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Missing Pieces of the Discussion Around Specialized High Schools and City Education
· opinionThe results of this test also appear to be gender biased, as girls tend to score significantly higher on state exams and receive better grades, but score lower than boys on the SHSAT. (Girls were only admitted to Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech in 1969-1970.) The test is quirky in other ways and is scored to give extra points to students who…
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A10427: An act to amend the education law, in relation to admission to the specialized high schools in the city of New York
· law10427–A I N A S S E M B L Y April 20, 2018 ___________ Introduced by M. of A. BARRON, BLAKE, DAVILA, MONTESANO, PERRY, SIMON, STECK, PICHARDO, COOK, HOOPER, TAYLOR, RIVERA, PRETLOW, DE LA ROSA, TITUS, DICKENS, WRIGHT, VANEL, BICHOTTE, JOYNER, SOLAGES, ARROYO, WOERNER, THIELE, FERNANDEZ, ERRIGO, ESPINAL, WEPRIN, MOSLEY, GOTTFRIED — read once…
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Best schools shouldn’t be determined by a test
· opinionKaplan Inc., is probably one of the most famous companies students turn to when they need help taking a test. Their preparation courses for tests like the SAT and ACT are part of an industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars (if not in the billions). In fact, the company offers a prep course starting…
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Why Gifted and Talented Schools are the Wrong Approach: To diversify schools, reimagine G&T: A bill to expand segregated programs moves in exactly the wrong direction
But we’ve already tried this, and it didn’t work. Back in 2009, Mayor Bloomberg tried to expand gifted programs and switched from multiple measures to a single test score for gifted admission. The result was actually more segregation, and reduced access for black and Latino students: The percentage of black and Latino students entering such programs in kindergarten was cut…
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Brooklyn President Eric Adams states his SHSAT position
· opinionI believe Eric Adams wanted to do the right thing with the SHSAT exam. He understands how detrimental it is, but ultimately didn’t think it was worth the fight. we have to meet the demand of highly capable candidates who want a specialized high school seat by expanding seats overall. I am expanding on my…
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Educators For Excellence: Open Letter to Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Carranza on Desegregating NYC Schools
· opinionOpponents of school desegregation argued in 1977 that “either we have to lower the standards for everybody so the special nature of the schools would disappear, or we would have to allow these students to be subjected to failure.” It is eerie how today’s opponents repeat these same arguments. This argument assumes that black and…
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Exam High Schools and Academic Achievement: Evidence from New York City
· researchPublicly funded exam schools educate many of the world’s most talented students. These schools typically contain higher achieving peers, more rigorous instruction, and additional resources compared to regular public schools. This paper uses a sharp discontinuity in the admissions process at three prominent exam schools in New York City to provide the first causal estimate…
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SHSAT Invalid: I’ve spent years studying the link between SHSAT scores and student success. The test doesn’t tell you as much as you might think.
First, that requires defining merit. Only New York City defines it as the score on a single test — other cities’ selective high schools use multiple measures, as do top colleges. There are certainly other potential criteria, such as artistic achievement or citizenship. However, when merit is defined as achievement in school, the question of…
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Discovery Expansion: Elite New York High Schools to Offer 1 in 5 Slots to Those Below Cutoff
· analysisBy 2020, 20 percent of the ninth-grade seats in every specialized high school will be set aside for Discovery students, according to city education officials. Currently, only 5 percent of the 4,000 ninth-grade seats are filled through Discovery. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/nyregion/discovery-program-specialized-schools-nyc.html
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Everyone needs help getting into Stuyvesant: What it really takes
· opinionNow that I mention it, I don’t think I was all that good at the test questions at the beginning. But my mother, a math teacher, had a blue shoulder bag of “manipulables”: toys, essentially, that she used to explain concepts in geometry and probability. The blue bag was always in the foyer, as if…