Category: opinion
-
Everyone needs help getting into Stuyvesant: What it really takes
Now 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…
-
Three charter-school leaders for ending single-test high school admissions: Black and Latino kids can perform at the highest levels
Using a single test to determine admission to the most elite schools is not a sound way to select students. It’s an outdated process that leads schools to miss too many talented students, a single-measure notion that the best colleges don’t even use. The Specialized High School Admissions Test isn’t based on the middle-school curriculum…
-
Stuyvesant Principal Eric Contreras In Favor of ‘Mixed Metrics’ Assessment Instead of Only SHSAT
Principal Eric Contreras is stepping down, but is in favor of using multiple criteria for measuring merit, as opposed to the single roughly 100 math and English multiple-choice SHSAT. That makes both the principal and valedictorian of Stuyvesant pro-reform. Though Contreras told the Journal he is in favor of “mixed metrics” to be used in…
-
Nix this admissions test: A recent Stuyvesant grad makes the case against the SHSAT
Student argument against the SHSAT Defenders of the current system, hailing the test as establishing a level playing field, argue that if more black and Latino students truly wanted to attend specialized high schools, they could just study harder. I have repeatedly heard my classmates champion this mindset, implying that black and Latino students are…
-
UFT: The Specialized High School Controversy is a Political Sideshow
UFT Michael Mulgrew’s opinion The United Federation of Teachers has made repeated suggestions for improving the admission process in the “exam” schools, including using multiple measures and prioritizing the highest-level performers from every middle school. But however that debate turns out, the real focus of the DOE and our local political leaders should be on…
-
Specialized High Schools – some comments should not matter
Educator blog post: The current admissions system is based on a single test, on one day. That’s the way it’s been, for a long, long time. But in 1970 or 1971, someone decided to study the admissions policy for the schools (at that time the Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical High School, and…
-
NYT Editorial Board: It’s Time to Integrate New York’s Best Schools
New York’s elementary and middle schools do not prepare children for the test, all but ensuring that students seek out extensive test preparation. Many Asian and white students have done so for thousands of dollars apiece. Black and Latino students are likely to walk in with little or no test preparation. Of all elite public high…
-
‘So there I was, figuring it out myself’: A Brooklyn teen on why the city’s specialized high school prep wasn’t enough
My family wasn’t well off financially. Often times, we struggled and there was constant worry over whether we had food in the fridge or we had school supplies. I wasn’t expecting to enroll in a Kaplan or a Princeton Review course like my fellow affluent classmates. Nevertheless, I persisted. I sought out a free program…
-
The Big Problem With the New SAT
The SAT will remain a “norm-referenced” exam, designed primarily to rank students rather than measure what they actually know. Such exams compare students to other test takers, rather than measure their performance against a fixed standard. They are designed to produce a “bell curve” distribution among examinees, with most scoring in the middle and with…
-
Challenge To the Concept of Elite
This was enough to convince many of the schools’ supporters that a lowering of standards was in the making. Such fears were aggravated by the fact that, for several years, some gifted and highly motivated disadvantaged youngsters — most of them black and Puerto Rican who might not have done sufficiently well in the standard…