SHSAT Sunset

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  • PUTTING DREAMS TO THE TEST: A special report; Elite High School Is a Grueling Exam Away

    A NYTimes overview of the test and experiences in 1998.

    The Stuyvesant test is officially called the ”Examination for the Specialized Science High Schools” — Stuyvesant, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School. The same test is given for admission to all three, and students simply list their first, second and third choice. Since a majority of students list Stuyvesant first — 11,397 out of 18,524 eighth graders who took the most recent test — the cutoff for admission to Stuyvesant is higher. This year students had to score 559 or better for Stuyvesant’s admission, or get about 85 of the 100 questions right.


    The test is divided into English and math sections, just like the S.A.T., and is prepared and graded by American Guidance Service, an educational publishing company outside Minneapolis-St. Paul. To make the test more fair to immigrants whose English lags, sections on sentence completion and word synonyms, antonyms and analogies have been eliminated. The English part of the Stuyvesant test emphasizes ”logical reasoning,” which educators say makes the test more difficult.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/02/nyregion/putting-dreams-test-special-report-elite-high-school-grueling-exam-away.html

  • Testing Time, and Anxiety Is High

    Since early December the pace has increased, with nearly 18,000 eighth- and ninth-grade students taking the admission test for the city’s three specialized “science” high schools, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Technical; more than 3,300 would-be art, drama, music and dance students auditioning at Fiorello La Guardia, and hundreds of others taking admissions exams for the city’s private nursery, elementary and high schools.

    A few tests and auditions remain, but for most city parents and students, this is a time of waiting for results, most of which are made known in February.

    Among the specialized public high schools, Stuyvesant is the most competitive — and this year, even more so. Apparently drawn by Stuyvesant’s $150 million new building, 9,336 eighth grade students took the Stuyvesant entrance exam this year, 2,156 more than last y犀利士 ear. That means that only about 9 of every 100 who tested will get into Stuyvesant, compared with about 37 out of 100 at Bronx Science, and 86 out of 100 at Brooklyn Technical. About 17 of 100 students who audition at La Guardia are expected to be admitted.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1993/01/17/nyregion/testing-time-and-anxiety-is-high.html

  • First High School Test: Getting In

    If the air was fraught with some apprehension, perhaps some was called for. The one-and-a-half-hour multiple-choice test, which includes vocabulary, reading comprehension, logical reasoning and mathematics, is the sole determining factor for admission to the city’s three specialized science high schools — Stuyvesant, Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School.

    […]

    Board of Education officials expect from 17,000 to 18,000 applicants for the ninth and 10th grade classes at the three science schools next fall. About 5,000 will be accepted, and officials expect about 4,000 of those to enroll.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/09/nyregion/first-high-school-test-getting-in.html

  • Special Classes Help Gifted in Ghettos

    OUTSIDE, there is a burned‐out tenement, a symbol of a devastated inner‐city neighborhood. Inside, a teacher is working on algebra problems with a class of gifted children, preparing them for entrance to specialized high schools.

    Of the 16,800 pupils in District 7, 400 are in special progress classes. The district is about 68 percent Hispanic, 31 percent black and 1 percent “other,” meaning white and Oriental.

    Madeline Golia, the coordinator of the district’s program for gifted and talented pups, said that admission to the special progress classes is based on several “flexible” standards. These include performance on the citywide reading test, mathematical ability, teacher evaluation, emotional adjustment and personal screening.

    Selection Method Changed

    This represents a change from the days when intelligence tests were used to determine eligibility for classes for the gifted, and when pupils who scored only one I.Q. point below the “gifted” score — 130 — were not admitted. I.Q. tests no longer are administered in New York City schools.

    The District 7 standard, Mrs. Golia said, is that the pupil read one year and six months above grade level and be at grade level in math. Over‐all, only 40 percent of pupils in the city’s schools read at or above grade level. There are no citywide math tests.

    This article points out quite a bit.

    1. Specialized High School test prep was given to students IN school. It wasn’t an added outside program like today’s “DREAM” program
    2. We had norm-referenced G&T before SPE which caused the predictable diversity issues. SP changed this to a local-normed admission process. This gives evidence to what I’ve always held. That Bloomberg/Klein knew that switching to a national norm-referenced exam would decimate Black participation in G&T
    3. SP had 400 students in a 16K district
    4. Students back then were performing at similar to lower on criterion-referenced exams ( something we already know, but some challenge )

    https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/12/archives/special-classes-help-gifted-in-ghettos-the-children-belong-in.html

  • Grouping by Ability Of Students Upheld For New York City

    The Federal Government said yesterday that New York City public schools could continue grouping Youngsters by ability even if it led to racially imbalanced classes.

    And in a related action, it withdrew a charge that the city’s three academically elite high schools discriminated against black and female students.

    The Government actions, contained in an agreement with the Board of Education, resolve a complaint intitated by the Federal Office for Civil Rights in early 1977.The board is expected to make the agreement public today.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1978/06/16/archives/grouping-by-ability-of-students-upheld-for-new-york-city-grouping.html

  • New York City’s Discriminating Schools

    n a city where residential patterns have made the student bodies of nearly half the public schools predominantly nonwhite, the effective integration of the special schools, and the maintenance of their high academic standards, should be cause for celebration, not condemnation. The Office of Civil Rights may not realize that, racial issues aside, the special schools have been under recurrent attack from those who abhor Jefferson’s “aristocracy of talent” as an affront to egalitarianism. They are dangerously wrong. New York’s special schools are not an aberration but the guiding beacons of public education.

    NY Times defends the use of the SHSAT

    https://www.nytimes.com/1977/11/13/archives/new-york-citys-discriminating-schools.html

  • 2 Ideals at Issue

    Many teachers and principals are convinced that there should be ability grouping for the good of the most able and the least able students. But often these same educators are uneasy over the racial isolation that often results. This has put some programs for bright students on shaky ground.

    Classes for gifted children are being abolished, for example, at P.S. 152, down the block from Brooklyn College, because even though the school’s enrollment is becoming increasingly black and Puerto Rican, the gifted classes are disproportionately white.

    “There is no doubt that our classes for the intellectually gifted would have been totally segregated at that school if we had continued them,” said Dr. Ralph T. Brande, the superintendent of Community School District 22. Nonetheless, most of the district’s schools continue to have classes for the intellectually gifted.

    “District 22 is one of the last bastons of the middle‐class — both black and white —in the city,” Dr. Brande explained in an interview. “We have to do something to keep them in the schools. Will they flee the public schools and the city if they lose the classes for the intellectually gifted and the special progress classes at the junior highs?

    “I know the word ‘elitist’ is associated with these programs, but the problem that concerns me is whether we can still develop these children if we throw them in with everyene else.”

    At least one of the decentralized. districts, District 3, which reaches from Columbus Circle into ,Ilarlem on the city’s West Sides has answered the question;by banning all classes for the intellectually. gifted and operating entirely on what it says is a heterogeneous basis.

    “The families in our district are either poor or well off and everyone knows there is a correlation between economic background and how kids do in school” says Joseph Elias, the distriet superintendent. “Until we iriade the change, if You were. white you go into the ‘smart’ class and if you were not ‘,White you got into the ‘dumb’ class, Getting their children into the classes for the gifted was a way for parents to avoid having to spend $3,000 or $4,000 a year for a private school.”

    犀利士 l” target=”_blank” rel=”noreferrer noopener”>https://www.nytimes.com/1974/05/22/archives/2-ideals-at-issue.html

  • Gifted Grade Schoolers To Get Special Instruction

    This is where NYC’s infamous Gifted & Talented program all started.

    The city school system will get its first program for teaching gifted elementary ‐school children this fall, following a vote to set up the program by’ the central Board of Education last night.

    A grant of $60,000 from the Vincent Astor Foundation will finance two experimental “early ‐learner” classes, in Brooklyn and Manhattan, for especially bright children aged from 4 to 6 years.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/16/archives/gifted-grade-schoolers-to-get-special-instruction.html

    And 2 years later…

    The two existing experimental classrooms for 4‐to‐6‐year‐old pupils are situated in Public School 116 at 210 East 33d Street in Manhattan and P.S. 114 at 1077 Remsen Avenue in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn.

    Students are selected from all boroughs on the basis of interviews, recommendations and tests and, according to Dr. Ehrlich, represent the top one‐half of 1 per cent of the pupil population.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1975/05/11/archives/pilot-project-aids-gifted-children-in-city-schools.html

  • New Entry Policy at 4 Special Schools Is Urged

    A special committee appointed by School Chancellor Harvey B. Scribner has recommended that the city’s four specialized high schools abandon their traditional policy of basing regular admissions solely on competitive entrance examinations.

    The 26‐member, broad‐based committee said admissions to these schools “should be based on multiple criteria that are objective and equitable in nature.” It called for a revision in state law to make possible such an admissions policy.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/24/archives/new-entry-policy-at-4-special-schools-is-urged-group-appointed-by.html

  • Legislature Retains Admission Tests for City’s Four Specialized High Schools

    Archive of the original NYTimes news article from 1971

    Without debate, the Senate and the Assembly gave final legislative approval today to a bill designed to limit the New York City Board of Education’s power to alter the city’s four specialized high schools.

    https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/26/archives/legislature-retains-admission-tests-for-citys-four-specialized-high.html