@gallentjill I agree with what you said. Personally, as a solidly upper-middle class father I’m going to let my daughter discover her own opportunities and pursue what she wants in her education and extracurriculars. But when I was growing up, my parents pushed me towards test prep because the future (even immigration status in this country) was very uncertain and we had to bank on objective measures of merit. We couldn’t afford piano teachers, dance classes, or sports like swimming, We shouldn’t demonize people who pursue this legitimate path towards success.
@momofsenior1 Then what’s the purpose of prestigious colleges at all? As someone who graduated (BS and PhD) from prestigious colleges and currently works in a large public university, I can tell you there is a huge difference in allocation of resources there. If it’s not that important to go to a prestigious college, maybe you should just let your kids do the activities they want and not worry so much about other people who are striving to achieve more.
@zoosermom the point was that we SHOULDN’T tell minority students that they’re relegated to those schools. No one would ever suggest that black and Hispanic students should be content with attending them over specialized schools like Stuyvesant, and similarly we shouldn’t say that for Asian students either. I’m not sure what outrage or fabrication you’re referring to (and frankly, I don’t think I even want to know).
The fabrication that the imbalance in enrollment in the SHSAT schools means that large groups of kids are denied opportunity. That’s not true. There are many high-achieving kids of all races who don’t want to go to those schools at all. I actually feel very sorry for the kids who are pushed into those schools because their families don’t feel comfortable in making other choices. The high school application process here may be awful, but the array of options for our children is nothing short of spectacular. I’m very proud of and grateful for that.
Great, so if there’s nothing special about Stuyvesant just let all the Asian kids go there. Under this idea, I don’t see why policies need to change or where the conflict is.
Just having different races does not mean diversity to me. My kid (Asian American) gets along with all kinds of kids, but generally I would prefer that the kids he surrounds himself be cordial, respectful and open minded kids of any and all races. I care less whether his school has 50% Afro-Americans or zero percent Afro-American kids. If my Asian American kid surrounds himself with all nice Hispanic kids and ZERO Asian-American kids, great. If he surrounds himself with all Asian American kids or French kids, that’s good for him also, as long as they are decent and respectful kids. Just going to the same school does not mean to me that you are going to interact a lot with different races anyway.
By the way, I went to a high school in VA during 1980s and got called all kinds of racist names by both whites and black kids for no reason other than being an Asian (also, our school had many racial fights), so I am into more respectful kids than diverse kids idea. To be fair, I also called them racist names in retaliation. Didn’t want to give an impression that I was a suffering angel.
They should set a minimum academic cut off point, and no way should they accept kids below certain academics cut off. My attitude is any kid of any race can study for that entrance test and do well, just like any kid of any race can practice soccer and improve. If you are not going to study for that test and try to do well, that’s just too bad. Low academic kids will not be able to survive in those high schools and may be better off at other types of high schools. For example, you send an average kid to Thomas Jefferson High School in VA, that kid will not be able to survive there. It’s like sending an average college basketball player to NBA.
I post these things because the students that read these boards need to understand that they can be successful by ways of many different paths.
It also saddens me to read so many posts from parents about their students with depression, anxiety, suicidal ideations, etc… This increase stems from somewhere, and I fear that it from the pressure we are putting on our kids at younger and younger ages.
I didn’t say it wasn’t special. It is. Stuyvesant just isn’t the only special program here for high-achieving kids. The question is whether the policy needs to change. I personally couldn’t care less. What I do think is important is that middle school families of all demographics feel free to choose the best high school options for their kids. It’s a shame that some kids who attend might have been better off elsewhere, but their families don’t know that, and it’s also true that there are kids who would be perfect fits at those schools don’t get admitted. When my D was applying, our City Council member held a year-long prep program for kids from every school in the borough (I want to say it was five kids per school, but I can’t remember now), and those kids mostly got accepted. Many did not attend. I completely support the Discovery program and think it should be expanded. But I do wonder if the kids who receive all that support would still be as likely to choose the SHSAT schools. There is a whole test-prep industry here targeted to immigrant families and they profit off the families’ fear and lack of information. It’s a shame.
Haven’t read the whole thread…but I have to say this:
America is about equal opportunity, not equal outcome. And the word equal is often taken too literally, as in “It’s not equal because my kid didn’t get in to school X or team Y and that’s because s/he wasn’t afforded the opportunity at a young age…blah blah blah”.
Look, the opportunity exists to (focus on exists) do X whether or not kid A can take advantage of it. Nowhere does it say that kid A is not allowed to take advantage of it. So it may take certain folks longer (an extra generation or two or three based on their circumstances). But the opportunity is still there. Some immigrants are fixated on the “American Dream” and literally do everything all day to make sure there kid has it better then them. Some don’t. No one can, nor should, control that. If the results are lopsided to one demographic, perhaps that demographic was far more focused on obtaining that outcome. It could be sports, academics, music, arts, etc.
Are we going to start taking away access to certain groups because they excel at certain things? America is not about making sure there’s one of every color, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity reaching X. It’s about not preventing all from doing whatever they can to get there. If someone can’t do enough, they can’t do enough. Hopefully they’ve improved their situation at least a little along the way.
Holistic admissions have tried to minimize the effect of results from any particular metric so as to not just admit kids based on test scores. But at the end of the day, if you have a kid with superior scores and all the other boxes checked, what are you supposed to do, not admit because too many look like her or him? That’s crazy. (and it happens all the time to show some level of diversity).
The laughable thing is many harp on the private elite schools. How about the large publics where metrics like grades and test scores are overwhelmingly used as the litmus test for admissions (because they don’t have the resources to dive to deep with 10s of thousands of applications)?
“Are we going to start taking away access to certain groups because they excel at certain things? America is not about making sure there’s one of every color, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity reaching X. It’s about not preventing all from doing whatever they can to get there.”
With the focus on “It’s about not preventing all from doing whatever they can to get there.”:
This is such a loaded statement - not for its own outrageousness (it is not) but for the fallacy that the nation has, or is (not really an argument I’m deeply invested in today) one which has acted in concert with its stated philosophical motto to this end. For everyone.
There are repercussions for not allowing people to read, for cutting off fingers and using insane amounts of violence against them if they sought to. For holding that one who would deign to fail to “know his place,” and pick up a book (or even be caught instructing such persons), or vote using those very same skills (even with minimal proficiency) should be maimed or killed.
I don’t necessarily think that test prep is “unfair” but it’s not equitable for a couple of reasons. First, the tests tend to measure what you already know rather than your capacity to learn and apply ideas. Second, one of the first things that test-takers learn is “how to take the test.” That is something that those not afforded the luxury of test prep have.
In addition, the NBA is probably not the best use of an example. Basketball, from the NCAA down through high school and into elementary school, as a sport tends to have a great deal of programs geared toward disadvantaged populations, even to the point of recruiting from playgrounds and Boys and Girls Clubs. A kid can get by at the price of a $20 ball and a $5 pump to keep it inflated. But, if you look at other sports such as soccer, swimming, volleyball, etc., a lot of the recruiting is done at the club level. There most definitely is a level of meritocracy involved in club sports with travel teams and private coaching.
If 20% of the test takers were black, yet blacks were offered less than 1% of the slots, the system is broken. It’s time to find a new system. NY needs to find some way to reach that population and bring their scores up while keeping the integrity of the test.
It would be interesting to see a NYC high school that accepts the top x% from all the junior high schools. And that this school be given resources similar to Stuy/Sci/Tech.
The old SAT from decades ago was designed to measure aptitude. It was widely criticized for being geared towards upper income students, for being “gameable” and for not really measuring aptitude at all. Just like IQ tests are often criticized. The truth is there is no way to measure the innate quality of intelligence. The tests didn’t work.
I too live in NYC and I’m very opposed to any change in the selection process for the specialized high schools, which, BTW, aren’t all STEM schools. The mayor or schools chancellor alone or even the two of them together can’t legally change the admission process for the top 3 exam schools, i.e., Stuy, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech. (They do have the power to change admissions to the other exam schools.
Not everyone who takes the test and wants to go to one of the specialized high schools aims at Stuy. Kids take the exam and then list their personal choices. LOTS of kids who live on Staten Island take it aiming solely for Staten Island Tech. A fair number of African-American kids take it and list Brooklyn Tech as their first choice because they prefer to be at a high school with more kids who look like them. Kids who live in the Bronx may prefer Bronx Science or the High School for Math Science and Engineering at CCNY because they don’t like the commute to Stuy. Kids who live in Queens may prefer the Queens High School for Science at York College.
As @zoosermom has said, the exam schools aren’t the only good high schools in NYC. Indeed, in some years, Townsend Harris kids have had higher median SAT and ACT scores than Stuy. The other schools already use a different selection process and focus more on grades and attendance. Townsend Harris, Bard Early College, Millenium, Beacon, Eleanor Roosevelt, NEST+m, Midwood, and other high schools that don’t rely on the test all offer good high school education experiences.
That doesn’t mean that the poor performance of African-American kids in the aggregate on the test isn’t something to be concerned about. However, changing the selection process is just smoke and mirrors. The problem is that the weakest link in NYC public school education is the middle schools. Some of them are truly abysmal The City needs to fix those schools.
Expanding the special prep classes won’t fix the problem. Why? You have to get African-American and Hispanic kids to enroll in them. Rudy Crews, the former schools chancellor, had a similar program. There were empty seats in it. Some kids who started the summer dropped out without completing the program. Back then, one of my neighbors taught in the program and she was very frustrated by the kids who just quit. Don’t assume that if you create opportunities for people they will take them.
@jonri I wonder how many of the kids who completed those programs and didn’t quit tested high enough to enter the programs. Is it possible kids were quitting because it was futile? How could one brief program compete against years of obsessive test prep?
I’m not arguing for changing the admissions standards. I just feel that offering those kinds of prep programs may just be more bandaids. I fully agree with your statement that the problem is that the rest of the school system, where the majority of kids attend, is awful. If we are looking to increase opportunity, maybe we should focus on fixing the problem for the thousands of city kids who are never going to test into one of the 3 elite schools.
I can’t offer any scientific evidence, but my impression based on both the teacher who taught in the program and the kids in my neighborhood who participated is that after a week or two or a month or so some of the kids just felt like they’d rather enjoy their summer more doing other things than studying.
It was a very good program. The results were good for the kids who completed it.
The higher the test’s ceiling the more resistant the score is to preparations (SHSAT has very few kids score above 700 out of 800). The kids who chose to do intensive test preps were already self selected in the first place.
Perhaps, one way to mitigate the effect of SHSAT is to make it easier, much like what they did with SAT/ACT. Then the test preps will have a greater impact.
I agree with this. There have been several variations of those programs over the years in various places. They did have good results. I genuinely support more summer programs in the year between seventh and eighth grade and not just for the SHSAT. In my dream world, there would be support for parents in learning about different options and high school programs.
As far as Staten Island Tech is concerned, the numbers are skewed because many families of means won’t allow their kids to apply there because the programs are too specific and limited. As I said, my D was a one-percenter and we absolutely would not allow her to apply there for that reason. Same with my son, although he wouldn’t have gotten in.
I also (having gone through this three time) know many kids of color (we live in a diverse area and have a diverse family) who have the ability and the information to go to Stuyvesant and would never list that as the first choice. As Jonri mentioned, the culture at Brooklyn Tech is much more welcoming and comfortable to black and Hispanic students. I also gently point out that the culture and community of Stuyvesant is not welcoming and inclusive, and there is historic and continued unfriendliness between parts of the Asian community and parts of the black community. There would need to be a critical mass of black students in order to ensure that their parents could feel comfortable that they were not isolated.
The fact that meritocracy and diversity are at odds is a symptom of a deeply racist and divided society.
I do not think children should be admitted unprepared to anything. Nobody is owed a spot among the elite.
However, I think the existing pipelines are so disgustingly biased that I would not describe our system as meritocratic at all.
There are cultural barriers to success for some kids (e.g. summer school is not welcome) but many come from centuries-old institutions that actively discriminate against people.
It’s another case of blaming educators for not fixing all the externalities we create in a highly classist society.
That said I don’t support that kind of tracking that early. I think every school should have an advanced track that is available based on effort and desire and which has free tutoring. There should be no geographic or score based barriers to excellence through effort.