SHSAT Sunset

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  • Seven NYC Students Didn’t Get Seats in Elite Schools, So They Asked State for Help

    Another attack on NYC’s specialized high school diversity efforts. This is representing attorney Claude M. Millman’s ( Bronx Science ’81 Alumni ) second legal action against the SHSAT reform that I know of.

    Previously he represented a coalition of anti-reform protesters in another SHSAT related matter in 2014.

    Referring to 2014 Legal Action

    I believe but haven’t confirmed that this filing was done through the state education department’s appeals process: Appeals or Petitions to Commissioner of Education. Maybe SHSAT reform supporters should have been filing petitions all along?

    From the WSJ article…

    The petitioners’ unusual move comes at a time of intense debate over Mayor Bill de Blasio’s effort to overhaul the admissions system. While lobbying legislators to change the state law, he vastly expanded the Discovery program for the coming school year, in hopes that doing so would better integrate schools that are predominantly Asian.


    “The absurdity of the implementation of the mayor’s Discovery program is that it is supposed to be directed towards getting African-American and Hispanic kids into these specialized high schools, and it is so arbitrarily drawn that even those kids are adversely affected,” the students’ lawyer, Claude Millman, said Friday.


    The petitions say the city ignored language in the 1971 law requiring that Discovery operate “without in any manner interfering with the academic level” of these eight schools. The petitions include signed statements from three former principals of Stuyvesant High School and Bronx High School of Science, saying the current version of Discovery admits many students whose test scores are too low for them to keep up.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/seven-nyc-students-didnt-get-seats-in-elite-schools-so-they-asked-state-for-help-11555768800

    It will be interesting to see how Mr. Millman plans to establish that letting students in who scored a few multiple-choice questions lower on a single test “interferes with the academic level” of the schools.

    In the past students accepted via the discovery program scored identically to students who aced the SHSAT and scored up to 300 points higher…

    Stuyvesant’s current principal, Eric Contreras, didn’t comment on the petitions but expressed confidence in the Discovery program. “Current ninth-graders who participated in Discovery last summer are doing well and participating fully in the Stuyvesant experience,” he said by email. “I have no doubt that the students who complete the program this coming summer will also be successful here.”

    WSJ article

  • Toward a Black education agenda

    “We have 5,000 applicants every year for these schools and NYC is the only school system that uses a single test as the only criteria for admission. All other schools in the nation have multiple measures for admission into specialized schools. They look at what the student has done all year, their GPA, their development. Not a single test that require eighth-graders to go to expensive private cram schools because the curriculum doesn’t include any of the material. Our children are less than 10 percent of the specialized high school student population while Asians are 67 percent.”


    Dr. Bernard Gassaway said, “The system is designed to fail our children. There are 17 members of the New York State Board of Regents. It is more diverse now than it’s ever been. But they’re not doing anything demonstrably to change the system. So you put people who look like us on the Board of Regents, but then they begin to conform to the ways of the people who are perpetuating the demise of our children. It’s clear the policies are what’s destroying our children and you are the policymaking board. You were put on that to Board to represent us, but yet you’re failing to do that. The problem is, they’re not being called out on that.”


    http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2019/apr/18/toward-black-education-agenda/

  • Segregation Has Been the Story of New York City’s Schools for 50 Years

    It’s important to understand the political climate before the NY State legislature decided to pass Hecht-Calandra in 1971. The New York Times does a great job filing in that context.

    In 2016, a proposal to send some Upper West Side children — who were zoned for a high-performing, mostly white, wealthy elementary school near their homes — to a lower-performing school, attended mostly by low-income black and Hispanic students, about a ten-minute walk away, was met with vitriol.


    A version of the plan — which ultimately impacted a relatively small number of schools — eventually passed after years of negotiations.
    B犀利士 ut the recent push for integration has been led in part by liberal white parents.


    Some of these parents helped force the most comprehensive local desegregation policy yet: the elimination of screened middle schools in Brooklyn’s District 15, which includes upper-middle-class neighborhoods like Park Slope. Some parents there have said the election of President Trump prompted them to combat segregation in their children’s schools.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/nyregion/school-segregation-new-york.html

  • Important Technical Features of the SHSAT Exam

    Recently @akilbello went over some very important open questions regarding the SHSAT. These remind us of how important it is for the NYC Department of Education to immediately release the SHSAT manual.

    Read the lengthy twitter thread here.

    https://twitter.com/akilbello/status/1117287719883898880

  • First Senate Forum on NYC Specialized High Schools

  • AERA Position Statement on High-Stakes Testing

    The American Educational Research Association is the foremost and most respected national educational research society. Below is their opinions on using high-stakes testing in admissions.

    This position statement on high-stakes testing is based on the 1999 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. The Standards represent a professional consensus concerning sound and appropriate test use in education and psychology. They are sponsored and endorsed by the AERA together with the American Psychological Association (APA) and the National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME). This statement is intended as a guide and a caution to policy makers, testing professionals, and test users involved in high-stakes testing programs.

    Protection Against High-Stakes Decisions Based on a Single Test
    Decisions that affect individual students’ life chances or educational opportunities should not be made on the basis of test scores alone. Other relevant information should be taken into account to enhance the overall validity of such decisions. As a minimum assurance of fairness, when tests are used as part of making high-stakes decisions for individual students such as promotion to the next grade or high school graduation, students must be afforded multiple opportunities to pass the test. More importantly, when there is credible evidence that a test score may not adequately reflect a student’s true proficiency, alternative acceptable means should be provided by which to demonstrate attainment of the tested standards.

    http://www.aera.net/About-AERA/AERA-Rules-Policies/Association-Policies/Position-Statement-on-High-Stakes-Testing

  • New numbers show just how few minority students get into NYC’s top, specialized high schools

    Students from families living in neighborhoods within the South Bronx and central Brooklyn were least likely to attend the famed schools, in a similar pattern to last year, the data show.


    An analysis of city Education Department data revealed just seven of roughly 19,875 students from Bronx District 7 landed seats in the elite public schools in 2018.

    That’s just .035% of students in the South Bronx district — and the smallest percentage of any of the city’s 32 school districts.


    The disturbing stats are even more extreme than those posted last year, when Bronx District 9 landed at the bottom of the heap, with .05% of students accepted to the elite schools.

    https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-top-high-schools-new-admissions-data-20190407-ora7mdii6bejtcgzk4rt2wn664-story.html

  • High-Stakes Standardized Testing Supporter: William Colton

    Name: William Colton
    Assembly Link: https://nyassembly.gov/mem/William-Colton/
    Ballotpedia: https://ballotpedia.org/William_Colton
    Phone: 718-236-1598

    Assembly-member William Colton is a proponent of keeping the SHSAT exam as the SOLE measure of merit for access to Specialized High Schools.

    Media:

    Assembly-member Colton conveniently leaves out the fact that NYC’s gifted & talented programs actually increase segregation. Parents from across the city opportunity hoard these competitive seats and we have a replay of the SHSAT issue but with 5 year-olds.

    To diversify schools, reimagine Gifted & Talented: A bill to expand segregated programs moves in exactly the wrong direction

    Besides the Gifted and Talented admissions process issues. Gifted and Talented programs also remove many of the highest performing students in every classroom. This has a dampening effect on most students left behind. In-class student ability grouping is much more effective and has less negative side-effects. E.g. Differentiated Instruction strategies.

    Senator Colton calling on SHSAT supporters to rally before a planned Senate “hearing”.

    Mr. Colton rallying anti-reform protests by invoking Dr. Martin Luther King. You can’t make this stuff up…

    According to a seating NY Assemblyman, using multiple-measures for a public high-school’s admission process is a kin to “destroying the future of our children”.

  • Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Voters Say Scrap Elite School Test

    Great news for SHSAT reform advocates:

    With support from white, black and Hispanic voters, 57 percent of all New York City voters say other factors should be considered in deciding admission to elite public high schools, while 36 percent say keep the present system which relies on a single test to decide admission. 

    Support for the “other factors” option is 50 – 43 percent among white voters, 63 – 29 percent among black voters and 73 – 23 percent among Hispanic voters. Asian voters are divided as 46 percent say keep the single test and 48 percent say consider other factors. 

    In a separate question, New York City voters support 63 – 28 percent “changing the admissions process to New York City’s elite high schools if it meant increased diversity at those schools.” Support is 51 – 37 percent among white voters, 75 – 16 percent among black voters, 77 – 17 percent among Hispanic voters and 53 – 39 percent among Asian voters. 

    “The admissions process to New York City’s top high schools has become a lightning rod. And New Yorkers say rethink it. They favor considering other factors besides acing a standardized test as the only door to entry,” Snow said. 

    “New Yorkers are split over the quality of public schools in their neighborhoods. The Bronx is the least satisfied with its schools. Staten Island has the highest level of satisfaction,” Snow said. 

    https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=2612

  • Why Did New York’s Most Selective Public High School Admit Only 7 Black Students?

    Nearly 900 students have been offered admission to one of New York City’s most elite public high schools. Only seven of those students are black.

    New York Times podcast on the SHSAT issue. Audio program reviews SHSAT history to current politics.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/02/podcasts/the-daily/black-students-nyc-high-school.html