When I saw Dan’s predictions, I felt compelled to follow up with a batch of my own.  But I knew I had to one-up him somehow, so I went for the old snazzy-synonym-in-the-title trick.  Works every time.  I’m gonna classify these as “Temerarious (But Not Lunatic).”

I predict that, in 2012…

1. Five different dance albums will reach the number-one spot on Billboard, and one of them will hold it for two (or three) weeks.
2. The video game industry — and reviewers — will take Naughty Dog’s challenge seriously and begin building a new age of story-based gameplay.
3. If there’s a slow news day and no elderly royals are on their deathbeds, Kate Middleton will divorce her husband.
4. In the mode of Rocky Balboa and Live Free or Die Hard, we’ll receive word of another manly reload in the making with a title that distracts from the age of the franchise.  I’d probably guess Lethal Weapons if it weren’t for this, which may or may not end up with a number in its name.
5. Equestrian events at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London will be delayed to the point of infuriation by rainfall and fog.
6. There will be a movement on Twitter and Facebook suggesting that Americans should be allowed to cast their votes for president via Twitter and Facebook.  Many will sign the online petitions, but none of those who do will get out of bed on election day.
7. Six months in, Ashton Kutcher will reveal that his starring role in Two and a Half Men is all part of an elaborate prank for the premiere of a new season of Punk’d.
8. A few progressive American high schools will make available loaner copies of e-books in place of the hard copies for English students with Kindles and Nooks.
9. Taylor Swift will not attempt a nationwide summer tour as she focuses on her acting, which will earn her no accolades whatsoever.
10. Within Q2 of FY2012, Apple will finally top last October’s stock prices and continue rising as Tim Cook finds the secret notes Steve Jobs left hidden around his office: “Northern European indie music,” “All-black exterior,” etc.
11. The minimum latitude at which a person may admit to following NASCAR will jump up to 43 degrees north.
12. Lady Gaga will, by sheer concentrated mystique, form a supergroup including Stevie Nicks, Don Henley, Meat Loaf, and Afrika Bambaataa, but still will not produce a single track as compelling as what Ke$ha recorded into her laptop mic while alone in her bedroom with the lights off.
13. Simon Cowell will leave The X-Factor before its second season to rejoin American Idol, simply because he can no longer abide Steven Tyler as his replacement.
14. “Greece Voted Out of EU” will appear in millions of Google Reader feeds right below The Daily Bunny.  One of those things will be forwarded by thousands.
15. I’ll be one of about 500 people who notice when Spock’s Beard goes into studio with their new lineup; one of about 5,000 who buys tickets to a brief Gatsbys American Dream tour, hopefully with a stop on the eastern seaboard; and one of about 500,000 who hear about it when Eve 6 releases their fourth album.

I know I’m delinquent on my end of 2011 posts, but after seeing this post on Grantland, I couldn’t resist interrupting my countdown to make a few predictions for 2012, mostly in the pop culture department. Like Grantland, I will classify these predictions as “Fearless (But Not Insane).”

I predict that, in 2012…

1. JK Rowling will announce a non-Harry Potter project.
   I’m still convinced that there’s at least a 10% chance that she has already released something else under a pseudonym.
2. One of the following people will die:
   Chuck Berry, Elton John, Billy Joel, Ringo Starr, Keith Richards, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, Little Richard, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie
3. One of the following people will have a big public meltdown (an arrest could be involved):
   Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, The Situation, Jennifer Aniston, John Mayer, Ashton Kutcher, Kim Kardashian, Katy Perry, Paula Abdul, Steven Tyler
4. The Dark Knight Rises will get an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes
   Brave, meanwhile, will earn an impressive 94%
   
5. At least six sports-related child abuse scandals will emerge — at least one of them major
6. There will be a failed assassination attempt on a major public figure
7. Major competitors to both Steam and NetFlix streaming will emerge
   And they’ll both be Amazon, which will release a slick, unified content manager
8. I will get married
9. At least half of the following long-running comedies will announce a date or a year of their final episode:
   The Office, How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men, iCarly, South Park, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Daily Show, The Simpsons, South Park, 30 Rock
10. There will be a major Facebook backlash
    And a sexy new competitor with a name of five characters or less will emerge
11. Relient K will release a top-ten album and a top-twenty single
    I think it will be a back-to-basics album packed with catchy hooks that will make some radio noise
12. The world will not end
13. Mass Effect 3 will earn an 89 on MetaCritic, far from the year’s best score, but will go down as the 2012′s best game
    Discontent over EA’s DLC habits and co-op bugs will drag down the score a few points
14. A non-SEC team will win the national title
    And I have an inkling it will unexpectedly be Boise State
15. 2012 will be remembered as a fantastic year for movies, music, games, television, and writing
    For at least some of those media, 2011 was a soft year. 2012 will is shaping up to be great on every one of those fronts, though.

This is part of my 2011 wrap-up series, A Few of My Favorite Things, in which I discuss what I enjoyed this year, regardless of when it was released.

12. Grantland

Sports and pop culture web site (debuted 06/2011)

I was hitting 40, and I was like, “What do I want to do long-term?” I always wanted to create a site that was sports and pop culture. 30 for 30 had a big impact because I loved how that was about finding, empowering and working with these incredible directors, and I thought the same thing could work for writers. I researched different sites and looked through all of my favorite magazines and tried to find people who were on their way up.

(from The Hollywood Reporter)

This is part of my 2011 wrap-up series, A Few of My Favorite Things.

Before I jump into my top fifteen for 2011 — read the overview here — I wanted to discuss a few items that I chose not to include on the list for one reason or another.

Parks and Recreation

This is a brilliant sitcom that made “The Leap” in 2011 — from great to one of the greatest.

It’s a show that seems to fire on all cylinders week in, week out. It doesn’t have the varietyof Community or Louie (though its incredible polish and tonal consistency mask quite a bit of experimentation). Instead, it thrives on television’s best comic writing and acting, a fleshed-out setting full of vivid minor characters, and a deep love for public service and everyday people.

This banner year included highlights such as the Harvest Festival, an unforgettable flu season (“Stop— POOPING!”), April and Andy’s surprise wedding, and heart-rending reunion between Leslie and Ben at Indiana’s smallest park. And those are only a few of the highlights.

Suffice it to say that Parks and Recreation would be near the top of my 2011 list if I deemed it eligible.

Community

Growing ever more ambitious, Community scored a high batting average in 2011, which coincided with the second half of its second season and the first half of its third season.

Unlike the uniform Parks and Recreation, Community thrives on the fact that it can be a completely different show from one week to the next. A consistency of character and humanity run underneath even the most bizarre episodes, but the structural design of this show can radically alter every seven days.

While Parks and Rec has leapt it as my favorite comedy on television, that show can’t claim such out-of-left-field classics as Paradigms of Human Memory — a clip show where all the clips were new — or Remedial Chaos Theory — a multi-timeline comic masterpiece.

NBA 2K12

Technically, NBA 2K12 is eligible for this list. And I did enjoy it enough that it should be included on this list. But I chose to exclude it for a couple of reasons.

First, this is basically a makeover, tweak, and roster update to NBA 2K11. (I don’t mean this as an insult; it’s exactly what I wanted. This series is one of my favorites ever.) Thus, it’s mostly an extension of a game that was on last year’s list.

Second, there’s only so much to talk about. I play Dynasty mode for hours on end, managing an NBA roster. There’s a lot of strategy involved; you can’t just accumulate the most talent, you have to balance playing time and budgets to keep everyone happy.

But it’s basically a sports nerd’s pastime, and there’s not much more to it than what I explained in the previous paragraph.

So: Sorry, NBA 2K12. You didn’t make the cut.

The Office (BBC)

I watched The Office UK during the last week of December 2010, so it only narrowly missed the 2011 window I set for this series. But if I had held off a week to watch this series, it’d be near the top of this list.

While the US version of The Office remains one of my favorite series ever, I totally understand everyone who says the original is superior. Per episode, it definitely is: It cuts deeper into the themes of the series at a more rapid pace, making it a lot more effective.

Even more impressive is just how unexpected and original it was. This pair of comedians, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, starterd with what could have been a one-note sitcom premise — a wretched boss makes his employees miserable. They turned it into a three-dimensional character study (of not just the boss, but of his employees who are just as lost as he is) and a formal innovation.

After The Office, not only were mockumentaries acceptable formats for television comedy, but the whole assumption that sitcoms had to be simple and structurally uninventive (setup-setup-punchilne) was blown up. I’d rank it behind only The Sopranos as the most obviously influential TV series of the aughts.

“Materpiece Collection” and “Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”

I went through two seriously music taste-broadening experiments in 2011.

The first was to find an overview of the greatest orchestral music of all time. I found this collection online, listened all the way through multiple times, and have found other classical music I enjoy since then.

Later in the year, I went song-for-song through Rolling Stone’s imperfect but compelling list of the 500 “greatest” rock and roll songs of all time. It gave me an overview of many of the greatest tracks of the past 50 years. Don’t take the rankings or inclusions/exclusions too seriously; this type of list is prone to trendiness and groupthink.

Still, it was utterly compelling to delve deep into the canon of many of rock’s most influential and well-regarded songs.

I decided not to include either of these mixes, because “classical music” and “classic rock” are entries that would be a bit too broad even for my list.

Next up: We have to go back and take a look at a show my fiancee and I watched together this year

I know we don’t write much about sports here at Earn This, but I’m going to file it under the “pop culture” part of our description.

Let’s rewind a decade. A dominant Shaq-Kobe Lakers team stifled MVP Allen Iverson in the Finals to go 15-1 in the playoffs. Chris Webber and Gary Payton were still two of the best players in the league. Tim Donaghy was just another NBA referee.

Now, suppose I described the following to you:

• In a few years, the best basketball talent since Hakeem and MJ were drafted in 1984 would be taken first overall by his hometown team in the NBA draft.
• For seven years, he would play hard every night, bring them to five playoffs, win two MVP awards, go down in history as by FAR the franchise’s best player, and bring millions (if not billions) of dollars to the city he plays for.
• That summer, he decides to sign with a different team where he can play more of a Larry Bird/Magic Johnson facilitator role instead of being an MJ-like primary scorer. He takes a pay cut and moves to a team with another star scorer. That team also signs a rising star rebounder/scorer.
• To signal his shift from being a scoring-focused player to being a winning- and leading-focused player, he changes his jersey number from Michael Jordan’s to Bill Russell’s.
• As he announces his intent to take a pay cut to try and go win a title elsewhere, he makes a public address — and uses it to raise $2.5 million for a children’s charity (that has a chapter near his hometown).

If I’d told you all of that a decade ago, there’s no way in hell you would have guessed that the transition I described would cause the athlete to become one of the top five most hated athletes in the world. Or that the fans from his hometown would burn his jersey. Or that the owner of the team he left would write a few days later: “This shocking act of disloyalty from our home grown ‘chosen one’ sends the exact opposite lesson of what we would want our children to learn.”

You certainly wouldn’t have guessed that taking a pay cut and going to a team where he has a better chance to win it all would have him denounced as an uncompetitive wimp or that he’d irreperably tarnished his chance to become one of the all-time greats.

Yet, this is exactly what happened to LeBron James. Granted, my bullet points left out a few key details, like the tremendous level of hubris in “The Decision” and the “Three Kings” vanity press event. It’s also true that LeBron didn’t pay much courtesy to Cleveland as he prepared to move to a different team.

But you know what? LeBron had already given all he had to Cleveland. He made the Cavaliers far more money than he cost them. He didn’t “owe” the team anything. Leaving without much notice wasn’t the classy way to handle his departure, but it wasn’t evil or “ungrateful.”

The betrayal here wasn’t LeBron’s Decision; it was Cleveland betraying LeBron’s prodigious legacy. Why is the question “Should Cleveland retire LeBron’s jersey?” greeted with laughter? It should be retired the moment LeBron leaves the league. He’s their best player ever by a huge margin.

It really seems like Cleveland just wants to feed its self-suffering complex. It would suck to be a Cleveland fan, but here’s some news, guys: You have an excellent baseball team, you got your Browns back, and LeBron gave you seven years of basketball that ranged from excellent to transcendent.

I’m rooting for LeBron because he’s not only (somehow) underrated as a player, but he’s the most overhated person in the world right now. I told my dad this earlier and he responded with something like “I don’t hate him, I just think he has a huge ego, and I don’t want him to win.” That’s not hate in a traditional sense, but it’s sports hate, and it’s what most of the world has for the Heat.

We should be celebrating the opportunity to not only witness one of the league’s all-time great talents, but to see him paired with another future hall-of-famer. Will they win a title? Will they win five titles? I don’t know. But I’m going to have a blast watching them try.

There are still heroes left in the NBA. Kevin Durant, for example. LeBron is something else: a misunderstood “villain” with plenty of good left in him. It’s a redemption story waiting to happen, except he doesn’t actually need any redemption. I’m rooting for him because most of the world doesn’t seem to realize this.

I have written many columns about the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County. Some readers have suggested I stop. They ask: Why is one school so important?

Well, the U.S. News and World Report has had them as the best high school in the country every year since ‘07.  TJ’s average SAT score is 2,184, compared to the national average of 1,509 and the Fairfax County average of 1,664.  Per Wikipedia, “For schools with more than 800 students in grades 10-12, TJHSST was cited as having the highest-performing AP Calculus BC, AP Chemistry, AP French Language, AP Government and Politics: U.S., and AP U.S. History courses among all schools worldwide.”  This doesn’t seem particularly hard to grasp.

Here’s the situation. I am an education writer who focuses on the best teachers and best schools, as measured by how much value they add to students’ educations and lives. Jefferson is the most selective high school in the country.

I addressed this last time, but it’s worth repeating: I’m pretty sure the statement about selectivity isn’t true.  TJ may be the most selective public HS in the country, with an admission rate of around 16%.  But Stuyvesant in New York seems to have an admission rate under 10%.  Is Jay allowed to make up whatever he wants?

By many benchmarks — faculty quality, course level, equipment — it has to be considered among the best.

Not quite the best defense of the school, but OK.  Let’s not forget that Jay recently said that TJ’s teachers may not be any better than those at other FCPS schools.  Apparently faculty quality is now one of the primary pieces of evidence for TJ’s greatness.

That is irresistible to me. Now I have found a Jefferson graduate, Chelsea Slade, who has given me a way to drag into my Jefferson obsession everyone who didn’t go to Jefferson, which includes me and almost all of mankind.

That last sentence is practically a war crime. 

Slade sent me an e-mail challenging my view that it doesn’t matter whether you go to Jefferson or not. I think if you are as smart as the people who get into the school, you will find everything you need at any of Fairfax’s other fine high schools. Because the quality of high schools around here is so good, I would even argue that a Jefferson-quality student can get a Jefferson-quality education at most of the public and most of the private schools in the Washington area.

Jefferson does not make the students it admits more persistent, more intuitive, more charming or more gifted than they are.

This is veering dangerously close to a “Why even have great schools at all?” argument.  It’s one thing to say that other FCPS schools are pretty good themselves; now he’s just throwing in digs at TJ.  Also, more charming?  Really?  That’s one of the most important traits for a school to infuse into its students?

Jefferson provides great teachers, many learning options and smart, interesting classmates, but so do many other schools in this region that attract Jefferson-quality students.

OK.  It’s true that one’s own individual motivation greatly affects what he “gets out of” his education.  But Jay’s three pieces of evidence for TJ’s greatness were faculty quality, course level, and equipment.  He didn’t say they were its only benefits, but they were the first things he mentioned.  Wouldn’t those things set TJ apart?  That is to say, how could faculty quality be one of TJ’s biggest strengths if it doesn’t set it apart from other FCPS schools? 

Slade graduated from Jefferson in 2006 and from Brigham Young University in 2010, and she is a medical student at George Washington University. She said the environment at Jefferson is more conducive to achieving academic and career goals such as hers.

Here are her reasons, based on her impression of other schools, such as Langley and Marshall, which one of her siblings attended:

“1) Drug use at Jefferson is much less widespread, as far as I am aware, than at many other high schools. I felt my peers better understood the negative consequences of drugs and were smart enough to choose not to use substances. At other schools, the peer pressure to use drugs would have been much stronger.

I don’t have a huge beef with this, although it should be noted that upper-class adolescents use drugs a lot more than most people seem to think.  Also.  Nevertheless, this is her first point in TJ’s favor?

“2) Students at Jefferson use all of their spare time to study — lunch, between classes, in study hall, etc. At other schools, students are more inclined to gather and talk and gossip. I know when I have been in similar situations, despite being a well-motivated student, it’s much easier for me to give in and stop studying and start talking with friends. Whereas at Jefferson, people really did expect their peers to let them study during free time.

OK, I’m sorry, but now we’ve violently derailed.  First of all, the initial statement here is patently false.  Do you have any idea how many students spend not just lunch hours, but 8^th period, before/after school times, and, yes, even class time-gasp!-in senior lounge, playing ping-pong, playing video games, or just lounging?  A whole lot.  You know how many students found it amusing to figure out how frequently, and to what extent, they could be late for class without the teacher caring?  Or how many students snuck off campus during lunch-or class-when they weren’t allowed to?

Second, and probably worse, is this: if Chelsea’s claims were correct…THAT’S A GOOD THING?  To feel guilty about talking to friends?  To spend ALL of break time studying?  Are you serious?

“3) Students at Jefferson don’t tease each other for doing well. When my sister achieves a great score on an exam, she is mortified if anyone sees, because of the teasing and rude remarks that her peers make about her (“nerd,” “tight-wad,” etc.). At Jefferson, we got excited for each other’s high scores, and pushed ourselves harder to do better than our peers on the next exam. It was certainly a competitive environment, but that helped us all achieve much more than a degradative or rude environment would have done.

There’s something here, except for the bit about getting excited for others’ high scores.  False; fellow students are in competition with you for grades—no teacher is going to hand out 25 As—so you’re rarely all that excited to see someone excelling next to you.

“4) My peers at Jefferson had very high self-esteem. Eating disorders, self-mutilating behavior, and other things linked to low self-confidence in adolescents were much less frequent than what I have seen in other high schools. This environment of feeling good about ourselves helped us all feel and do better, be proud of our accomplishments, and help each other in achieving our goals.”

According to my Abnormal Psychology college textbook: “Research demonstrates that young women with eating disorders endorse perfectionist goals both about eating and weight and about general expectations for themselves.”  Doesn’t this sound a lot like TJ?  Also, “eating disorders are considerably more common among middle- and upper-class whites,” which makes up a considerable portion of TJ.

So, no, I’m sorry but I can’t subscribe to this one, either.  The TJ environment may preclude people from teasing others for good grades, but the uber-competitive environment doesn’t reduce behaviors like eating disorders.

It also would have been nice if Jay had noted that Langley, one of the schools with which Chelsea was comparing TJ, is one of the wealthiest high schools in Fairfax County-and thus similar to TJ in many respects.  But OK.

There are little or no data to buttress her view or mine.

An enjoyable statement on many levels.  First off, it’s not all that accurate.  Secondly, isn’t this a bad thing?  Shouldn’t people hold off on making proclamations without evidence?

Jumping off that a little bit…it seems that Chelsea was speaking from her anecdotal experience.  But relying on anecdotes is a prime way to get misled, for anecdotes lie easily.  I don’t care if Chelsea thinks this way–she’s not writing articles.  I mind Jay acting as though this is the best defense of TJ he can give us.

To the many observant teens out there, is your school so bad? Is Jefferson that good? Comment on my blog at washingtonpost.com/class-struggle.

None of this surprises me, of course: Jay Mathews came to speak to my journalism class when I was in high school, and we marveled at what a politician he was; he fawned on and on about TJ’s wonderfulness while in front of us, and then he would go back and spit out another column saying how nondescript we were.  Fun times.

The office for the company I work for has a large selection of edgy, anti-authority education books. I picked up this one yesterday and read most of it last night. It’s pretty short (191 pages) and, unlike most education books I come across, has little to say about schools other than to dismiss them almost entirely. They’re not for me, chimes Bach.

Instead, Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar is a manifesto for self-education, and it’s tremendously persuasive. Bach outlines much of the reasoning and the methods of learning only what matters to you. His utter dismissal of institutional education is infectious.

This topic resonates with me strongly. During my later years of college, I grew so weary of school and homework that I would flat out skip some assignments. I became disgusted at the inordinate value placed on grades; there are other measures of competency. (Yet, the pressure from all around to focus on them pushed me into a state of drifting and constant frustration.)

More directly to the point of the book, many of the meaningful things I’ve done have been self-taught (or mentored) and self-practiced. I teach myself how to write by reading good writers and writing tons and tons of (mostly) garbage. I teach myself web design and content management by running small, barely-visited websites. My business and leadership practice has come not from institutional education but perserverance at a few small opportunities, like the position I have now.

I say all of this not to toot my own horn; I don’t claim to be a good writer, web designer, or businessman. But these skills and hobbies provide me a ton of value and happiness. Along with a handful of other passions, they’ve nourished my soul and my brain. I also know that, if I persevere on these skills with techniques outlined by Bach, I’ll get better and better at these and whatever else I decide to pursue.

Bach clearly has both an immense desire for self-improvement and an unstoppable drive to satiate that hunger. The book glosses a bit too much over what magnitude of effort his no-institution lifestyle takes (perhaps focused mental labor is so natural to him that he fails to see how someone wouldn’t want to — or be able to — spend hundreds of hours on self-guided projects). It also drills the metaphor of buccaneer and self-learner to exhaustion, though I do respect his desire to develop a brand.

Yet, I recommend Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar to just about anyone who wants to hear a different take on learning from what they’ve heard from parents and teachers. I’ve developed many suspicions and vague impressions about the advantages of self-education and disadvantages of institutional learning since graduating high school. James Marcus Bach verbalizes and defends those notions here.

I don’t agree with its every point, but Bach’s book is a wake-up call.

—

EDIT: It appears you might be able to get Secrets of a Buccaneer Scholar for free as an e-book.

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.

Jay’s latest piece addresses Thomas Jefferson High School in northern Virginia, the old stomping grounds for this site’s original editors (and my only reason to hope that Dan won’t delete this posting).  I very much believe that intelligent discussion of one of the country’s most prominent high schools is warranted.  This is not that.  (I gleefully lift my format from the peerless site firejoemorgan.com, except that my comments will be in bold and the author’s–verbatim–in standard font.)

Well, it's certainly a struggle.

My colleague Kevin Sieff reported last week that the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology is not only the most selective public school in America, but one of the least diverse. After years of promising to reach out to the third of Northern Virginia students who are black or Hispanic, less than 4 percent of its students have that background, while ultra-selective colleges such as Harvard and MIT have about 20 percent.

First of all, as a former resident of NOVA and attendee of TJ, I can tell you that playing the race card for that school is such a tired story I can’t believe an editor allowed it.  But whatever.

Second of all, Jay, referencing 2 schools proves nothing.  Moreover, Harvard and MIT draw from, you know, the whole country, rather than a piece of one state that so happens to be one of the most wealthy—and concomitantly one of the least diverse—in said country.  Harvard and MIT have also been in the public eye as a ‘very selective school’ for much longer than TJ has, and thus have probably faced more pressure, for longer, to amend their admission’s criteria to ensure sufficient minority representation.  I hate when people assume two things to be comparable without taking into account the substantial differences that render said analogy moot.

That said, there may be a minor point to be made here.  But he doesn’t make it.

When you create a school based more on sorting than teaching,

What?  What in the world does that mean?

as Fairfax County did with Jefferson in 1985, it is hard to break the habit of picking applicants by their accomplishments and test scores at age 13, rather than their potential to benefit from Jefferson’s great teachers.

A) You went from “based more on sorting than teaching” to “great teachers” in like 40 words.  Just how good are these teachers, in your eyes?

B) Then what, pray tell, should we use to evaluate applicants, if not their accomplishments and test scores at the time of their application?

Don’t worry.  He’ll get to that point later.  I’m all of a flutter.

Four percent underserved minorities is not good enough. Public schools have to follow court guidelines on admission, but U-Va., also public, manages to have 13 percent black or Hispanic students.

Here’s another lazy analogy.  UVA by itself doesn’t come close to countering the notion that ‘public schools have to follow guidelines on admission.’ (Is it just me, or could one of the words “follow court” in that sentence be cut?) And, once again, UVA draws students from California to Texas to New Jersey, not just Tysons Corner.

Furthermore, he hasn’t told us what percentage of minorities he wants—though 4% is clearly too low—but his apparently-acceptable number has dropped from 20 to 13%.  Well that was easy, eh?  Let’s find a public school that’s 9% and pimp that one.  Nothing like having incredibly vague criteria that allows you to mold facts to fit theories, rather than the other way around.

Jefferson still rejects many qualified blacks and Hispanics.

And many qualified Whites.  And probably some qualified Tiger Woods-esque Cablinasians.  And maybe my cat.  Meaningless statement.

Last year, the school says, 52 Hispanics and 29 blacks reached the semifinal round of admissions, based on their academic records. But only 13 Hispanics and four blacks were enrolled.

First of all…enrolled does not mean admitted.  Thanks for skewing your data.  And I personally think ¼ of Hispanics going from the second round to enrollment isn’t a terrible number.  Roughly half of all students go from that stage to admittance, and since there were likely more than 13 admitted, that’s not heinous.  The numbers for Blacks are worse, yes, which gets at what I was saying earlier—that he might have been able to squeeze a small point out of this piece—but the sample size is ridiculously small; why not go back farther to have a larger sample?

The ability to benefit from the school’s imaginative teaching

I attended, and I’m glad I did.  But there is little to no imaginative teaching.

is not the main criterion for the admission people, I suspect.

As well it shouldn’t be.  Hmm, let’s see, what should we examine in consideration for admission—one’s tangible ability and achievements, as reflected in such meaningless dross as test scores, teacher recommendations, essays, and grades—or some vague ability, which everyone would define differently, to “benefit from [supposed, speculative] imaginative teaching”?

Like the rest of us, they are impressed by test scores. I have seen the Ivy League admissions process at close range.

If he would actually explicitly state how ‘close’ he’s been to said process, I doubt most people would interpret his proximity as positively as he does.

Applicants in the 95th percentile on standardized tests are not seriously considered because there are so many in the 99th percentile above them. Those colleges will, however, take a second look if you are a talented flautist or a ranked squash player or black or an alumni child or Hispanic or related to the family that just funded the new science center.

Finally, he gets to the meat of the piece, and it’s the most befuddling part.  Is he really defending the practice of admitting a lesser-qualified candidate because he happens to play squash or be related to a wealthy alumnus?  Is this what TJ is supposed to do?  These are better criteria than test scores and recommendations?  This is how you judge the intangibles of which he’s so fond?  Really?

Jefferson teachers tell me their admission committee is more handicapped by the fact that many bright eighth-graders, of all ethnicities, don’t want to attend their school or any like it.  Here is a relevant demographic fact: at many of our most selective public schools, students of Asian ancestry are the largest ethnic group. This is true of Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and Hunter College in New York City, and Lowell and Whitney in California, all of whom draw from areas where Asians are a minority. At 46 percent, Asians are also the largest ethnic group at Jefferson.

With no transition or paragraph break after the first sentence here, the continuity makes no sense.  ‘Many students, of all ethnicities, don’t want to attend.’  ‘Lots of Asians attend.’  Um…?

Maybe if he’d said, “Because many talented students don’t want to attend [although this is speculative, anecdotal information in and of itself], the pool of applicants shrinks, thus allowing for more variance in the data; and that, combined with Asians’ apparent zeal for education, allows them to be disproportionately represented,” he would have made sense.  But he didn’t.

There are two ways to explain this. First, most parents have little opportunity or interest in sending their children to selective high schools, public or private. We think our kids can get just as good an education in the neighborhood school.

This is ludicrous.  If we’re talking about private schools, then fine, some parents won’t want to pay.  But you can’t possibly tell me that most parents wouldn’t send their child to a public school—with free tuition—that probably provides a superior education.  No chance.  Talk to me about whether the kids themselves want to attend TJ, and I’ll listen; don’t try to sell me on parents not wanting it.

In many cases we are right. Most Northern Virginia schools have teachers just as good as those at Jefferson.

Wait, I thought TJ had such “imaginative teaching” and “great teachers.”  He said this, like, 4 paragraphs ago.  Maybe that bit about TJ caring more about sorting than teaching should have hit the cutting room floor, eh?

Second, many Asian American families, particularly those more recently arrived, have a reverence for science, math and academic success not typical of this country, and remember prestigious selective secondary schools in China, Japan and Korea. They love what Jefferson offers and apply out of proportion to their numbers.

All of this is prolix; if he’d just said something resembling what I wrote above, he could have explained the Asian numbers with far less time and ink wasted.

Their children’s commitment to science and math may be particularly important to their being more likely to be admitted than other ethnic groups, because Jefferson principal Evan M. Glazer says interest in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, math) is key. “A very bright student without a passion for STEM should not be selected for admission,” he says.

Welp, I guess I shouldn’t have been admitted.  Better shore up that loophole, guys.

To be fair, that wasn’t Jay speaking.  But it still has little relevance to his piece, and it vaguely offends me, so I’m going to attack it.

Asian-American children get terrific educations at these selective high schools, but they learn eventually that attending Jefferson does not guarantee admission to Princeton or Yale.

So?  God, these vague statements kill me; ‘Some qualified Blacks weren’t admitted,’ ‘TJ is no guarantee of admission…’

Again, with different wording, this paragraph might have sniffed cogency: “Attending TJ can provide a stimulating academic environment for the right student; however, because of restrictions on how many students from one HS will be admitted to one college, a gifted student might be better served, as far as college goes, to stand out at his local public school.”  Is that what he’s going to say?

Those colleges dole out admissions like Halloween candy, not too many to any one high school.

No, he’s going with a terrible analogy.  Jay, most houses dole out Halloween candy liberally—primarily because they don’t want two tons of it left over for the dog to choke on—so this couldn’t be more off base.

Broadening the ethnic profile of our nation’s best high school should not be that hard.

Actually, since affirmative action is one of the most controversial subjects in our society right now, I’d say it is/would be hard.  And what in the world does “broadening the ethnic profile” mean?  I hate euphemisms.

Many educators and students supporting Jefferson have formed a Diversity and Engagement Curriculum Team to recruit more blacks and Hispanics interested in science. I think the school should also keep in mind that success in America stems more from character than test-taking ability.

I guess I can just sign an affidavit at the end of my GRE that testifies to my exemplary character, which will raise my score 500 points.

Washington offices are full of brilliant people who lacked the patience, persistence and charm to rise as high as they hoped.

So?  The nation’s top positions are also full of people who possess little more than the good looks and/or charm to win over someone in the first 2 minutes of an interview.  This is how the world works.

Sadly, we haven’t figured out a sure way to teach character.

Well, then that makes this piece rather irrelevant, doesn’t it?

The largest federal study of character-building or social-development programs just reported little progress in improving student behavior or achievement.

There’s no attribution here, but I don’t mind so much, because he’s digging his own grave.

But we can tell which Jefferson applicants show signs of the determination and grace that produce great lives.

Can we?  Really?  So picking TJ applicants on the basis of their test scores and tangible accomplishments at age 13 is unfair, but by that age we should be able to descry “determination and grace that produce great lives”??  What in the world does that mean?

And who are you to define what a great life is?  I have utterly no idea how much ‘grace’ Isaac Newton had, so he must not have done anything for our society, eh?

I’m being intentionally annoying, I know, but statements like “we can tell which TJ applicants show signs of the determination and grace that produce great lives” represent the kind of vague and illogical claptrap that should never approach the pen of someone who’s paid to transcribe his thoughts for a prominent international newspaper.

Just ask their middle-school teachers.

Um, they do.  They’re called teacher recommendations.  They are required.

Many of the most promising ones will be black and Hispanic. Give more of them a chance, and Jefferson will not only be a more interesting school to attend, but more reflective of the values we want all of our kids to have.

How do you know how interesting it is or will be to attend?

And are there ANY values that “we all want” our kids to have?

Arg.  In retrospect, this piece exemplifies typical Jay hallmarks, namely that roughly 5% of it addresses the actual thesis—such as it is—and the rest features tangential filler riddled with inaccuracies and logical fallacies.  Oh well.  Back to your regularly scheduled programming later.  Maybe I’ll start firejaymathews.com.