@techmom99 you hit the nail on the head!
The magnet high schools in my neck of the weeks use a matrix combining test scores and grades. If you have high enough grades you can still get in even with a relatively low test score. This ends up working very well from a diversity perspective, with the school roughly 1/3 Asian, 1/3 black and 1/3 white (not that many Hispanics in my city). But the school is hard, so those students from lower performing middle schools who get in because of high grades either have to do the work or they fail out. About 20-25% fail out or otherwise leave in the first year.
There have been two great pieces recently in the NYT on the topic, covering both the racial equity piece and 504 plans, and access. One on June 3, and the other on June 18.
A lot of families test prep for those tests. Look at who is attending those top schools!
I know some very bright students who did not get into those top NYC high schools who got into some private schools, including boarding schools on scholarship. They went on to Amherst, Swarthmore, Cornell and other highly selective colleges with excellent academic profiles. These kids are doing better than most of the Stuy grad that are their peers. But they did not heavily test prep in middle school and did not get into one of these top NYC high schools.
There is another elite public school in NYC that requires testing for entry: Hunter College High School.
But it is not run by the public school system, rather by Hunter College IIRC. It started out as a “lab school” for Hunter’s education program.
Hunter has entry for elementary and then again for middle/high school.
Its graduates include Lin-Manuel Miranda and Elena Kagan.
For elementary, the first cut was basically an IQ test. Scores to move up must be in the 98-99%ile depending on the year. Those who moved up then went through a series of activities with other finalists, to see who played well together, showed leadership, etc.
Hunter said they used to admit based solely on the IQ tests. But they found that students they selected on that basis alone did not achieve later in life at the highest possible levels, to the extent one might expect. They theorized that maybe people who are that smart figured out they don’t want to live the way one has to live to achieve at the highest possible levels. ( I’m paraphrasing from dim recollection). So then they started adding the other criteria.
For middle school admission, back in the day they took people from a a pool of all the gifted programs in the NYC public schools. With probably a test. But I don’t know what they do now.
I know a number of Hunter graduates, and from what I can see it must be (or have been) a really wonderful school.
The people I know are all women, because it used to be an all-girl school.
Edit: This should presumably correct all my mistakes above:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_College_High_School
^Hunter added boys in 1974. My understanding, from a URM I happen to know who attended, is that in the late 1970s, admission to 7th grade was by test.
I agree they need to fix the K-8 system. All kids should get the same chance at a good education. The neighborhood you live in shouldn’t matter. Àll school district should be good and offer the same opportunities and resources. The fact this was issue when I was a kid and is still going on is today is disgusting.