Although I was ranked third in my middle school, I still thought the SHSAT was too biased and I lacked support and tutoring. Had I not been admitted to LaGuardia, I may not have gotten into college and began my path to success. How many others like me have slipped through the cracks?
Tag: first-hand
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Make education fairer for all: Specialized high schools must open up
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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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Hear from four TJ freshmen admitted under controversial circumstances
It’s a terrible title, but the article makes the rare decision of asking students what they thought.
I think TJ was right to get rid of the admissions test, because it makes it more fair for everyone. Now, people who can afford to spend thousands of dollars on test-prep programs won’t have an advantage over people who can’t. I think a lot of students agree with me.
But the debate seems to be really political now, and driven mostly by parents. I don’t think students have been heard very much.
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Ending the Exploitation of Asian Parents
These days, however, many Asian parents are unfortunately wasting hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on expensive tutoring and preparatory classes. This industry’s sole purpose is to train children to ace standardized admissions tests, which bar the entrance to many magnet high schools and colleges across the country. “Enroll your child, and we’ll virtually guarantee they get into the top schools!” This, of course, is a lie. For example, TJ only has a few hundred openings each year, despite the thousands of kids who apply. Starting in the early 2000s, countless Asian parents across the region were marketed to with the same message: access to TJ has to go through these test prep programs. If you weren’t willing to spend the money, then you weren’t a good parent.
https://jiunwei.substack.com/p/ending-the-exploitation-of-asian?s=r
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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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Why I Support Reforming New York City’s Elite High School Admissions
The usage of examples of Asian success to justify our current high school system harms all communities of color. This rhetoric reduces the Asian American community to a monolith by focusing on a subset of its population. Educational inequity affects all minority groups, and we need to recognize the ways in which it comes into play among Asian Americans. Our current high school admissions model might appear to favor Asian students—and sure, there are definitely students that benefit from it—but the pushback against reform, couched in praise for industrious minority families, is hurting and dividing the Asian American community as well as minorities as a whole. The way that this issue has deepened rifts between Asian and Black/Hispanic communities is counterproductive and will only hurt us all.
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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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NYC, suspend high-stakes admission tests
Yet for years, neither the mayor nor the Legislature — nor anyone in Hunter College leadership — has taken the necessary action to overhaul a system that bases admissions to the most coveted schools on just a test, the SHSAT or the Hunter test. There’s not a single elite college in America that bases its admissions only on SAT or ACT scores, yet New York City’s best high schools make a single, homegrown exam make or break for thousands of students, despite results that worsen segregation.
Now we are faced with an even greater educational crisis: The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequities within the school and health-care systems. School leaders across the country have suspended their 2021 admissions tests to mitigate the disparate effects of the pandemic. We are calling on New York City’s leaders to uphold both equity and safety by suspending the SHSAT and Hunter admissions test for 2021.
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SHSAT AND SEGREGATION by Micha Hervey
6-minute student short documentary “SHSAT AND SEGREGATION” by teen student Micha Hervey.
Micha did an excellent job, and though our vote maybe biased, would get our nod for an Emmy if we had one.