This year’s eighth graders could be the last class that takes the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test with paper and pencil. A New York City education panel is slated to vote on a roughly $17 million contract later this month that would transition the test to a computer-based model.
Tag: chalkbeat
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NYC eyes $17 million contract to create computer-based Specialized High School Admissions Test
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He dreamed of attending Stuyvesant. But getting accommodations for his disability proved too much.
At the city’s eight specialized high schools requiring an exam as the sole basis of admission, students classified with disabilities represent a staggeringly small share of the population, much lower than the average at high schools citywide. In fact, the specialized high schools rank close to the bottom or last, according to the Education Department data from the 2022-23 school year.
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Black and Latino enrollment in NYC specialized high school integration program still lags
after 4,050 test takers received an offer based on their test scores, the city extended offers to 855 students to participate this summer in the Discovery program. (Not everyone who gets invited into the program will accept the offer or end up enrolling at a specialized high school.) Nearly 60%, or 509, of the participants in this year’s Discovery program were Asian American, according to city data. That’s even higher than the share of Asian Americans who got offers to specialized high schools based on the SHSAT, which was about 53%.
Overall, Asian American students make up about 17% of students citywide.
Meanwhile, nearly 12% of the Discovery program seats — or 99 — went to Black students, and 20%, or 172, went to Latino students. That’s higher than the overall percentage of Black and Latino students who got specialized high school offers based on the test, 3% and 6%, respectively.
It’s still not representative of the school system as a whole: Roughly 24% of the city’s students are Black across the city, and 41% are Latino.
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How I found my voice as a Black student at Brooklyn Tech
It shouldn’t have been so difficult to feel welcomed in my own school. Something is wrong when students feel alienated in the space where they spend the majority of their time. My experience is part of a bigger problem. Black students remain vastly underrepresented at New York’s elite specialized high schools.
https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2022/12/15/23487044/black-at-brookyn-tech-student-union-step-voice
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NYC’s specialized high schools continue to admit few Black, Latino students, 2022 data shows
While the share of Black and Latino students taking the test increased this year by more than five percentage points, to almost 47% of test-takers, that did not translate into more students earning a score high enough to qualify for admission. (There is no cut-off score for admission. Rather, offers are based on ranked scores, starting with those earning the highest marks.)
Almost 28,000 students took the entrance test this year — 4,000 more than last year.
https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2022/6/15/23169817/nyc-specialized-high-school-admissions-offers-2022
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My SHSAT scores didn’t show what I could achieve at Brooklyn Tech
Although I am about to enter my senior year and doing well at Brooklyn Tech, I don’t think my eligibility for getting into any school should be based on one test. In fact, I excel in community leadership and have started my own organization to raise awareness about racism and hate crimes. I get good grades and am an excellent writer, which is how I got accepted to write for YouthComm Magazine. As New York City Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter said during a recent interview with students: “I think there are students who are so gifted and talented in so many different ways.” I think those gifts should be the entrance criteria for specialized high schools.
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She got into one of NYC’s top high schools. Four years later, she wishes she hadn’t
“I started to slowly realize that a lot of these kids had kind of been sheltered from other races of people to the point where they didn’t really know how to be racially sensitive,” said Yarde, 17, who graduated Monday. “It seemed like kids were either automatically intimidated by me, or they immediately undermined me.”
Wint attended Stuyvesant when she was a student in the late 2000s but left the school her junior year, a decision she attributes to the overt racism she experienced there.
Her breaking point came when the school organized a day during Spirit Week called “Ghetto Fabulous Day.” Although the school changed the name of the event after the Black Student Union noted the implicit racism, students still dressed inappropriately, in what Wint said “could only be called a Minstrel show.”
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Stuyvesant students say the crushing workload is hurting their mental health. Here’s what they’re doing about it.
Homework for regular classes is supposed to be capped at an hour over two days, or two hours for Advanced Placement classes, Giordano explained.
Much of the discussion about the path forward has often been mired in the debate over academic standards.
“It often comes down to this zero sum game, that in order to support students’ mental health that we need to give a little on the academics,” he said. “I think they’re both possible. They both need to be possible.”
But they haven’t always felt possible. When English teacher Mark Henderson started working at Stuyvesant about 15 years ago, the principal at the time would tell students they could only choose two of the following: friends, sleep, or grades.
https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2021/3/12/22328382/stuyvesant-high-school-mental-health
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Will the coronavirus mean the end of the SHSAT? I hope so
I believe the exam should have been eliminated years ago, but this difficult moment in history would be the perfect opportunity to see how a more inclusive set of admissions criteria could work for these specialized high schools without administering the test. The city’s education department should see this as a chance to explore the effectiveness of the other solutions that have been suggested as alternatives to using the SHSAT. While it is not up to the city alone, the city should put pressure on members of the New York State Legislature — who are the only ones that can repeal the relevant law — and push for a waiver to not have to administer the exam this year at least.
https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2020/11/24/21625605/coronavirus-end-of-the-shsat