Proposals

Besides stopping the use of a single exam as the sole screening criteria for public schools, we have a few proposals that we believe should be implemented to improve the fairness of the exam.

1. The SHSAT exam should be opt-out as long as Hecht-Calandra remains law.
2. Rudimentary mandatory prep should be incorporated into school curriculum.
3. The SHSAT margin of error should be considered in evaluating all students.
   1. I.e. We don’t assign students who score within 1 point of each other to different schools, as we do now
   2. This could be done by ranking using a moving average with a random assignment within the margin of error.
   3. We’d argue this is still a simple ranking, just incorporating the limitations of the exam.
4. Provide an opt-out PSHSAT
   1. Or opt-out audit of the real exam
5. Find other uses for the SHSAT
   1. E.g. Extra funds for recovery schools or schools with low proficiency but high SHSAT participation and/or scores
   2. All Middle-schools should report how their curriculum falls short of SHSAT prep as part of a middle-school rigor report.
6. Expand the number of Specialized High-School seats to mitigate the effect on Asian students.
7. Allow Online registration.  A student should not need to discuss with the school counselor.