Bill games the test
In pursuit of the noble goal that the city’s elite high schools look more like the diverse metropolis they serve, Mayor de Blasio is embracing a zero-sum approach that would leave countless working-class Asian students on the outs. The single-test admissions system for Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and five other citywide high schools is not sacred — such systems, exceedingly rare in America today, have their problems — but it has served thousands of New Yorkers well, and it is at least objective. No interviews, no influence. One test is it. De Blasio would have the Legislature in Albany replace the test with rigid rules that admit the top 7% of eighth graders from each and every one of the city’s 600 middle schools.
Excellent feeder schools from which many students now make the cut would see their slots slashed by 90%; the city’s lowest-performing middle schools would send identical shares of children, even when they’re not reading or doing math at grade level.
That model would likely produce a strong citywide high school, and certainly one with more black and Latino students. But it need not supplant the exam schools, which are working.
Do both. Open more doors of opportunity, not fewer.
Also recognize that de Blasio, belatedly concerned about school segregation with the arrival of new Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, is taking on the most blatant examples without yet reckoning with disparities rife in the system, starting in kindergarten. The scandal behind the scandal is that too many city elementary and middle schools doing a poor job preparing young people to excel.
Despite accounting for two-thirds of the public school population, black and Latino students are small percentages at Stuyvesant (4%), Bronx Science (9%) and Brooklyn Tech (14%). That’s because fewer young people from those groups take the Specialized High School Admissions test, and of those who do, a lower rate pass.
De Blasio treats it as a lamentable tragedy that Asian students disproportionately take, and ace, the test, calling the test “arbitrary and capricious.”
But there’s nothing any less arbitrary about replacing one test with two tests, state English and math exams designed not to measure excellence but grade-level performance, and then formulaically admitting quotas of students based on where they happened to go to middle school.
Widening the net of applicants — reserving some spots from underrepresented schools without closing the door on top achievers — makes more sense and builds on the existing but largely dormant Discovery Program, which gives a leg up to students who fall just below the cut score.
The right way to diversify these existing SHSAT schools is to drastically improve outreach to communities throughout the city and offer free test prep to all. And move full speed ahead on diversifying — and improving — elementary and middle schools.
As an intermediate step, de Blasio and schools Chancellor Richard Carranza will set aside 20% of the seats for Discovery. What took so long?