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The bill would modify the admission criteria for specialized schools by giving weight to factors like attendance and GPA. Currently, an applicant’s score on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) is the sole determinant of admission to those schools.Eight specialized high schools in the city currently use the SHSAT, including Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech.</p>
<p>...The legislation aims to make the demographics at the elite specialized schools more representative of the city’s diverse groups.
<p>This is just the latest chapter in a series of decades long attempts by city and state politicians, educrats, and educational activists who are seeking a red herring for the decades long failures and deterioration in many of NYC’s public K-12 schools. </p>
<p>They were the same folks or kindred spirits who along with Mayor Lindsay tried to eliminate the Specialized High Schools…a reason why Lindsay’s name is considered a 4-letter word among some older SHS alums who lived through/remembered that era. </p>
<p>They also are the folks who brought about the post-1969 open admissions policies to CCNY/CUNY which eviscerated the once sterling academic reputation they’re still trying to recovering from now. </p>
<p>And since the late 1990’s, those very institutions have been under attack by some of those same groups by doing things like raising admissions standards, reimplementing a semblance of academic standards, instituting honors programs targeting students with elite u stats, and trying to move all remedial instruction to the community colleges. </p>
<p>The alumni foundation of Brooklyn Technical High School (one of the three original NYC test-in schools; the biggest and most diverse with the most free-lunch-eligible students) published an analysis of this situation.</p>
<p>Many Stuy and BxScience alums have passed around and praised the points made in that statement. </p>
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<p>If history repeats itself and a NYT article on this issue are any indications, it’s highly unlikely this bill will go anywhere or gain much support in the state legislature. </p>
<p>Ironically, even diBlasio has yet to issue a public statement in support of that proposed state bill on changing the SHS admissions process. </p>
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<p>Incidentally, because the Hecht-Calandra law mandating the SHS admissions process be by exam was passed at the state level, any changes or elimination of that law must be done at the state legislative level. </p>
<p>As such, the most diBlasio can do is issue public statements and influence NY state politicians. He has no power as NYC mayor to implement any changes himself. </p>
<p>Well, that is really dumbing down the system.</p>
<p>Unless of course they mean that if two people have the same test scores, the one with the worse attendance gets in since they got that score with less schooling.</p>
<p>to show how making the admissions process more holistic will not only fail to facilitate more racial diversity, but also risk admitting many academically under prepared students to the public magnet HS. </p>
<p>1/3 of students in remediation after being admitted under the more holistic policies is pretty bad…</p>
<p>And TJSST is also being targeted for an NAACP lawsuit after the fact…</p>
<p>The most selective public high schools in NYC aside from the ones that admit via the test have fewer black and Latino students than the test-admit schools. There are fewer free-lunch-eligible kids and there are more white and fewer Asian students (as a group).</p>
<p>The NYC high school “system” is dizzyingly byzantine, a collision of a zillion different legacy “systems” by borough, by district, by cachement areas drawn decades ago. Unfortunately it would be very difficult to reorganize in a more logical way, much less change it to the advantage of the disadvantaged.</p>
<p>Sign me very glad to be DONE with NYC school choice. We were extremely lucky but it’s an awful system.</p>
<p>In Chicago they have a system whereby neighborhoods of the city are assigned to groups by SES, and cutoff score for admission to each magnet school varies by group. This obviously has its plusses and minuses, but it does, AFAIK, result in greater diversity of all kinds without quotas.</p>
<p>It depends on what the objective of the magnet school is. If it is diversity, a lottery system would work just fine.</p>
<p>Having a cut-off score would just hurt diversity efforts since it would eliminate students who may have a different learning style or different outlook on grades as an evaluation of their worth. That would unnecessarily cut down on the diversity of the class.</p>
<p>Staten Island Tech,which now admits by the specialized test, used to admit by the power score that reform proponents now want to use for all the specialized high schools, but it was so completely corrupted by middle schools skewing 7th grade grades that it was an absolute mess. There are zero black kids in the incoming freshman class at Staten Island Tech this year.</p>
<p>“Sign me very glad to be DONE with NYC school choice. We were extremely lucky but it’s an awful system”
I did the high school admission process three times over a decade, the process of which was different each time, and it was always a sadistic horror. I found it significantly worse than the college process the first two times. I hope to live through the third college process.</p>
<p>While the NYC SHS didn’t have different cutoffs on the basis of neighborhood SES, we had a summer discovery program with some similarities. </p>
<p>Applicants who missed the cutoff of a given school who were from low SES households/neighborhoods AND scored within 60 points of the cutoff of the desired school in question had another chance to gain entry by passing a rigorous summer academic program. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, this was done away with for Stuy and BxScience in the early '00s. </p>
<p>Word was this was caused by the state/city DOE and politicians trying to force those two schools to alter eligibility so discovery for them was open to applicants who fell within 60 or so points short of the school with the LOWEST cutoff. Not the cutoffs of the desired schools in question. </p>
<p>Understandably, the principal/admins at Stuy and BxScience felt that was taking things too far as there’s a gulf of difference between 60 points short of Stuy’s or BxScience’s respective cutoffs and those of the school with the lowest cutoff and there’s little chance a summer program will prepare the latter type applicants enough for the academic rigor required come September. </p>
A reason behind all of these is that, as a society, we really can not agree on what the definition of merit is, let alone the measure of the merit.</p>
<p>Why don’t these “political leaders” just admit that they want the quotas?! At least then they would not be so hypocrisy.</p>
<p>In one of the programs in high demanding in our flagship college, they once experimented with a lottery system. If you are lucky, you then have the merit. At least there is no ambiguity in the system or no under-the-table dealing.</p>
<p>Favoring students from low SES will not solve the problem of the lack of diversity. In one area that I am familiar with, the students from immigration families tend to be of low SES. But as a group they may be more competitive in the traditional academic measure than other groups with a similar SES status.</p>
<p>One serious issue with considering “different learning styles” or “different cognitive styles” is how far do we want to extend it? </p>
<p>Do we want to broaden the academic range of admitted students so much that a school which was designed for academic high achievers must water down the academic pacing and rigor to teach to the middle 50% or worse, the LCD and thus, effectively undermine the very point of having a public magnet HS geared towards high academic achievers? Isn’t the latter two common conditions in many regular NYC public K-12 schools to varying extents already? </p>
<p>Keep in mind that a large part of the reputation of the NYC SHS is the demonstrated academic potential and achievements of its students/alums. Undermine that by changing the admissions process or worse, repeating what happened to CCNY/CUNY in 1969 and as with them the NYC SHS reputation will likewise be flushed down the toilet and recovery of it will be a long arduous process. </p>
<p>POTENTIAL FOR “MISMATCH”
If Stuyvesant lowers its admissions standards to increase representation of other racial groups, there may be a problem w academic mismatch.</p>
<p>If minority group White kids are admitted w lower test scores, will they be able to keep up w the stronger-scoring majority group Asian kids? </p>