@UndeservingURM it does not weight grades more heavily. You must get sufficient grades + sufficient test scores + sufficient behavioral record. If any of those three points is not met, you just don’t get in. There is zero subjectivity although sometimes with the test scores a kid can appeal after admission are announced if they are within one or two percentage points. I have only ever heard of that process benefiting wealthier white students, though. And it’s only if they have enough room.
The shsat is how Stuyvesant became the school it is today. To get rid of it without another plan would not be prudent.
Entry to Stuyvesant is total meritocracy. Score enough on the shsat, you get in. No interviews, gpa, financial info, recommendations etc. required. Hence, the students who go to that school make the school what it is today, and those students were admitted based on the one exam. The school does not make the student; the students make the school. You can throw as much money as you want into a school, building, facilities, teachers, but the students are the drivers. If we lower the bar on these schools and get rid of the shsat, we’d get a different student body (and I am not implying race) and hence, a different school. The students would then eventually not be attending the same Stuyvesant high school that we know of today.
Years ago, when Stuyvesant was in a rundown building near union square with old facilities and overcrowding, it was still an elite school and a crowning jewel of NY, and that old building with the old facilities did not deter the students one bit.
As always, I’m not saying Stuyvesant is the best model for a high school, and it certainly isn’t for everyone, but raising students to certain standard, as high as they can get, would probably be better for society generally than lowering them I would think. It seems to work for Stuy.
Not only that, Stuy has absolutely zero say in who attends. Stuy doesn’t get to say “we will set the cutoff here and choose among the students that are above it”.
Instead the students rank order their school preferences when they take the test. Afterwards, Stuy gets told “Here are the top N scorers who chose Stuy. Take them.”
You can take a look at them yourself. The SHSAT handbooks created each year by the NYC Department of Education are online, and each one has two sample tests. I cannot link to the site, but you can search for SHSAT tests.
I skimmed the first sample test in the 2018-2019 handbook (pages 46-92). I am no longer a good judge of how difficult the English section is, but as I stated earlier, it would be easiest for people who have English as their first language. The mathematics section only covers topics through algebra.
No. Just take a look at AIME, USAMO, IMO, etc. They don’t require any math beyond HS, not even calculus. However, the problems become increasingly difficult as one advances from one level to another, in order to discriminate among the competitors who are all obviously “good” at math. No amount of training will turn a random student into a USAMO or IMO winner, or even a qualifier, just like no amount of training will turn s/he into a basketball star. And just like basketball, good preparation and work ethics help, but they’re far from sufficient. It takes talent.
Related to the above post, I find that people often assume that everyone within a certain range (say top 5%) is assumed to be similarly talented. In fact, the difference in talent levels within that group expands, not shrinks. We see this everyday in sports. Everyone in the NBA is among the top 0.01% of basketball players, but the giants like LeBron and Curry simply play at a different level. And they repeatedly make their defenders look hapless (remember they are still in the top 0.01%).
Likewise, the bottom students at Stuy who are struggling just to keep their grades up are already competing against top students who not only excel in school but at the same time get elected to student council or run a club or two and on the side write a few research papers that win the national science fairs and get published. The difference between the top and bottom students at a school like Stuy is immense, much larger than in a typical high school.
And now some politicians think it is a good idea to add even less qualified students to this mix? The top students will still be there, making the differences between top and bottom even greater. How would these new and less qualified students come out feeling confident about themselves?
Not to state the obvious, but it seems like we need some kind of middle ground here. I agree with a lot of @hebegebe 's points and lowering the bar or putting kids in these top magnet schools that can’t perform probably isn’t the answer. It’s almost like we need something like a lower level magnet school, or just figure out a way to improve the regular public schools so that the kids who care/have potential can receive a great education with more opportunities to challenge themselves. So rather than trying to get these kids to apply/test high enough for the top magnets, figure out another way to identify those high-performing-but-just-not-magnet-material kids (of any racial/ethnic background) and provide them with some special opportunities (gifted and talented, whatever). I’m sure this already exists, but we can always improve. Such a complex issue and I don’t envy the people that work for the Department of Education that have to deal with this.
just want to say - that i’ve read every post on this thread, and am learning and thinking about so much that is not part of my normal world. Thanks for all of the thoughtful, insightful and heartfelt posts. we live in the suburbs, but our kids go to a non-competitive 60% low SES/free lunch school. Just reading through your posts has opened my eyes. Carry on.
I like that there are magnet schools like Stuy and I’m sure that NYC has other magnet school choices even for kids that don’t make it to Stuy. The key is to have choices with all kinds of environments and pedagogical methods. I personally wouldn’t want my children to attend a school like Stuy in high school just like I didn’t want them to attend the high achievement MS/HS in Philly. I just wonder who is complaining the most about the lack of AA/Hispanic students at Stuy? Is it parents or is it Administration?
@Dolemite that’s a good question. I don’t know enough about the NYC schools but would be interested in hearing from any experts on this thread…are there other choices that aren’t quite at the level of Stuy but still considered magnets? And are they more diverse?
“Education is a huge investment of emotional, physical and mental energy and time. The payoffs only come after your mid 20s. The parents who care about education put enormous stress on their kids and themselves. This harms the parent and child relationship and the self esteem of the child.”
To many Asian american parents, the parent-child relationship is secondary to the success of the child. You cannot have success without blood, sweat and tears so the enormous stress that is put on families is an established part of the journey. I disagree about harming the self esteem of the child as this is not always the case. The demand for perfection can oftentimes lift the self esteem. If your parents don’t believe in you, who will - this mentality has helped me personally as a child growing up in circumstances that were not ideal.
I read somewhere that the single most important factor at helping to determine the success of a child at birth is having both the biological mother and biological father together. Of course there are many other contributing factors however this is the starting point. There is no government or private agency that could advocate for a child when the child’s own parents are not around to support and nourish in their development. Divorce rates, unmarried childbearing, adolescent pregnancies among various race groups is an important discussion to have regarding social immobility.
From Wikipedia, the 2018 cutoff scores for the various SHSAT schools were:
Stuyvesant: 559
Staten Island Tech: 519
Bronx Science: 518
HSMSE @ CCNY: 516
HSAS @ Lehman: 516
Brooklyn Technical: 493
Brooklyn Latin: 483
So yes, there are other exam schools. In terms of diversity, Stuy is the least diverse, meaning that others will be more so in order to get to the 12%, but I don’t have the details on that.
Agree with all the above posts about different levels of magnets and more educational customization.
When my kids were in middle and elementary school, our state experimented with a “1 size fits all” standardized curriculum. I was appalled because now the students were being taught to the “middle” at the cost of high performing kids at one end and “developing” kids at the other . Our kids’ teachers hated it too. I scheduled an appointment with our School Superintendent but got pushed off to the person in charge of developing the district’s curriculum. I heard a bunch of bureaucratic nonsense and nothing about meeting educational needs to maximize each student’s potential. When I asked what was wrong with tracking students, the reaction I got was if I had suggested segregated water fountains. This was the closest I ever got to pulling my kids out of public and into private schools.
I am an immigrant myself and when I started elementary school, I could not speak English. Not surprisingly and appropriately, I was initially tracked with the slower students. Within 2 years I had caught up and tracked with the high performing students. At the time, there was no stigma attached to which group you were in. You were just in the group where the learning pace and depth fitted everyone, and there was mobility between groups based on teacher assessments, grades and standardized tests (Iowa Test). By 5th grade, tracking was by subject matter (English, Math, Science, Social Studies, foreign language) and of course continued through HS. Further, vocational classes were introduced in middle school – Home Ec and Shop were mandatory for all students in 5th and 6th grades and treated the same as Art and Music. In addition to vocational classes in HS, there was a special vocational HS in our county. My mid-Atlantic public district which graduated 200 in my class, saw 1 classmate go to Harvard, 1 to Yale, 2 to Duke, 1 to Swarthmore, 1 to Bates and several to honors programs in both our in-state and out of state flagships. Just as importantly, many of my friends and classmates went on to successful careers and businesses in the trades. There were no “tiger parents” that I recall, but just about every family we knew cared about education.
Our educational system has gotten offtrack in the intervening years as programs have gotten more and more homogenized and we put undue emphasis on esteem (everyone gets a medal/award), which I think has more to do with the parents and not the kids. You give kids esteem and confidence when you give them realistic “reach” goals tailored to their talents and interests at their stage of development. “Stuy” is not for every kid, a traditional college degree is not for every person, nor does an “Ivy” education serve everyone well. While I agree that the home environment is paramount, we should not be fitting round pegs into square holes in our school systems, secondary and college.
When I was growing up it was Bronx Science as the top high school and then Stuyvesant followed by Brooklyn Tech. A few years later Townsend Harris opened.
I didn’t know there was a Staten Island Tech as well as the other schools listed above.
@BKSquared I couldn’t agree more that it is often more about the parents, especially those aspiring for the Ivy level schools. I see it a lot. And it’s not even necessarily the parents putting pressure on the kids in these cases (although some of them are) but it’s the parents that build their kids up that they actually DESERVE a spot because of their scores, or because they went to a fancy private school or because they are perfect or whatever. Then these kids feel like going to the non-Ivies feel that they are victims forced to settle for a consolation prize. Drives me nuts.
@collegemomjam – there are academically-focused, college-prep oriented magnet or charter schools that do not have competitive, test-based admissions and are racially diverse. I know, because my son attended one. But at the time I did get negative feedback from others in my community who told me that they didn’t think the school was a good fit for my (white) son, including one parent who specifically advised against the school because it had “too many people of color.” (My response was to avoid all contact with that parent after that). I’m sharing this because part of the problem might be a variation on white flight. But the point is that its very possible for schools to combine an academic focus with noncompetitive or non test-based admissions policies.
I’d add that my son was essentially “tracked” during high school simply because he entered on a higher math track & was enrolling in AP courses when available – so for the most part he ended up in the same classes with other AP students. At my son’s high school, the AP’s were also open to all who wanted, but there tended to be self-selection there.
Seems like the size of the district relative to the size of the particular school may be a significant aspect here – if the particular school is large enough relative to the size of the district, it may be able to take all interested students. On the other hand, there are probably around 100,000 students per grade in New York city, with about 800 per grade at Stuyvesant (one of about 47 selective public high schools there).
My son’s academic magnet was also a “small” school – so smaller enrollment overall than the traditional high schools.
But as noted, the fact that it was non-competitive for admission coupled with the demographic mix was a deterrent for many. As was the fact that in focusing on academics, its athletics and arts options were minimal.
A high school does NOT have to be focused on elite college admissions in order to be providing students with a college prep curriculum. A student who graduates from high school and goes on to attend a community college or local 4-year commuter college is not a failure, nor is their high school somehow deficient if many or most of their graduated follow that path.
^^Agree. We all work with what we have, and an elite school should not be everyone’s focus. No matter what level of academics my son achieved, I’d still support that and be happy for him.
But a student can also do very well and end up at elite colleges after attending a non-competitive high school. I looked up my son’s high school on a competitor website (one of those sites that CC doesn’t allow links to) and it ranks in the top 6% of most diverse public high schools in our state; top 4% nationally. The site also lists the school as being in the top 12% of “best college prep public high schools” nationally.(“public high schools that best prepare their students for college success. Ranking based on graduation rates, AP enrollment, SAT/ACT scores, state test scores, and the quality of colleges that students consider”)
The point I am trying to make is that a college prep focused high school environment and curriculum can be effectively offered to students without erecting an initial barrier to attendance at that high school. There are plenty of students who are late bloomers, or coming in from elementary & middle school environments that don’t provide the level of preparation that would allow them to get top scores on tests – but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t able to do well when provided with appropriate opportunities.
And if we are talking about race in college admissions – then the path is only made harder when barriers are erected earlier in the process. So yes, schools like Stuyvesant are great – but they are sorting students based on achievement levels from their pre-teenage years – and that is by definition going to erect both economic and socio-cultural barriers. So in the context of the individual student – maybe those schools are a good thing (though not what I would have wanted for my kids) – but in the broader context of college admissions, the impact of those schools’ admissions practices are a bad thing in terms of providing opportunity to students coming from less advantaged backgrounds.
I looked up Stuyvesant on the same website and its national diversity ranking is 40%. It is also ranked among the top 3 best college prep schools – (well within the top 1% – actually in the top 0.02%) — so yes those kids are getting a great education. But again – that is a quality of education that is being denied to the students who can’t’ get in.
And at least in my view, the students who attend less diverse high schools are also losing out an important social aspect of education – one that impacts their worldview. So even though I don’t dispute the academic caliber of those schools…I consider the lack of diversity a negative educational factor – one of several reasons that I wouldn’t have wanted to see my kids aspire to or attend that sort of high school.