Meritocracy vs. Diversity....is there a right answer?

Parents Forum
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The admissions decisions for the class of 2023 at Stuyvesant High (NYC) were released today. 895 offers of admission to what is generally thought to be the best of the cities 8 public specialized high schools. Black students received a total of 7 offers. Asian students received 2/3rds of the acceptances.

Admission is based solely on a 1-day test. Below is a link to the NYTimes story.

So…it’s hard to argue about fairness (accepting that kids do study for the test for years…so the same privilege conversations exist), but are the students missing out on experiences that would serve them well in college and beyond?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/nyregion/black-students-nyc-high-schools.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

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I wonder whether there is a self-selecting process involved here as well: ie, kids from certain group (race/gender/ethnicity/SES level) may or may not want to select this particular hs to begin with. The magnet hs is my hometown is more liberal arts leaning, kids who are excellent students but prefer stem would pass the “entrance exam” and get the offer but choose stem-centered hs instead.
Additionally, diversity has lots of facets, race/ethnicity are just one of the many.

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Meritocracy and diversity are not mutually exclusive. Admitting purely by test score is far from a true meritocracy. I would say a true meritocracy is hard to attain, but pure test score-based admissions are very far from it.

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@EyeVeee, if you read the book “Everybody Lies”, they highlight a study that shows that Stuy actually provides zero benefit to a particular individual regardless of whether they just get in across the cut-off or just miss. Both sets of individuals go one to, on average, achieve as much later in life.

That is, many Stuy grads go on to do impressive things because many are impressive hard-working smart individuals.

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“Asian-American groups who believe discarding the test would water down the schools’ rigorous academics and discriminate against the mostly low-income Asian students who make up the majority of the schools’ student bodies.”

The test can’t possibly favor low income students, so Asian-Americans must be already overcoming the odds in a test that discriminates against them.

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De Blasio should announce a long-range plan to produce a more level educational system to enable all students to compete more fairly on the test. In the meantime he shouldn’t take an identity politics axe to one of the few remaining meritocratic bastions in the U.S.

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I found this trend deeply disturbing. I grew up in a very diverse NY suburb that was the first district in the country to force busing for racial diversity (this was in the ‘60s). Our high school was a mix of races, ethnicities and religions. As a result my entire community was more tolerant and accepting. I never knew my experience was unusual until I got to college. There is more to education than test scores. How can you explore and discuss a variety of ideas, viewpoints, etc without diversity? I truly believe this is one of the strengths of our country. I know it sounds idealistic but I really believe my experience bears this out. Education in our public schools should take place both in class and through exposure to a diversity of thought, experience, and ideas. That can’t be measured in a single test. We need to move away from this test scores above all else mentality. We are more than just a number.

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@eastcoast101: “That can’t be measured in a single test”. That’s what the Ivies decided when they decided to move away from admitting based off of performance on a test towards holistic admissions, though their expressed purpose for doing so was to keep the number of Jews at Ivies to an acceptably low percentage.

BTW, I am disturbed too. I am disturbed that the home and school environments of black kids in NYC before HS are so poor that they perform much worse than equally socially and economically disadvantaged Asian kids. How do you propose to fix that?

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The fix happens at the other end of education. Have free preschool for kids aged 2 and up. Have kids in safe environments with food and education and nurturing for at least some hours in the day. US first grade is much too late to start socializing kids in the school environment.

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Among NYC public school students, 72% are lower income (eligible for free or reduced-price lunch). The percentage at Stuyvesant High School is 43%, so it appears that somewhat less income-disadvantaged students have more success in getting in there.

Higher income families may also be more likely to have and use the option of sending their kids to private schools.

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As a NY’er, people always say that if the Black and Hispanic and even white families started prepping for the test as early as the Asian families then it would be more balanced demographically. Many Asian students spend every Saturday from the time they are young in those weekend schools that prep for the test. It’s all about test prep and who is willing to sacrifice a lot of their childhood for that one test. I think the whole thing is crazy. I don’t believe in setting aside spots for minorities, but I like the idea of giving them access to test prep. I don’t think privilege comes into play, because most of the Asian students who get into Stuy qualify for free lunch.

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@eastcoast101 In NYC, if you want diversity you can find that at countless high schools. Stuy and Bronx Sci are for the brightest or most hard working or the best test takers who actually want to go to school in that kind of environment. We didn’t want that for our child, but so many in our city are obsessed with getting their kids into one of those schools. The thing is I know so many other kids who didn’t go there who will be going to great colleges in the fall. You don’t need Stuy or that kind of stress to do well in college admissions.

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My point was that being low income does NOT stop the Asian students from succeeding. At some point we have to admit that equality of opportunity isn’t going to give equality of outcomes. The Asian experience is formed of a population structure (timing and type of immigration), a set of cultural attitudes (that desire this type of education), and a family structure (generally relatively stable). You can’t force all this on everyone.

Even the test is math and English - I would expect the black students to have a higher percentage of English-speaking adults at home to help with language acquisition.

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And as for the idea that 67% or whatever Asians doesn`t contribute to diversity …

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While I am a supporter of AA, I do not support it “for diversity’s sake” in a “pure” (single) sense of that word. There exist many truly academically qualified, underrepresented minorities – some of them brilliant. But I have watched and read a number of interviews over the last year, with minority students who do not seem to exhibit that same quotient of skills and readiness to attend an elite school as does the previous group I mentioned, yet these more recent applicants have communicated a kind of resentful, confrontational “entitlement” for the simple reason of poor educational circumstances, requiring struggle. An elite education is not set up to be a reward for “hard work,” – for whites, for over-represented minorities, for under-represented minorities. It is an acknowledgement of likely superior achievement, ability, intelligence, drive, potential, and even maturity. Whatever the personal origin, great private universities do in fact reward challenges overcome; that is different from merely challenges endured, challenges which have limited, and challenges which compromise a student’s ability to achieve at the university to its very expectations. Otherwise, the task of a university becomes redirected toward political representation for its own sake.

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I think it’s an embarrassment for nyc, for Deblasio and for the school chancellor. More than anything else it speaks to the poor job nyc city schools do in educating black children in elementary and middle school, leaving them unprepared to do well on high school entrance exams. It seems nyc thought it was closing the gap with accessible and free test prep, but not only did that not move the needle, results were worse. The Discovery program described in the article sounds interesting. Hopefully that will give some more kids a chance at the specialized high schools.

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People familiar with industrial psychology? This is a well-known problem in the field. It is called the diversity-validity dilemma. Sad to say, meritocracy and diversity are usually related- inversely.

1 Like
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We actually don’t know if “other students” are unprepared to attend Stuy. What we know is that some students “over-prepare” so that their scores will be the top ones, raising the bar. Maybe those who come from “ordinary” preparation are enough qualified. Maybe not. We don’t have the information here to decide that.

Basically, a pure ranking like this tells us who is most willing to spend their childhood time prepping every Saturday and after school for years (as described above). If that is what gets you to the top of the list, then that is what is being selected for. Not necessarily the smartest, best thinkers, but the ones willing to sacrifice everything else for the spot. Which is fine, if that’s what you want. I wouldn’t call that a meritocracy; I’d call it a workocracy.

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Back in the Dark Ages (1980s) I went to Hunter College HS and my older brother went to Stuy. We were working class white kids from Brooklyn who had to schlep in on the subway. It was not even remotely on our radar that HS entrance exams were something that even could be prepped for, let alone a widespread phenomenon. (Hunter uses a different exam than Stuy and the other NYC test-in schools, but in either case.) Then again, only a few well-off kids I knew even prepped for the SAT.

No offense to my brother, lol, but I don’t think either of us are/were super geniuses and I don’t know that either of us, walking in to those tests cold as we did back then, would get in today. Test prep mania has definitely skewed things in the last few decades. I’m not sure what the answer is. Kids come from such widely differing familial, neighborhood, and school-cultural circumstances. I don’t know how it’s possible to devise a system that is “fair.”

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As the husband of an educator and a parent of a child who attended, by choice, an “inner city” charter school designed to enhance college prep to disadvantaged kids, my view is much of this comes down to the family dynamic and emphasis on education.

We actually live in an affluent area and chose to send our oldest to a 90% free lunch public charter because we felt it was a far better education than the overcrowded traditional public HS in our neighborhood. Yr over yr it receives an “A” and is the only Blue Ribbon school in our district (9th largest in the country).

So how does this very diverse (primarily African American and Latino, then white, then Asian) have a 100% college placement record? There’s a combination of effort. The families who send their kids there do so because they want a better outcome for their kids. It’s important to them. it’s a priority. It’s a sacrifice (no transportation, missing many traditional HS experiences like a football team and marching band). Year over year they add ECs to provide for a more complete HS experience but the overwhelming emphasis is on education. Not drilling figures in to their heads, but good old fashioned education with smaller classes, qualified teachers, strong discipline, etc. The banners that adorn their gym don’t have state championships featured, but rather large print words like: Accountability, Respect, Achieve, etc.

Families have to WANT and be prepared to DO something about that WANT. Kids who have families that don’t “buy in” don’t do well (and are often replaced for behavior reasons) at this school. Home environment is a big deal.

It’s definitely not easy to go to this school. Not for the kid. Not for the parent (required transportation, community service, etc.) It’s a choice , and now a lottery with about a 500 student waiting list.

Some will see this and immediately think, "unfair advantage - what about the families who don’t have cars, can’t afford uniforms, etc. That’s sad and I agree it’s difficult but many in the same situation figure it out as their kids do attend. Take a city bus, walk, rideshare, etc.