SHSAT Sunset

Tag: city-and-state-ny

  • Liu: No quick fix to specialized high schools entrance exam

    Senator John Liu showed his hand and hinted that he plans to kill any SHSAT reform by languishing the decision in committee over the next few years.

    State Sen. John Liu said at City & State’s Education Summit on Thursday that he doesn’t expect any major changes to come out of Albany for at least several years as lawmakers and stakeholders figure out the best way to address racial disparities at the city’s specialized schools. The Queens lawmaker said that he does not yet know the best path forward, adding that he and his colleagues in the state Legislature don’t want to act hastily in response to results from the Specialized High Schools Admission Test.

    For Senator Liu, this continues a pattern of not addressing specific issues around testing and admissions but rather simply declaring other proposals won’t work.

    Senator Liu has yet to propose a single proposal of his own. A common practice among SHSAT supporters, as their goal is to protect the status quo as is.

    https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/policy/education/john-liu-no-quick-fix-specialized-high-schools-entrance-exam.html

  • What NYC should do with the Specialized High School Admissions Test

    Now, we’re turning to the experts. In this week’s “Ask the Experts” feature, we reached out to Syed Ali, a professor of sociology at Long Island University-Brooklyn; Zakiyah Ansari, the advocacy director for the Alliance for Quality Education; David Bloomfield, a professor of educational leadership, law and policy at Brooklyn College; and Soo Kim, president of the Stuyvesant High School Alumni Association.

    https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/ask-experts/what-should-nyc-do-about-specialized-highschool-test.html

  • My journey shows why specialized high school admissions must change

    With a sense of tragic déjà vu, reactionary forces are once again pushing back against any proposed integration of prestigious, but largely segregated, schools. This development is so predictable that it would be comical – were it not for the terrible consequences. Already, several irate New Yorkers have called my district office to voice their displeasure with Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plans to diversify New York City’s elite specialized high schools. Many of these phone calls possess the same overt racial animus of years past, with arguments that had served the same purpose then: to maintain the broken status quo.

    For a young black or Latino middle schooler living in Flatbush in the 1980s, the thought of going to one of the crown jewels of New York’s public schools seemed unimaginable. Even though I was ranked third at my middle school and enrolled in a gifted program, I did not for a moment consider taking the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test in order to apply to Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, or Brooklyn Tech. Left to my own young devices, I determined the SHSAT would be too difficult and too culturally biased for me to perform well on it. Instead, I opted to apply to the fourth specialized high school, LaGuardia. Although the school was the most competitive school of its kind, I based my decision in part on LaGuardia’s different application process, which entails a performance audition and tends to attract more culturally diverse applicants.

    https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/opinion/opinion/my-journey-shows-why-specialized-high-school-admissions-must-change.html

  • Specialized high schools and race

    Another overview.  Adds a DoE spokesperson quote.

    According to New York City Department of Education spokesman Will Mantell, the citywide average GPA of students in the top 7 percent of their classes is 94 out of 100, the same average GPA of students offered a spot at the elite high schools. Additionally, he said their state test scores are comparable, an average of 3.9 out of 4.5 for the top 7 percent versus 4.1 for those admitted to the specialized high schools.

    https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/policy/education/nyc-specialized-high-schools-and-race.html