How to Solve the Diversity Problem at NYC’s Elite Public Schools
http://m.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/03/how-to-solve-the-diversity-problem-at-nycs-elite-public-schools/386944/
Here we go again…
The real issue few want to address is how the K-8 curriculum in most NYC public schools with the exception of the highly selective G & T centered elementary & middle schools has been watered down in the last couple of decades to the point some families feel the need to start prepping for the SHSAT as early as third grade.
Back when I took the exam in the early '90s, most students either took the test cold or did a few months of prep at the most. Not years worth of prep and certainly not since third grade.
And the SHSAT exam is practically identical to the one I took structurally and contentwise judging by what I’ve heard from my HS alum committee, old teachers still teaching there, and from perusing sample questions from the DOE. In short…the exam didn’t change…something else did.
The report from NYU and the authors’ reactions says it all. Changing the admissions criteria “had a lot smaller of an impact than I would’ve predicted,” according to one of the authors. The main impact would be more “White” kids and fewer “Asian” kids. (As anyone with a kid in a Specialized High School knows, both “White” and “Asian” encompass a wide range of national origins.)
This results of the NYU study might surprise the authors, but are not surprising to this NYC parent. I also think that the results (more white faces, fewer “Asian”), would fade quickly as the immigrant families that view Specialized High Schools as a pathway to middle class success in the US would adjust. I hope that the NYU study will at least make for a more honest discussion as opposed to the current one, which sometimes reads as an attack on the current students and families, as though it were somehow unfair for first and second generation immigrants to take too many spots in the Specialized schools.
@cobrat - I agree that the test prep schools have really boomed in recent years, with more and more families, and new immigrant groups, deciding that this is a good way to prepare for the test. But plenty of kids still prep by doing a few months of practice with the Barron’s book - and get into the school of their choice by doing so.
From what I’m hearing from current parents of students aspiring to attend one of the SHSs is unless one gets into a highly selective G & T centered elementary/middle school, the regular curriculum is paced so slowly most students won’t cover the basic math and vocab/CR concepts until well into 8th grade…when it is too late as the exam takes place at the beginning of 8th grade for entry into 9th.
Hence, the perception one needs to do years of prep to even have a smidgen of a chance on the SHSAT.
I don’t really get why this is so surprising. Schools like Bard Early College and Beacon have a much more holistic admissions process considering not just grades, but things like interviews or portfolios of classwork or essays. And yet they also have low numbers of African American and Hispanic students, and the percentage on free or reduced lunch at both is almost half that of Stuyvesant or Brooklyn Tech.
Most of my fellow alum from The Bronx High School of Science object with the effort to tinker with the current SHSAT, which is the most race blind type of admission system. The problem is with the lack of preparation for the black and Hispanic students in the elementary and middle schools. Having seen another school system trying to tinker with the admission system for its very highly regarded specialized high school with additional criteria such as written essays and teach recommendations, the result was even fewer black and Hispanic students being admitted. The families with means will always have more resources available to them.
From my observation, many families with means would avoid sending their kids to the SHS. They tend to prefer attending private/boarding schools where there is more handholding and less intensive competition between students.
The high academic workload*, lack of handholding, and reputation for intensive academic competition among students among well-off NYC families tend to be major turn-offs.
Some well-off families may also be turned off by the high number of working/lower-middle class “striver” families…especially recent immigrants whose children may surpass their own academically in such an environment.
The president of the Stuy math club who was a math genius and ended up majoring in math at Harvard came from one such working-class immigrant striver family.
- Most HS classmates...including yours truly found the workload and rigor/pacing in college to be easier than in HS. Exceptions were those attending colleges like MIT, Caltech, CMU, UChicago, Swat, or Reed.
^^In NYC that’s true. The super wealthy almost always avoided public schools. There are notable exceptions, like Leonard Lauder (Bronx Science 61). I’m thinking more of the Northern Virginia model where many students at TJHSST come from upper middle income families.
The demographic resulting from the holistic admissions process at BHSEC is interesting in that the school is 70% female.
Staten Island Tech was included under the specialized test umbrella a few years ago to move away from the “power score” admissions model because it was so easily and significantly gamed. Now SI Tech and some of the other schools are in danger of moving back to the power school model because of the outcry when no black students were admitted last year. But it won’t help.
I agree with @cobrat that the well-off are less apt to send their kids to a specialized high school, perceiving the competition and workload to be too high. Back when I attended, many of us were first-generation Americans, and I think that is even more true today.
Green, the private school process now is also slightly earlier than the specialized process, so by the time those decisions have come out, well off parents have already made commitments of time and money to the private schools, so they are often committed there regardless.
Some of the well-off parents who did commit to private schools back when I was applying to the SHS did so as a fallback in case their children failed to get into their desired SHS or any SHS.
While the numbers of well-off classmates like the upper-east sider classmates I encountered were a tiny minority, they did exist and often had a sibling or few who attended private school due to preferring a different educational environment or because they ended up being rejected by my SHS or all SHSs.
One close HS friend had a sibling who attended one of the elite NYC boarding schools after being shut out of all the SHSs.
NovaDad, I suspect it’s the same way in most our suburban MD county. Our kids’ school may be the exception; it has the two selective programs that are probably more heavily upper middle class. I can’t say for sure that’s the case, though; our family certainly isn’t in that category. Overall, though, the percentage of free and reduced lunch kids in the school is fairly high.
In regards to the private schools, the well off parents will have only committed to a security deposit at this point. If these parents can afford 40k tuition, they can afford to forefeit a 5k deposit. So it’s not the money commitment. The well off parents simply have no interest sending their kids to public school.
GMT, but it is the commitment of time that trumps. They have already been included in parties, dinners, events for the kids. I know because I have done it myself and my boss is doing it this year. The kids already feel part of a group, and it isnt an accident that the private schools go all out to fold in those families as soon as the acceptances come out. Also, the specialized schools aren’t really comparable to the private schools, not worse, but not truly comparable, either.
If you excluded large numbers of “immigrant strivers” in favor of culturally much more homogeneous blacks and Hispanics, the diversity would decrease, of course.
@cobrat my child is at a Specialized High School., graduating this year. Four years ago, he and his classmates in middle school maybe prepped for three of four months for the test. His was a smallish middle school with a class of about 160 kids, and about 1/3 got a place at a Specialized High School. This was not a gifted and talented middle school – but it was primarily middle class, so lots of kids probably with good verbal skills, and also, the school offered Regents Algebra in 8th grade. Similarly, these kids had mostly gone to local elementary school, not hothouse gifted and talented schools for young geniuses.
So, I don’t agree that students have to be at a gifted and talented school to do well on the SHSAT.That was not my experience or my observation.
However, I think you’re right that not too many wealthy people send their kids to Stuy, Bronx Science or Tech. The classes are big, the pace is fast, and there is lots of work to do.
I consider my family middle class. We have been very happy with the experience, and very happy with the school environment. I wish the schools well in the future and hope that they can continue to serve immigrant families for years to come, and also, give a start to any number of young engineers and scientists.
Isn’t Hunter High School considered an “elite” specialized high school, even though, as I recall, it starts in 7th grade? And aren’t the students still predominantly female?
@DonnL. The term Specialized High Schools is used to refer to the eight schools that admit through the SHSAT - the original three (Stuyvesant, Bx Science, and Brooklyn Tech, all been around 80-100 years), and a handful of others that are more recent (High School for American Studies, High School for Math, Science and Engineering, Brooklyn Latin, Queens High School for Sciences, and Staten Island Tech); and LaGuardia which does not use the test.
Hunter College High School is not one of these. It is definitely viewed as elite, very difficult to test into and very challenging. But it uses its own test - students from boroughs other than Manhattan take it for entry in 7th grade. And is partly administered by CUNY, along with NYC DOE. It is not a Specialized High School.
I am not sure what the stats are for Hunter, but many of other NYC schools that are not the Specialized High Schools but are labeled as “elite” like the Bard schools, Beacon, Millennium, and Eleanor Roosevelt are predominantly femaie, i.e. between 60 to 70%.
Thank you.