The NY State Assembly had its first hearing on SHSAT exam.
The hearing brought together activists, scientists, politicians and city hall employees all to discuss Hecht-Calandra and the exam it authorized.
Follow the link below for the over 7 hours of testimony.
https://nystateassembly.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=8&clip_id=5117
The mayor’s plan isn’t anti-Asian, it’s anti-racist. It would give working-class parents — including Asian-Americans — who can’t afford and shouldn’t have to find ways to afford expensive test prep programs a fairer chance that their child will be admitted into what’s known as a specialized high school. True, taking a test prep course doesn’t guarantee admission to such a school, but it does offer clear benefits and is widely understood to be essential to test-takers.
Nor is the plan a form of affirmative action. Affirmative-action admission policies — like those in place at some universities — require that race be one part of a host of measures considered. Mr. de Blasio’s plan doesn’t stipulate any racial criterion for admission, much less racial quotas (which the Supreme Court outlawed in 1978). The plan will simply give kids from a wider variety of backgrounds access to a public resource: an excellent public high school education. This is a public resource, something all New York City families contribute to with their taxes. Only about 5 percent of all New York City high school students are enrolled in a specialized high school and last year half of these kids came from just 21 middle schools.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/opinion/stuyvesant-new-york-schools-de-blasio.html
The fact that the test changes so frequently with no impact on the quality of graduates from the specialized high schools also argues against the utility of the exam as a necessary factor in that success.
“The National Action Network, as a Civil Rights organization, cannot allow nor support ‘elitism,’” the remarks state. “As for the opposition’s position for ‘keeping the test as is and fix all middle schools,’ NAN asks why hasn’t this been done before??! And doing so would take too long. Eliminate the test and fix all the middle schools in the process.”
Two key questions about the Specialized High School Admission Test (SHSAT) have not received enough attention in the current debate.
First, is the SHSAT a good test?
Second, is using a test, even if it’s good, as the sole basis for admission a good idea?
The answer to the second question is easy. No.
No one should use a test score in isolation to determine who should be admitted to a school, which is likely why no one but New York’s specialized schools does it. The American Educational Research Association, the American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education all recommend using “multiple sources and types of relevant information” to make educational decisions.
The College Board, which owns the SAT college entrance exam, and ACT Inc., which owns the ACT test, have long insisted that colleges should use test scores as only one valuable piece of information among others. If a holistic approach to admissions is good enough for Stanford, Caltech, Phillips Exeter and Thomas Jefferson, shouldn’t it be for Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech?
Answering that question is hard, too, because the city releases no copies of the exam after they are given. All the major test makers for the college and graduate school admission make retired exams and test questions readily available, but New York City’s Department of Education does not.
UFT opposes single measure admissions
The union is on record criticizing and challenging the validity of a single test as the sole criteria for high stakes decisions – such as entrance to early elementary gifted and talented programs or specialized high schools. The proponents of these standardized tests for entrance to competitive screened schools allege the tests are a reliable, objective measure that reinforce the schools’ success and set the standard for academic achievement; ultimately, it’s not broke, so no need to fix it. We respectfully and vehemently disagree. Our prior 2014 testimony citing the Education Policy Research Institute at Arizona State University’s report, “High Stakes, But Low Validity,” and the American Educational Research Association’s 2012 qualitative research, challenged the wisdom of a sole measure for admitting students in specialized high schools, plus revealed the most competitive educational institutions determine academic merit using formulas comprised of multiple academic measures, among which the most highly valued variable is exceptional talent.
The UFT believes admission to the specialized high schools must be changed to a system of multiple measures. This is not news. We urge the City Council to revisit our recommendations contained within our union task force’s 2014 report called “Redefining High Performance for Entrance Into Specialized High Schools — Making the Case for Change.” (4) That same standard, multiple indicators to assess a student’s academic standing, must be applied across the board – so a single test does not determine access to gifted and talented programs, middle schools or the specialized high schools. The UFT opposes creating additional specialized high schools where admission is based on a single test. The UFT supports admission programs based on multiple measures that capture a year of a student’s growth and ability.
http://www.uft.org/testimony/testimony-regarding-segregation-new-york-city-public-schools
City council members on Wednesday grilled education department officials on school segregation at a joint hearing of the Education Committee and Civil and Human Rights Committee.
The sharp questions and answer session took place just weeks before the 65th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.
The atmosphere was a stark departure from just five years ago, when council members questioned education department officials about diversity issues in a school system that remains among the most segregated in the country. Back then, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his previous schools chancellor, Carmen Fariña, steadfastly refused to even mention the words “integration” or “segregation.”
Battle lines remained hardened around the what to do about the lack of diversity in the specialized high schools, a debate that overshadowed much of the hearing. Some council members tried to strike a delicate balance between the need for reforms and listening to the concerns of the Asian community, whose children make up a majority of the schools’ students.
Recent polling shows that most New Yorkers want to overhaul the single-test admissions system currently enshrined in state law. But before the hearing, a group of largely Asian-American advocates protested a city proposal to overhaul admissions.
One Asian-American student testified that her community shouldn’t be painted with a single brush and that she supported integration efforts.
“Integrating our schools will reduce racial bias and counter stereotypes,” said Bonnie Tang, who attended city public schools and is now in college.
Carranza touched on the undertones of the frequent argument that changing the admissions method would dampen academic quality.
“I will call that racist every time I hear it,” he said. “If you don’t want me to call you on it, don’t say it.”