Replies

The thing that tickles me here is that the Chinese would pay for the detailed info on TJ. Yes, it is an outstanding high school. But it is still a high school. Nothing being done at TJ is top secret, national security type stuff. We’re talking curricula and syllabi. TJ’s senior teachers and administrators probably present this information at conferences with great regularity. Attend a conference. Ask for a copy of the powerpoint presentation, and keep the three ring binder of samples that got handed out. Maybe even invite some of the TJ people to come over to China for a year on an exchange program.

Does TJ have a magical ingredient that catapaulted it to the forefront of U.S. schools? Yes, and it’s not a secret. TJ has — or had, before the Fairfax County Board of Education got drunk on DEI and went to war with excellence — an extremely selective, merit based, exam driven admissions system. And it rigorously screened faculty as well.

TJ’s other “secret” is that it is located in NOVA, which has become one of the country’s top tech hubs. The DC area is also a major player in biomedical and other STEM fields due largely to the DOD, NIH, NSF and other federal funding streams. There are a lot of really smart people in the area, and selective admissions created a magnet for their kids.

This could be done anywhere in which a critical mass of smart people develops. Of course the Chinese want to copy success. The shameful disgrace is that the American educational establishment has gone woke and is reflexively hostile to excellence, because the lefties don’t like the demographic correlates of objective testing and performance based evaluation.

A century ago, the top prep schools and colleges all wanted to copy Oxford. Since I like Collegiate Gothic campuses, I always thought that was a fine model. It’s kinda cool that an American high school became such an icon of excellence that it developed that kind of sex appeal. It’s said that Fairfax County now wants to throw it away.