SHSAT Sunset – Against High-Stakes Testing for NYC Public School Admissions

Over the almost 50 years of Hecht-Calandra act being law, we now have decades of research detailing the problems with high-stakes testing as the sole measure of student ability. Yet Hecht-Calandra and the exam it authorizes continue to be New York State law.

Denying the harm in using a single multiple-choice exam as the sole measure of a child’s academic worth with the mountains of scientific evidence we now have is similar to denying global warming.

No other district in the nation uses a single exam for screening a public high school. No red state or GOP-led State has a single-measure entrance exam.

Replace Hecht-Calandra act to allow modern psychometric testing practices that aren’t subject to the above issues.

How you can help

We have a hard time getting NY Assembly and Senate elected members to give on-record opinions on the test. Call your Assembly and Senate representatives to ask for their opinion on the test. And let us know their opinion.

Posts, News & Articles

Interested in learning more? We’ve collected [total_posts] articles on Hecht-Calandra, SHSAT, and related topics.

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Should NYC’s specialized high school test come in other languages? Manhattan parent council says no.

Last school year, just four of the nearly 16,000 students enrolled in the eight specialized high schools, or 0.03%, were classified as English learners, according to city data. That’s in a school system where roughly 148,000 students, or 16.3% of …

contract, news, nytimes, pearson, pep

New York City Approves New Contract for Specialized High School Test

According to the D.O.E., approximately 30,000 eighth graders and 5,000 ninth graders take the test each year. Major racial gaps have persisted in the admissions process, with 12 percent of spots last year offered to Black and Latino students — the …

ny-daily-news, opinion, opinion, pearson

The NYC school system must reject this contract

In 2012, the NYS state exam produced by Pearson featured more than 30 errors, with faulty questions and problems with translation and scoring. One of the reading passages was so ludicrous it was featured on John Oliver.
In 2013, Pearson’s state exams …
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budget, contract, john liu, news, ny-daily-news, pearson

Push to digitize NYC entrance exam for specialized high schools reignites equity debate

n panel documents, it reported receiving two bids during a request for proposals from Pearson, which has historically provided the exam, or a competitor, Educational Testing Services. After negotiating the contract down with Pearson, education officials said the cost of …

budget, chalkbeat, news

NYC eyes $17 million contract to create computer-based Specialized High School Admissions Test

This year’s eighth graders could be the last class that takes the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test with paper and pencil. A New York City education panel is slated to vote on a roughly $17 million contract later this month …

news, nytimes, results

More Black and Latino Students Admitted to New York’s Elite High Schools

Across the public school system, 24 percent of students are Black and 41 percent are Hispanic. But at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, often viewed as the city’s most competitive high school, 10 of the 744 offers made this spring …

Uncategorized

URBAN AGENDA: End Apartheid in Admissions to NYC’s Elite High Schools

Lastly, we must renew the push to scrap the SHSAT in favor of a multifactor admission strategy. Just two years ago, former Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter was shouted down when she called on the state to kill the SHSAT …

ibo, research, research, statistics

IBO Report: The Specialized High School Admissions Pipeline

While about one third of traditional public and charter school 8th grade students took the SHSAT during the 2021-2022 school year, far fewer students received offers of admission and ultimately enrolled. IBO examined admissions rates by disability status and found …

louis, nymag, opinion

Why Are New York City Schools Still So Segregated?

“You can’t fix segregation by creating more segregated Stuyvesants, more segregated gifted-and-talented programs. Ultimately, what we’ve always advocated for is that all students in New York City deserve high-quality, diverse, and equitable schools,” Gonzales told me. “There are many policies …

law, law, lawsuit, nytimes

Court Allows Case Challenging Segregation in N.Y.C. Schools to Advance

“We cannot just keep on saying, ‘This problem is too big — there’s nothing we can do about it,’” Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels, of the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, told a lawyer for the city at …

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