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How One ‘Ordinary’ Brooklyn High School Produced Six Nobel Laureates, a Supreme Court Justice, and Three Senators
· nonshatVerba, it turns out, was a graduate of James Madison High School in Brooklyn, New York. So is Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. And the Senate minority leader, Charles Schumer. And even a former Republican senator from Minnesota, Norm Coleman. At least six Nobel laureates also attended the…
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McCauliffe 2018 Case: MOTION for Preliminary Injunction
· lawThe judge’s motion denying a preliminary injunction which attempted to block scheduled changes to the Discovery program. You can find most case documents here https://shsatsunset.org/christa-mcauliffe-intermediate-school-pto-inc-et-al-v-de-blasio-et-al/ The 40-page document also contains lots of findings of fact that should be a useful legal overview. Here are some notes… As a preliminary matter, the Court finds that Plaintiffs…
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It’s the peer effect, stupid: What makes schools like Stuyvesant great? It’s not test-based admission, but a broader culture of excellence
· opinionWe’ve conducted more than 70 interviews (and counting) with adult alumni of Stuyvesant High School who graduated between 1946 and 2013 for a book we’re working on called “The Peer Effect.” (We both graduated from Stuyvesant in the 1980s.) Many of the people we’ve interviewed grew up poor, and/or were black, Latino or Asian. Some…
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Chancellor Carranza’s Gifted & Talented Remarks at the CEC4 Townhall
Recently at the district 4 education townhall, Chancellor Carranza was asked a fairly complex question on Gifted and Talented programs. Parents wanted to know what your vision for G&T education is? Can you commit that G&T education will always be a part of the DOE? What are your positions in terms of access to G&T…
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NYC has the country’s most segregated schools; will the city’s plan to change that make its best schools worse?
· overviewThe old “integration will make our schools worse” argument. A frequent argument after Brown vs. Board in the 60’s makes its return. “There’s no research that shows that it’s either valid or reliable as an instrument to identify talent,” said Carranza about the SHSAT. “It’s just a hard test.” NYC Chancellor https://pix11.com/2019/02/16/nyc-has-the-countrys-most-segregated-schools-will-the-citys-plan-to-change-that-make-its-best-schools-worse/
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High-Stakes Standardized Testing Supporter: Yuh-Line Niou
· profilesName: Yuh-Line NiouAssembly Link: https://nyassembly.gov/mem/Yuh-Line-NiouBallotpedia: https://ballotpedia.org/Yuh-Line_NiouPhone: 212-312-1420 Assembly-member Yuh-Line Niou is a proponent of keeping the SHSAT exam as the SOLE measure of merit for access to Specialized High Schools. Although her website claims to be against standardized testing, this is false. Speaker Heastie reported that assembly-member Niou was one of the key assembly-members to lobby against allowing…
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Stuyvesant Alumni President: Calling NYC Schools ‘Segregated’ Makes Me ‘Feel Like I’m a Bad Person’
“How is this possible, that people are saying we’re segregated, we’re Jim Crow,” Kim told the Times. “These words are too harsh. It makes me feel like I’m a bad person.” This is a striking and revelatory assessment of what’s happening. New York City officials admitted long ago to having a segregated public school system, and…
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Racist? Fair? Biased? Asian-American Alumni Debate Elite High School Admissions
“We used to joke that whoever had the most money to spend on test prep would probably go to Stuyvesant.” That was how Ms. Rahman was introduced to the specialized school debate as a young Bangladeshi immigrant living in Brooklyn. In high school, she came to believe that the admissions process was about money, not…
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Admissions Overhaul: Simulating the Outcome Under the Mayor’s Plan For Admissions to the City’s Specialized High Schools
· researchDemographic Changes. IBO compared the demographic composition of the specialized high schools under each of the three scenarios with the actual demographic composition of the ninth grade class in specialized high schools in 2017-2018.14 We found that:More black and Hispanic students would get offers. Under the top 7 percent scenario, the share of black students receiving offers…
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How a Thirteen-Year-Old Girl Smashed the Gender Divide in American High Schools
· historyThe anniversary of de Rivera’s battle comes amid another controversy about diversity at Stuyvesant. The school accepts students based entirely on an entrance exam, and the result is that few black and Latino students are admitted. (Only ten black students were admitted to Stuyvesant’s incoming class last year.) Last year, Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed…