Letter to the Editor: Alexandria Should Not Place a Cap on Ambition

To the editor,

We are writing to urge Alexandria City Public Schools to join the consortium of school districts that send students to the Thomas Jefferson magnet school in Fairfax County while moving forward with an academically-intensive STEM program at T.C. Williams.  

We are proud that our community is already working to improve STEM education. And we see allowing children to attend Thomas Jefferson as an extension of ACPS’ effort to create a new STEM program at Minnie Howard (and its eventual roll-out at the main T.C. Williams campus).

Encouraging ACPS students to consider the lengthy admissions process for Thomas Jefferson will jump start the new Minnie Howard STEM program.  The challenging course load required for admission to TJ is the same set of rigorous math and science classes that should feed into our own STEM academy (including Algebra 1 or Geometry in the eighth grade, honors level science and extracurricular programs such as Math Counts, Odyssey of the Mind and Math Olympiad).

Allowing students in Alexandria to sit for the rigorous entrance exam for TJ should not be viewed alone as an opportunity for the relatively small number of  individuals (a maximum of 13 per year), who would be permitted to matriculate. In fact, the prospect of the entrance exam and rigorous set of prerequisites will motivate hundreds of kids each year to study harder, achieve more and enroll in our STEM program at Minnie Howard (slated to accept 100 kids in 2014). This would be a positive outcome in and of itself.

In addition, allowing Alexandria students to attend TJ would be a statement by the community to our youth (and their families) that aspiration is a good thing and that we support the highest academic achievement. Our community should not place a cap on ambition.

Alexandria and our nation have a significant need for STEM educated students and a single path is not enough.  Students should have the opportunity to be challenged by a high school that provides rigorous, integrated coursework in science, technology, engineering and math—at T.C. Williams and at Thomas Jefferson a few miles down the road.