Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

Speaking as someone who actually went to the school in question (class of 2008), here's my thoughts:

TJHSST has been going downhill for a long while. Probably Lodal leaving as principal was a catalyzing factor, as she was much more adept at insulating TJHSST from school system politics than her successor was. The philosophy of treating the students as adults was under fire from parents of students at other schools for reasons I don't completely understand. (e.g., they forced the school to cancel all off-campus lunch privileges).

Another issue I saw was that the school generally trended away from a science & tech magnet to a more generic gifted & talented school. Instead of getting in because you were passionate about, say, programming or robotics, and the school's tech labs were a good fit for you; you are now going there because it's the best school in the country and you're top in the class, even if you don't much care for the enrichment activities that are provided.

You missed the golden era by a bit. I was there during the Geoff Jones era, and Lodal was the beginning of the end. Fairfax County got tired of TJ telling them to f--k off, and installed Lodal. She was a bit of a "company woman" in terms of appeasing the county, but apparently not as bad as who came after.

I would argue that the most recent principal has likely done far more destruction than the Lodal -> Glazer transition did, but I have heard that sentiment before from older alumni. (I was a student near the end of Glazer's tenure.)

As to the latter point, the school has definitely been trending in that direction. In my time, I would wager that around 50% of students had primarily a science interest, 35% had primarily a technology interest, and the remaining 15% had no strong inclination between the two. (From what I have heard, in more recent classes the tech has become more popular than the other sciences.)

At the end of the day, though, as long as the curriculum still requires sci-tech rigor, it's entirely beneficial that the school also have strong humanities and arts programs. 13 year olds are applying to this school, and people's interests change throughout high school in unpredictable ways.

Funny how perceptions changed over time. I attended in the early 90s and back then I was not aware of any philosophy to treat the kids as adults. We did not have an off-campus lunch program; I got detention one time when I got caught sneaking off campus. And there was definitely a vibe of gifted and talented across the board. The labs were not as sophisticated as they are now. My classmates had broad interests and ended up with achievements across many professions. Just within the few folks I’ve kept track of, there are successes in science and tech but also theater, TV, movies, writing, restaurants, politics, etc.

I don't know anything about the school but it sounds like the prestige took over- like with harvard, MIT, etc all, it's a great school but that's as much being driven by it's reputation for being a great school, attracting the most ambitious students in the world

+1 to all of the above (class of 10)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com