Tests nixed, more poor kids got into top schools

More low-income students and English language learners were accepted to competitive city middle schools this year after officials temporarily suspended the use of admissions screens during the coronavirus pandemic, officials said Tuesday.

Dozens of coveted middle schools across the city get far more applications than they have seats, and in the past have selected students based on a combination of grades, test scores and attendance records.

But with the pandemic canceling last year’s state exams and upending grading and attendance systems, city officials announced last winter they would pause the use of admission screens for this year’s fifth-grade middle-school applicants and shift to a lottery system.

As a result, the share of low-income students and English language learner students accepted this year to the city’s most selective middle schools ticked up, Education Department officials said Tuesday.

Overall, the 46 elite schools gave 48% of their admissions offers to low-income students, compared with 41% last year, and 7% of their offers to English language learners, compared with 3% last year, the Education Department said.

The city’s student body is roughly 73% low-income, and 13% English language learners.

At some schools, the changes were more dramatic. The Christa McAuliffe school in Brooklyn went from offering 5% of its seats to students learning English last year to 16% this year. Coney Island’s Mark Twain middle school increased its offers to low-income students from 35% last year to 46% this year.

For critics of the city’s complex system of school admissions screens, the new numbers bolster the argument that the pandemic-induced changes should become permanent.

“Even before the pandemic we knew that using performance and behavioral screens from fourth-graders to determine middle school admissions furthered segregation and inequities in our schools,” City Councilman and comptroller candidate Brad Lander (D-Brooklyn) tweeted. “Suspending them was the right thing to do this year, and we should continue this change.”

Other parents objected to the changes from the start, and urged the city not to continue them past this year.

“The drastic changes in middle-school admissions policy is unfair to all students,” the parent group PLACE NYC said in December.