Our favorite insipid reporter, Jay Mathews of the Washington Post, has struck again. Kudos to Dan to putting this one in front of my eyes, in which Jay does a total flip-flop on the drivel he published in the fall regarding admissions policies at Thomas Jefferson High School in Northern Virginia—a piece I had great fun in, um, challenging. Or, actually, maybe Jay hasn’t flip-flopped; since this piece lacks a point/thesis/intention, it’s difficult to say. Read on. (As always, Jay’s words–untouched–are in non-bold.)
By all accounts, he is one of the best math teachers in the country. The Mathematics Association of America has given him two national awards. He was appointed by the Bush administration to the National Mathematics Advisory Panel. For 25 years he has prepared middle-schoolers for the tough admissions standards at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, the most selective high school in America.
Slipped into the end of this obsequiousness is the claim that TJ is ‘the most selective high school in America.’ Per its Wikipedia page, it accepts about 480 students of 3,000 who apply—16%. Take a stroll over the page for Stuyvesant HS in New York: its total enrollment is 3,000 students, so we’ll assume the freshmen class is roughly 800. Admission is based solely on an exam, which about 26,000 eighth-graders take. 800/26,000: 3%. And this was just one school I checked because I’d vaguely heard of it; it all took about 60 seconds. Am I missing something? Or is Jay just allowed to make up whatever he wants?
Yet this year, when Vern Williams looked at the Jefferson application, he felt not the usual urge to get his kids in, but a dull depression. On the first page of Jefferson’s letter to teachers writing recommendations, in boldface type, was the school board’s new focus:
I’d just like to remind everyone here that, in Jay’s aforementioned piece, he bizarrely asked for TJ to use teacher recs—as though they didn’t.
It wanted to prepare “future leaders in mathematics, science, and technology to address future complex societal and ethical issues.”
So far, doesn’t sound particularly offensive.
It sought diversity,
Ahh, of course, here comes the juicy stuff.
“broadly defined to include a wide variety of factors, such as race, ethnicity, gender, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), geography, poverty, prior school and cultural experiences, and other unique skills and experiences.” The same language was on the last page of the application.
“This is just one example of why I have lost all faith in the TJ admissions process,” Williams said. “In fact, I’m pretty embarrassed that the process seems no more effective than flipping coins.”
Effective at what? That’d be nice to know. As Mathews points out later, the process is producing absurdly high SAT scores among TJ kids; certainly, that doesn’t entirely vindicate it—but that’s more evidence than Williams provides for his claims of a bad process.
Last year, he said, Jefferson rejected one of only two eighth-graders in Virginia who qualified to take the Junior USA Math Olympiad test, six scary problems to be done in nine hours. At the same time, “students who had very little interest [or] motivation in math and science were admitted,” he said. “Some admitted students had even struggled with math while in middle school.”
Oh. My. God. This was the part that made this post inevitable. By Williams’s logic, everyone who takes the Junior USA Math Olympiad test deserves admission to TJ. Really? Taking 1 of 2 said applicants tells us anything? Really? And, Jay, you’re going to pimp the awesomeness of said Olympaid by describing it as “six scary problems done in 9 hours?” If nothing else, that description makes it sound not that bad; more detail and specificity would have been lovely if you wanted readers to be impressed with it.
And “some admitted students even struggled with math while in middle school”—NOOOO!! What a disgrace!! We can’t admit any student who wasn’t able to take his middle school exams blind, with no studying, one arm tied behind his back, and half as much time as everyone else. I mean, are you serious? It’s a problem to ever admit students who may have struggled with math in middle school, for any reason? This sounds like something from The Onion: “Teacher complains that elite high school accepted a student ‘who even struggled with math in high school.’”
Williams knows that the school board is concerned that less than 4 percent of Jefferson students are black or Hispanic. He is black himself and was born in the District. He is familiar with the failings of math education for low-income minorities, but he doesn’t think rejecting top math students is the best way to make the school more diverse.
I love how any discussion of anything vaguely race-related has to point out that its instigator is a minority. You know, because that’s relevant to his intellect.
The solution, he said, is to “get rid of all warm and fuzzy math programs at the elementary school level and teach real academic content to all students.” Textbooks are dumbed down, he said, to accommodate allegedly math-phobic children. Don’t get him started on the overuse of calculators.
What’s particularly interesting about this paragraph is that it markedly illustrates the limitations of Jay’s column. Williams’s philosophy on teaching can be found at the link, and a good portion of it makes sense. There are few bigger critics of conventional American teaching than me. Yet, Jay doesn’t explain Williams’s cogent points (needless repetition of old material, inflexible teachers, excessive group work, to name a few); he lets him ramble that ‘some admitted students have even struggled sometimes in math OMGWTFFAIL.’ And Jay’s BUYING IT.
He showed me a copy of a Jefferson recommendation he filled out in 2004. It asked him to rate the candidate on “interest in math,” “self-discipline” and “problem-solving skills.” There was no mention of ethnic diversity. This year, recommenders are required to assess three qualities: intellectual ability, commitment to STEM [science, technology, engineering, math] and whether the applicant’s background, skills and past experiences “contribute to the diversity of TJHSST’s community of learners.”
Last November, I wrote a column endorsing that approach. I said that if the school put more emphasis on character and less on math scores, more black and Hispanic applicants would have a chance. I still believe that. But I have been so taken with the power of Williams’s teaching over the years that I feel obliged to present his contrary view.
He has run into several cases of Jefferson ignoring STEM commitment.
By the way, how does Williams know all of this? He’s a middle-school teacher, not a TJ insider. Is it from Bush’s advisory panel? Just curious.
Humanities types are being accepted, and stars of Mathcounts, the nerd equivalent of youth soccer, are being rejected.
“Humanities types.” Thanks, Jay. I’m sure they enjoy being talked about like they’re not sentient. The latter portion of the sentence is typical Jay claptrap; it might be perfectly defensible to reject some stars of Mathcounts when considering everything else about them. And?
“And yet how many minorities have this corrupt process scooped up? Barely any!” Williams said.
Ah, is this what we meant by saying that the process isn’t effective? It’s hard to tell conclusively; but this is something; addressing whether the admissions procedures have increased racial diversity would be worth noting, I suppose. But we’re about to shift gears to fawn over Williams’s diligence in writing recommendations.
“I usually write between 45 and 60 TJ recommendations and spend at least 75 minutes on each because I make them all totally unique. I felt like last year’s effort was a total waste of time.”
Too bad you don’t fully understand the meaning of the word ‘unique,’ which never deserves a qualifier.
The Jefferson admissions committee’s careful sifting produced last year’s average senior class SAT score of 2233, the highest in the nation by far. That is impressive. But at least one gifted teacher who knows Jefferson well thinks it could do better finding the students who come for the love of math, not prestige.
Students who come for the love of prestige? That’s the concern about the admissions process—that it’s finding 13-year olds who want status?
Look, changing admissions procedures to admit more minorities is one issue—a completely separate one. But freaking out over the mathematical attitude of intelligent tweens is overwrought hand-wringing. Jefferson receives tons of applications—not as many as Stuyvesant, it looks like, but plenty–all of whom come from one of the most-educated areas in the country. In other words, there are TONS of qualified applicants. We can parse words on the application packet to favor students with a slightly different approach to math, but, really, what’s that ruining? Is there any evidence that this approach is dulling the school or producing less qualified graduates?
Jay, there’s a way to present a contrary viewpoint to your own. Highlight its strongest, most persuasive points (not done) and compare them with your own (not done), ultimately either telling us why you still prefer your own (not done) or modifying your position into some sort of hybrid/synergistic/new model (not done). Instead, Jay wrote some Vern-is-wonderful filler, printed some of his dumber claims and ignored his stronger ones, and, as always, ignored the concept of a thesis. Well done.
You make many good points here, but I only wanted to comment on the one thing I feel qualified to: the USAMO is an intense exam for high schoolers with two qualification rounds preceding it, and I agree with Mr. Williams that any 8th grader who takes it should be admitted to TJ (barring some significant failure in another aspect of life). True, this should have been explained better (or at all) in the article, but having taken that exam in high school, I wanted to throw in my support for Mr. Williams’ assessment.
Accepted.
In the past, I’ve defended Mathews’s right to voice an opinion. This time, though, I take offense at his approach, even for reasons other than yours: after so many years of criticizing TJ’s admission process and choice of AP over IB, I guess he just forgot how to say anything nice.
“Last November, I wrote a column endorsing that approach. I said that if the school put more emphasis on character and less on math scores, more black and Hispanic applicants would have a chance. I still believe that.”
As I read this, I’m hoping and cheering for him to say “…and for this progressivism, I commend the school’s administrators.” What I actually get is perhaps the only way to say “thank you for responding quickly and successfully to criticism” without using any positive words.
Why is Mathews citing Williams’s opinion here? The only reason given for writing this article is that “I have been so taken with the power of Williams’s teaching over the years that I feel obliged to present his contrary view.” But Mathews first wrote a feature on Williams in 2003 (“An Intrepid Foe of Warm-and-Fuzzy Math”). Williams’s denouncement of TJ admissions was recorded, among other places, in a May 2005 issue of tjToday. In all this time, why are we only now getting such a thorough (apparently anti-Mathewsian) tongue-lashing from Williams via Mathews’s column? Furthermore, the quotes throughout the column amount to doomsaying. The only statistic given with regards to the effects of TJ’s new admissions practices is that “barely any” minorities have been “scooped up.” Mmhmm. If Williams has publicly opposed trends in TJ admissions for most of a decade, then at this point there should be some TJ graduates, admitted by this “corrupt process,” whose final records we could evaluate to see how strongly Williams’s fears are supported.
And what were those fears again? Does the article ever mention what anyone supposes will be the dreaded outcome of these ill-advised new criteria?
One tangential question: on a scale from “opinion” to “journalism”, where should a blog be? Do readers question that, or does the average person interpret any piece published by a news magazine categorically as “news” without making a distinction?