SHSAT Sunset

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  • Stuyvesant High School Black Alumni Diversity Initiative: Letter To Chancellor Carranza

    Below is an open letter to Chancellor Richard A. Carranza from the Stuyvesant High School Black Alumni Diversity Initiative (SHSBADI). SHSBADI was formed in 2010 to address the declining enrollment of Black and Latinx students at Stuyvesant and the city’s other specialized high schools.

    The letter below outlines SHSBADI’s recommendations for ways to increase the number of Black and Latinx students at Specialized High Schools along with their thoughts on the pending State Legislation (S7983, A10427 and S8503) to address this issue. 

    https://www.stuyalumni.org/open-letter-to-chancellor-carranza/

  • My Feelings about the SHSAT & Specialized Schools

    I don’t think the standard mathematics curriculum IN MIDDLE SCHOOL CLASSES will prepare a student to successfully get into one of the specialized schools without going to extra math classes (and ELA, probably, but I’m focusing more specifically on the math, because that’s my area of expertise). Now, when I consider the ways in which teachers are prepared to teach and focused on their curriculum development, I would say that most middle school teachers (unless they’re teaching an SHSAT prep course) have never done an in-depth analysis of the kinds of questions on there, and are not looking to embed those questions into their curriculum or deploy them as extension/challenge questions for students who finish early (even though there are actually some questions that could be tackled by kids as young as 6th grade! And I may steal some this year!). So there’s an opportunity gap here: knowing what the exam is and recognizing that you do actually need to prepare for it. The DOE’s website is misleading about it (bordering on lying, in my opinion): “The test measures knowledge and skills students have gained over the course of their education. Keeping up with schoolwork throughout the year is the best possible preparation.” I don’t disagree that you can’t do well on the SHSAT if you haven’t done these things, but I honestly don’t think that’s sufficient. And to tell the students that it is sufficient is to rob them of the preparation time.

     

    https://teachdomore.wordpress.com/2018/08/12/my-feelings-about-the-shsat-specialized-schools-iteachmath-mtbos/

  • Why I Support Multiple Measures of Admission to New York’s Specialized High Schools

    First, I support multiple measures of evaluation for colleges, jobs, sports teams and anything else I can think of, why should I support a single test as the sole standard of admission to specialized high schools.
    Secondly, at a time when more and more colleges are becoming SAT/ACT Optional, it is in no one’s interest, other than test companies and those involved in data mining, to put so much emphasis on standardized tests. You are not preparing students for higher education by using a single test criteria for top high schools- you are not preparing them for today’s workplace either.

  • Scrap the SHSAT, for diversity’s sake: Mayor de Blasio is right about selective high schools

    We at the New York Urban League are taking these issues head-on by helping to educate parents and students about the SHSAT so more black and Latino students are aware of the exam. Exams are administered in the fall; check the New York City Department of Education website for test dates, and encourage students to jump on this opportunity.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-scrap-shsat-for-diversitys-sake-20180905-story.html

  • Pathways to an Elite Education Exploring Strategies to Diversify NYC’s Specialized High Schools (2015)

    This brief examines students’ pathways from middle school to matriculation at a specialized high school, and simulates the effects of various admissions criteria that have been proposed as alternatives to the current policy. Analyzing data from 2005 to 2013, we found that while the SHSAT is (by design) the most important factor determining who attends the specialized high schools, it is not the only factor. Many students—including many high-achieving students—do not take the SHSAT at all, and some of those offered admission decide to go to high school elsewhere.

    Even when comparing students with the same level of prior academic achievement (based on state tests), we noted disparities at each stage of the pathway into a specialized school. For example, among students with comparable prior achievement, girls and Latinos were less likely to take the SHSAT. And girls, Latino, and Black students who took the test were less likely to receive an offer of admission. These findings suggest that there are opportunities to increase access, even within the confines of SHSAT-based admissions. Interventions that ensure that well-qualified students sit for the SHSAT—and have adequate resources to prepare for it—could help make the specialized schools more diverse.

    https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/research_alliance/publications/pathways_to_an_elite_education

  • New York City released its study of the SHSAT. Here’s why it won’t end the admissions debate.

    Still, the study doesn’t address key questions about whether the SHSAT is any better at predicting student success than the alternative system de Blasio put forward. And it can’t get at the heart of the debate about the importance of diversifying the elite schools.

    The study uses data from every single eighth grade student who took the SHSAT between 2005 and 2009, looking at whether a student’s score seemed to predict early success in high school. It finds a relatively strong relationship between SHSAT scores and early high school performance.

    https://chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/08/03/new-york-city-released-its-study-of-the-shsat-heres-why-it-wont-end-the-admissions-debate/

  • SHSAT History: New York Specialized High School Admission Policies Have Changed Over the Years

    A new reform movement was launched in 1996 when a report issued by the community-activist organization ACORN branded the high-stake one-shot admissions test a form of educational apartheid. They were supported by Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew, but once again the campaign failed because of deeply entrenched political opposition.

    In 1995 the city opened a Specialized High Schools Institute (SHSI), city-run preparatory program that was supposed to even out performance on the SHSAT and make admissions to the specialized high schools fairer, however with the plethora of private tutoring agencies it failed to improve ethnic balance at the schools.

    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/2/1785290/-New-York-Specialized-High-School-Admission-Policies-Have-Changed-Over-the-Years

  • Who Finds Out About Summer Test Prep Can Depend on Race

    “If if it wasn’t for having a dual-income household, I would not be able to afford it at all,” said Auressa Simmons who enrolled her daughter Anaiyah.

    On top of the tuition for the summer program, she and her husband pay for a van share that takes Anaiyah to her summer classes.

    In contrast, Melissa Doyle is just tuning into the high-school admissions process for her eighth-grade son. She attended a recent session in the Bronx about the specialized high schools.

    “I didn’t even know  that they had to take the, what is it, the S-H-S-A-T test,” Doyle said. If her son decides to take the entrance exam in October, he’ll be competing against students who spent years preparing for it.

    https://www.wnyc.org/story/who-finds-out-about-summer-test-prep-can-depend-race/

  • Asian Americans should embrace reform of specialized high school admissions

    Not all communities view testing in the same light, and aversion to change is natural. Still, SHSAT supporters have yet to persuasively explain away decades of social-science research. Contrary to the belief that scrapping the SHSAT would lower the quality of students, education experts such as Amy Hsin, associate professor of sociology at CUNY, have argued that grades are considered the best predictor of academic performance. “At best, the SHSAT [results] are unproven assessmentsof skills,” she says.

    Moreover, unlike the SHSAT, annual statewide exams probe mastery of material actually taught in schools. Using Hsin’s measures of academic potential, modeling by the city’s Department of Education indicates that the new student body would continue to be comprised of high-performing students. Grades would average 94%, while state test scores would average 3.9 on a 4.5 scale. Fourteen percent of black and Latinx students with 4’s on state math exams get offers now. According to the Department of Education, this could rise to 32%.

    Sean P. Corcoran, an associate professor of economics and education policy at New York University, and NYU research fellow E. Christine Baker-Smith ran simulations of a plan similar to de Blasio’s proposal. While critics have claimed that eliminating the SHSAT is anti-Asian, the study suggests that white and Asian American students would be affected proportionately. With only trivial changes in state exam scores, offers would increase to free-lunch-eligible students, girls, and black and Latinx students, all of whom are currently underrepresented in the specialized high schools.

    http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20180725/OPINION/180729955/asian-americans-should-embrace-reform-of-specialized-high-school

  • Evidence on New York City and Boston exam schools

    The current admissions approach almost certainly shuts out many gifted, disadvantaged students. When we rely on parents, teachers, or students to make the decision to apply to a program for gifted students (by, for example, voluntarily signing up for a test), evidence indicates it is disadvantaged students who disproportionately get shut out.

    But getting rid of the test is not the answer.  Well-educated, high-income parents work the system to get their kids into these programs. The less transparent the approach (e.g., portfolios or teacher recommendations instead of a standardized test) the greater the advantage these savvy, connected parents have in winning the game.

    An important step is to make the test universal, rather than one that students choose to take. In the dozen states where college admissions tests are universal (free, required, and given during school hours), many more students take the test and go on to college.[8] The democratizing effect is strongest among low-income and nonwhite students. The same dynamic holds among young children: when testing for giftedness is universal, poor, Black and Hispanic children are far more likely to end up in gifted classes.[9]A school district in Florida showed huge increases in the diversity of its gifted programs when it shifted to using a universal test, rather than recommendations from parents and teachers, to identify gifted students.

    Rather than force students to take yet another test, New York could use its existing 7th– and 8th-grade tests to determine admission to the exam schools. These tests are, in principle, aligned to what is taught in the schools and so are an appropriate metric by which to judge student achievement.  When so many are complaining about over-testing, why have yet another test for students to cram and sit for?

    The city could go further toward diversifying the student body by admitting the top scorers at each middle school to the exam schools. Texas uses this approach to determine admission to the University of Texas flagships: the top slice (originally 10%, now lower) of students in each high school is automatically admitted to these selective colleges. This ensures that Texas’s elite colleges at least partially reflect the economic, ethnic and racial diversity of the state’s (highly segregated) school system.

     

    https://www.brookings.edu/research/evidence-on-new-york-city-and-boston-exam-schools/