Now, we’re turning to the experts. In this week’s “Ask the Experts” feature, we reached out to Syed Ali, a professor of sociology at Long Island University-Brooklyn; Zakiyah Ansari, the advocacy director for the Alliance for Quality Education; David Bloomfield, a professor of educational leadership, law and policy at Brooklyn College; and Soo Kim, president of the Stuyvesant High School Alumni Association.
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 education both at the kindergarten level, changing the entry points for that, and also possibly changing the SHSAT and the access to the specialized high schools?…
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 merit. Now, she said, “I feel like that system shouldn’t really exist.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/nyregion/nyc-specialized-high-school-test.html…
SHSAT and Its Discontents: WNYC Audio Interviews
Madina Touré, New York City education reporter for Politico New York, andClara Hemphill, founder of InsideSchools at the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs, discuss proposals to change admissions policies at NYC’s specialized high schools.
Schools chancellor calls for more black, Latino students in city’s specialized high schools
…“We’re the only city in America that requires a single test for admission to a public school,” he said. “So I’m asking the question . . . ‘Is that OK?’ I’m asking the question, ‘Is that justice for our kids?’ ”
[…]
“You have brilliant black and Latino students . . . if they don’t do well on that test, given one day, for one time period, for one opportunity, if they do not do well they don’t get the opportunity,” said the chancellor, who derided the current system as “neither reliable or valid.”
The Students Trying to Get Ahead in a One-Test System
…At Think Prep, a testing outfit near Penn Station, six students bent over desks in a windowless classroom. They’d been there for the past six weeks, Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., studying practice S.H.S.A.T. questions. (The program costs five thousand six hundred dollars.)
[…]
The instructor, whose name was Andrew, wiped down the board. He’d attended Hunter College High School, another school with exam-based admissions, though it uses a different test. “It’s a mess,” he said, of the S.H.S.A.T.
Questions raised about aptitude tests
Fox news interviews students and other stakeholders about the SHSAT
…“It’s not the right way to evaluate a student’s merit,” said Muhammad Deen, no other college uses one single test.
Deen says he came just below the cutoff to get into Brooklyn tech and instead ended up attending a charter school. He and Morales support the Mayor’s proposal to eliminate the SHSAT and instead admit students to the elite schools based on GPA and state test scores.
“It is more of a way of looking at the student as a whole, rather than this one simple test score that didn’t really showcase what a good student is,” Deen said.
Union chief says de Blasio’s plan to scrap the SHSAT is going nowhere in Albany
It seems unlikely that Bill A10427 will succeed, according to Michael Mulgrew. This has been our assumption from the beginning as well.
…“I don’t believe at this point in time it can pass in the next legislative session because it has been so highly politicized,” Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said during a panel discussion hosted by City & State and moderated by Chalkbeat.
Mulgrew’s comments underscore the challenge ahead for de Blasio’s plan, which calls for eliminating the single test that determines admission at eight of the city’s top high schools and instead admitting the top 7 percent of students at every middle school across the city.
In a wide-ranging interview, Carranza takes issue with admissions to New York City’s gifted programs
Chancellor Richard Carranza in a wide-ranging interview with Chalkbeat.
“There is no body of knowledge that I know of that has pointed to the fact that you can give a test to a 4-year-old or a 5-year-old and determine if they’re gifted,” he said. “Those tests — and it’s pretty clear — are more a measure of the privilege of a child’s home than true giftedness.”