Category: analysis
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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…
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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…
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Does Admissions Exam for Elite High Schools Measure Up? No One Knows
Many parents and teachers have long contended that the SHSAT is an assessment of students’ test-taking skills, honed by extensive test preparation, more than their potential to succeed at the specialized schools. Pian Rockfeld, an English teacher at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College in the Bronx, one of the smaller specialized…
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To integrate specialized high schools, are gifted programs part of the problem or the solution?
“We’re working to raise the bar for all kids,” Carranza said in a statement to Chalkbeat. “We also have to think about access and barriers to entry, and that includes whether we’re creating unnecessary barriers by tracking students at the age of 4 or 5 years old based on a single test.” https://chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2018/07/17/to-integrate-specialized-high-schools-are-gifted-programs-part-of-the-problem-or-the-solution/
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Who Wins, and Who Loses, in the Proposed Plan for Elite Schools?
Dr. Caceres, the Bronx principal, said that half of his eighth-grade students already take advanced math and science classes, and have the ability and work ethic to thrive in a challenging school like Bronx Science. His students do not do well on the SHSAT, he said, in part because most of their families cannot afford…
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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
By 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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Should These Tests Get a Failing Grade?
SHSAT 1, NYTimes reporters and editors 0 But the problems I encountered when taking the SHSAT online demonstrate how even one standardized test question might derail a promising student’s future. In fact, I was thrown off by the very first question on the test […] Daniel Koretz, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of…
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74 Analysis Shows Girls Already Outperform Boys at NYC’s Elite Schools Amid Fear That Opening Up Admissions Would Water Down Quality
With the city’s focus on improving STEM options for girls, the use of the SHSAT seems a bit hypocritical Perhaps, but the mayor’s initiative would also give more offers to a particular kind of student — one more likely to earn high GPAs, achieve college readiness on Regents exams, and graduate with top honors. That…
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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…