Repeal of the 1971 Hecht-Calandra Act and transferring control of admissions to New York City’s specialized high schools to the City. The Hecht-Calandra Act made the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test the single metric that can be used to admit students to specialized high schools. By giving control of specialized high school admissions back to New York City, there are opportunities to move beyond the test as a determining factor, which has resulted in a lack of diversity at these schools. The resolution calls upon the New York State Legislature to pass, and the Governor to sign, A.10731/S.8847.
Tag: barron
-
New City Council Resolutions Push for Overhaul to School Admissions Process
-
New bill seeks to repeal state law governing admissions to NYC’s specialized high schools
“We’re not calling for any policies, we’re just saying the state should stay out of it,” said Assembly Member Charles Barron, a co-sponsor of the legislation introduced Wednesday.
The previous bill never made it to the Senate, where Sen. John Liu was seen as an obstacle to getting legislation through the New York City education committee, which he chairs.
https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2020/7/9/21319383/new-bill-repeal-admissions-nyc-specialized-high-schools
-
Toward a Black education agenda
“We have 5,000 applicants every year for these schools and NYC is the only school system that uses a single test as the only criteria for admission. All other schools in the nation have multiple measures for admission into specialized schools. They look at what the student has done all year, their GPA, their development. Not a single test that require eighth-graders to go to expensive private cram schools because the curriculum doesn’t include any of the material. Our children are less than 10 percent of the specialized high school student population while Asians are 67 percent.”
Dr. Bernard Gassaway said, “The system is designed to fail our children. There are 17 members of the New York State Board of Regents. It is more diverse now than it’s ever been. But they’re not doing anything demonstrably to change the system. So you put people who look like us on the Board of Regents, but then they begin to conform to the ways of the people who are perpetuating the demise of our children. It’s clear the policies are what’s destroying our children and you are the policymaking board. You were put on that to Board to represent us, but yet you’re failing to do that. The problem is, they’re not being called out on that.”
http://amsterdamnews.com/news/2019/apr/18/toward-black-education-agenda/