chalkbeat
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Mamdani wants to rethink gifted and talented in NYC. The program has already seen big shifts.
But the test helped drive sharp racial and economic segregation: In 2020, the last year it was administered, just 12% of kindergartners in gifted programs were Black or Latino. After the city nixed the test, the demographics began to change. In the 2023-24 school year, 30% of kindergartners in gifted programs were Black or Latino,…
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Fewer Black and Latino students win offers to attend specialized high schools
Just 3% of offers at eight of the city’s specialized schools went to Black students, down from 4.5% last school year, according to Education Department data released Thursday. Meanwhile, 6.9% of offers went to Latino students compared with 7.6% a year ago. Across the city’s public schools, nearly two-thirds of students are Black or Latino. Asian…
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Should NYC’s specialized high school test come in other languages? Manhattan parent council says no.
· newsLast school year, just four of the nearly 16,000 students enrolled in the eight specialized high schools, or 0.03%, were classified as English learners, according to city data. That’s in a school system where roughly 148,000 students, or 16.3% of the population, are learning English — a share that’s been growing as the city absorbs…
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NYC eyes $17 million contract to create computer-based Specialized High School Admissions Test
· newsThis 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. https://www.chalkbeat.org/newyork/2024/10/17/nyc-specialized-high-school-admissions-test-shsat-could-go-digital/
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He dreamed of attending Stuyvesant. But getting accommodations for his disability proved too much.
· profilesAt 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…
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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…
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How I found my voice as a Black student at Brooklyn Tech
· opinionIt 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
· newsWhile 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,…
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My SHSAT scores didn’t show what I could achieve at Brooklyn Tech
· opinionAlthough 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…
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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.”…