given the fact that both McLean and Langley have high SAT scores and kids that perform well on AP tests and go on to elite schools (similar to those at Churchill/Wooton/Whitman/etc) , that's an indicator that there are plenty of smart kids that choose not to attend TJ.
It's also a strategy for some. Why be one of the big fish in a crowded big pond when you can be a big fish in a medium pond?
Even in the high income areas, all students in FFX Cty suffer with the student teacher ratio. That's why the wealthy don't bother and send their kids to private school which have lower ratios.
If you look at the GT centers for each pyramid, they are rarely located in the schools serving the most affluent neighborhoods. (Which is ironic, since those schools usually have a disproportionate number of GT-eligible students.)
Actually, this isn't surprising.
Whether GT or not, schools in wealthier areas generally perform better than schools in poorer areas. That's because the better teachers want to teach there, and are held to a high standard, while the kids come from generally white collar professional parents and are generally better prepared to learn.
So, even though a school like Cooper MS isn't labeled GT, it's probably performing near the level of a GT school.
TJ is the holy grail for very smart kids, but given the fact that both McLean and Langley have high SAT scores and kids that perform well on AP tests and go on to elite schools (similar to those at Churchill/Wooton/Whitman/etc) , that's an indicator that there are plenty of smart kids that choose not to attend TJ.
It's also a strategy for some. Why be one of the big fish in a crowded big pond when you can be a big fish in a medium pond?
I don't really think there's an inconsistency between what you and Clairemarie are saying. There are very bright kids who don't want to be in the big pond at such a young age, or don't want to put up with a daily commute back and forth to Alexandria. They don't apply to TJ - and some of them would have been admitted had they applied.
If, however, they go ahead and apply to TJ and are fortunate enough to be admitted following a rigorous testing process, the vast majority will take advantage of the opportunity and enroll.
There are many high-achieving students who do not apply to TJ -- perhaps because they are not that interested in TJ's math/science focus, or they are not interested in a long bus ride, or they prefer to attend school with their neighborhood friends. Whether a significant number of families make a strategic decision to stay at their neighborhood school in order to have a better chance at getting into Harvard is unclear. Given the crapshoot nature of elite college admissions (especially for students from affluent suburban schools in major metro areas), and the undeniably wonderful opportunities offered at TJ, it seems unlikely that many families would choose that route.
If, however, they go ahead and apply to TJ and are fortunate enough to be admitted following a rigorous testing process, the vast majority will take advantage of the opportunity and enroll.
That would be an interesting statistical figure that unfortunately has not been revealed.
There are many high-achieving students who do not apply to TJ -- perhaps because they are not that interested in TJ's math/science focus, or they are not interested in a long bus ride, or they prefer to attend school with their neighborhood friends. Whether a significant number of families make a strategic decision to stay at their neighborhood school in order to have a better chance at getting into Harvard is unclear. Given the crapshoot nature of elite college admissions (especially for students from affluent suburban schools in major metro areas), and the undeniably wonderful opportunities offered at TJ, it seems unlikely that many families would choose that route.
Well, the latest with TJ is that the "new" principal is trying to integrate more social science classes to the curriculum. In fact, many kids who graduate from TJ don't move on to math/science.
There's a difference between a kid having to enroll in Langley/McLean vice TJ versus a kid having to enroll in JEB Stuart/Annandale vice of TJ. With the former, you will receive a quality education/opportunities also, and to those who have that option, the appeal of TJ may not be the end all be all.
ClaireMarie,
Great post. Right on the money. Genes matter, so does environment. Parents who care the most about education tend to have the kids who do well in school. duh.
Urghh...some of these posts are making me cringe, especially that one by ClaireMarie, and I think that environment is like 95% of the determining factor on whether or not someone will succeed or not. My husband has a Ph.D in Physics, and he immigrated to the US from Eastern Europe where you have so so many highly-educated people with advanced degrees in Chemistry/Engineering/etc. etc., but how come many of those countries (Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, etc.) that produce loads of scientists are still poor and backwards? Obviously, their economy is still in the crapper due to the economic ENVIRONMNENT and history of Communism/Socialism.
The USA is successful because we get the "cream of the crop" from around the world, we benefit while other countries suffer Brain Drain as their most successful citizens leave, and same goes for Fairfax County, they have the cream of the crop and it's one of the most highly-educated communities in the country.
Why is TJ 45% Asian? Are they really all that smarter than your run-of-the-mill White-American? Or is it because those kids are studying 3hrs/day and under hyper-intense pressure to perform since Mom/Dad may have left South Korea and uprooted the whole family PRECISELY so that the kids could attend schools in FC Gifted-Talented programs? Yes, I have heard of this happening too, and to me that's "gaming the system" because in this country everyone (including temporary immigrants here on a visa) can attend public schools for free.
I am African-American, and I see how hard it is for some of these kids to even concentrate and study at home, because the TV is always on! My husband grew up poor in a really small apartment, and when he was school-aged his Mother would not even allow anyone to turn on the water when he studied because she did not want to break his concentration! Now, how many AA parents (or even White parents) have that sort of committment and dedication to education? WP just wrote about how Fairfax County parents are complaining because you need 94% to get an A, and they want to dumb-down the standards and switch to a 10 pt system!
I have read "The Bell Curve" and read loads of research, and enough already, it is NOT GENES!!
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