New York City’s mayor and schools chancellor faced harsh criticism at a community forum in Queens on Thursday night as speaker after speaker pilloried their plan to eliminate an admissions exam for the city’s specialized high schools.
“Not only is the rollout racist, but the whole concept is racist,” said David Lee, an alumnus of Brooklyn Technical High School, one of eight highly selective schools where the sole criterion for admission is passing a competitive test.
@CU123: Thank you for sharing this article. The article contains eye opening statistics.
America is great because of diversity & freedom of opportunity. But diversity presents challenges which require strength, acceptance & adaptation.
In my opinion, the officials are moving in the right direction because public tax dollars are funding these specialized high schools. The numbers are alarming.
I think that we need to define “equal opportunity”. And we need to think when does an obligation of equal opportunity begin. And when does society have an obligation to assure equal opportunity. Seems clear to me that there is an obligation when public tax dollars are funding the endeavor, yet the overwhelming majority of taxpayers are shut out.
What if, instead of specialized schools, we were dealing with specialized athletic facilities such as tennis courts, swimming pools or running tracks ? How would the public react if only the best tennis players, the best swimmers & the best runners were allowed to use these respective public facilities ?
And how would “best” be defined ?
I wonder what is the quality of the non specialized NYC high schools? Would a student who just scores below the admission cut-off still have still the opportunity to strive elsewhere and take challenging STEM and AP classes at the regular schools?
@nypapa: Interesting question.
I wonder if the states of Michigan & California have dealt with similar issues regarding state sponsored universities (the UC system & the University of Michigan). Is the answer that there is a Cal State University system & that there are other publicly funded state universities in Michigan besides UM ?
@Publisher, your analogy to specialized athletic facilities is inapt. New York’s specialized high schools are still going to be exclusively for the “best” students. The debate here is simply about how to choose those students, not whether those schools should be limited to the best students. Right now, the determination of “best” is made solely by exam scores, and the proposed change would instead admit the highest-performing students from the city’s middle schools.
@soxmom: That is why I ended my post #2 above with the question: “And how would “best” be defined ?”
I wonder how they deal with special needs numbers.
We have charter schools here (or magnets) that are told they still have to take their share of special needs/special ed students. Even if a school selects its students by lottery or by audition, they have to have a method for accepting those with IEPs, 504 plans, physical or other needs.
My daughter went to a magnet and they had no problem meeting those requirements (it seems every kid but her had a 504 and a bag full of meds). Even the school of the Arts has to ‘serve the community’ and can’t pick every kid based only on the audition or test.
@nypapa The quality of the non-specialized high schools ranges from excellent (as good if not better than some of the specialized schools) to dismal. NYC is a HUGE system- 1.1 million students and approximately 1,700 schools. There are more than 9 good high schools, no matter what some people might claim. Unfortunately, many of the excellent non-specialized schools are just as hard to get into - a couple of years ago, the NY Post ran an article looking at 10 non-specialized schools that had lower acceptance rates than Yale.
@twoinanddone The 9 specialized schools do not have set aside seats for students with IEPs, but there are students with IEPs at all of the schools - the format of the test actually works in favor of kids with uneven skills, as many 2E kids have. You basically need to do very, very well on one section of a test given on a single day to be admitted. For some kids, this is much easier than maintaining a high GPA and excellent attendance. Many of the other very good screened admissions schools do set aside seats for kids with IEPs - I know at one of the schools, there was 1 seat for every 27 applicants in the general admissions group, but 1 seat for every 3 applicants in the IEP group. Under fair student funding, schools get more money for students with IEPs, so it’s in their best interest to have at least some kids with IEPs.
We went through three parallel admissions processes during my son’s 8th grade year - private boarding, NYC specialized and NYC screened public. It was a nightmare I wouldn’t wish upon anyone - even within the public screened schools, there were different requirements (portfolio submissions, interviews, school’s own admissions exam) and it took up a significant amount of time and energy to wade through it all.
Wow, I have to say I’m glad I don’t live in NYC with school aged children.
Inequities must be addressed at the lower grades—not for the first time at the high school level. The city cannot allow students to fester at abysmal schools for grades K-8, then suddenly admit them to Stuyvesant or Bronx Sci because they were at the top of their failing middle school. Fix the schools starting in pre-k.
It’s easier and faster to admit the top student(s) to specialized high schools then help them acquire what their intelligence shows they can, even if the schools were failing them, rather than trying to improve more than a thousand schools.
Why not create an additional specialized high school - one that focuses on history, social sciences, international affairs, and foreign languages, for instance, rather than STEM? This way more places would open.
Why not have a screening test in Grade 4 and whoever scores in the top 10% of their own, particular school gets free afternoon lessons/activities, and all students in the afternoon program in grade 6-8 get test preparation too?
Then include a mix of grades, school quota, test results to decide who gets in? Why include questions that deal with grade 9, grade 10, grade 11 material?
Banking it all on one single test, one single day, doesn’t seem “right”, and the current process’ outcomes that seemingly automatically exclude a vast majority of the city’s students are not sustainable.
Brooklyn Latin and High School of American Studies already fit this description. Plus, LaGuardia HS of Performing Arts is a SHS, although you don’t take the SHSAT for it.
Plus, students from high poverty schools who just miss the admission cut-off are eligible for the Discovery Program. It’s in the summer, and if they complete it successfully, they gain admission to the SHS that they ranked. Two years from now, 20% of all spots in SHSs will be reserved for Discovery students.
. The Dream program for 7th graders from low-income backgrounds. It’s a free program that helps them prepare for the test.
Bottom line is, the DOE is already doing a ton to help disadvantaged students get into specialized high schools. Also, in addition to the 8 SHSs, there are G&T schools and other selective schools and programs. As someone is quoted in the article, "Underrepresentation of blacks and Hispanics at specialized high schools is a symptom of a much larger problem.” It has to be addressed way earlier.
One of the issues is that URM students who qualify for Stuyvesant or Bronx Sci (the two hardest to get into) are the same ones who would be offered a full scholarship to any elite private school in NYC and to many elite boarding schools, where the classes are smaller, attention is more individualized, and there are more URMs.
@brantly Now you’re making stuff up with that last paragraph. That simply isn’t reality.
@CU123 I have sent my children to parochial school. All three! The state of the schools is one reason people just leave New York City.
And my two cents, Keep the tests the way they are!
@itsgettingreal17 Why do you say that? Students in Prep-for-Prep or A Better Chance are applying to independent schools and can also take the SHSAT.
I’m another BronxBaby and I agree with keeping the system the way it is. It worked when I took the test in 1972 and it still works. Fix the schools from pre-k on and anyone who is bright enough will pass the test. Don’t just let kids in who can’t do the work because it will bring down everyone. Fixing the regular schools is the priority. Diluting and destroying the specialized high schools is not the solution.
I attended a rinky dink yeshiva in the South Bronx. NO test prep was done. 7 of the 19 kids in my 8th grade class took the test for Bronx Science. At that time, you could only take one test so you had to choose Tech, Stuy or Science. I wanted Stuy but my parents refused to let me go to Manhattan. The test was given on the afternoon of a school day. I went to school in the morning and then my dad picked me up and drove me to Science for the test. 4 of the 7 kids who took the test in my class passed and 3 of us attended; the 4th went to a yeshiva HS that you also had to test in for.
Kids have to audition for LaGuardia, Sinatra and the other performing arts HS. As much as I would have loved to attend one of those schools, I am tone deaf and have two left feet, so it wasn’t right for me. Should I have been allowed to go there just because I had a dream of being the next Diana Ross.
^I’m not sure that in the 1970s the test for 8th graders included questions from the 9th, 10th, and 11th grade curriculum.
I attended Performing Arts back in the Ice Age, before it was called LaGuardia. @techmom99, I still look back fondly on Audition Day, one of the scariest experiences I’ve ever had! Your post made me laugh because the girl who sat beside me was also a Diana Ross wannabe. (Are you sure it wasn’t you?) 