But here’s where Blumenstein and other critics get it wrong because, although Bronx Science founder Morris Meister was a firm believer in merit-based admissions, it was in the context of seeing science education as integral to a democratic social and political vision. Criticizing reforms intended to make the city more democratic by fossilizing Meister’s original vision is paradoxical.
Tag: history
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Social Justice Was Always Essential to NYC’s Public High Schools
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SHSAT History: New York Specialized High School Admission Policies Have Changed Over the Years
A new reform movement was launched in 1996 when a report issued by the community-activist organization ACORN branded the high-stake one-shot admissions test a form of educational apartheid. They were supported by Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew, but once again the campaign failed because of deeply entrenched political opposition.
In 1995 the city opened a Specialized High Schools Institute (SHSI), city-run preparatory program that was supposed to even out performance on the SHSAT and make admissions to the specialized high schools fairer, however with the plethora of private tutoring agencies it failed to improve ethnic balance at the schools.
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Failing The Stuyvesant Test
In bringing its federal complaint against the Specialized High Schools admissions policy, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (to which I am an unpaid advisor) is challenging both the effect of the test in diminishing opportunities for bright black and Latino youth and shining a light on the arbitrary nature of the admissions process. How peculiar, to have the state legislature determine these procedures! Normally, such technical matters are left to educators versed in psychometrics and professional judgment. Here, a 40 year-old law trumps everything we know and otherwise practice about academic merit.
That SHSAT scores are highly sensitive to test prep is beyond dispute. Rigid rank ordering creates hair’s-breadth distinctions without substance. The test has never been validated to determine its consistency with actual high school performance so the city Department of Education cannot even demonstrate a relationship between admitted students’ test results and those of others who might have been more successful meeting elite high schools’ demands. Discounting the use of middle school grades, portfolios of student work, and (after substantiated widespread cheating at Stuyvesant) character diminishes merit to a narrow gauge of tutored test-taking proficiency on a given day in an adolescent’s life.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/ny/2013/01/11/failing-the-stuyvesant-test/
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Missing Pieces of the Discussion Around Specialized High Schools and City Education
The results of this test also appear to be gender biased, as girls tend to score significantly higher on state exams and receive better grades, but score lower than boys on the SHSAT. (Girls were only admitted to Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech in 1969-1970.) The test is quirky in other ways and is scored to give extra points to students who do exceptionally well on the ELA or the math section – rather than those students who score well on both subjects.
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Why Gifted and Talented Schools are the Wrong Approach: To diversify schools, reimagine G&T: A bill to expand segregated programs moves in exactly the wrong direction
But we’ve already tried this, and it didn’t work. Back in 2009, Mayor Bloomberg tried to expand gifted programs and switched from multiple measures to a single test score for gifted admission. The result was actually more segregation, and reduced access for black and Latino students: The percentage of black and Latino students entering such programs in kindergarten was cut in half, from 46% of program entrants to just 22%, while the percentage of white and Asian students climbed from 53% to over 70%.
[…]
Furthermore, the city should improve its strategy for serving students once they are in a gifted program. G&T program proponents often refer to them as a form of special education — but this ignores that research on special education overwhelmingly points to the benefits of placing students of all types in regular classrooms as much as possible.
The city’s approach to serving students with disabilities reflects these best practices: Many schools across the city offer integrated co-teaching programs where students with disabilities are educated alongside their general education peers with special education support.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-to-diversify-schools-reimagine-gt-20180803-story.html
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Specialized High Schools – some comments should not matter
Educator blog post:
The current admissions system is based on a single test, on one day. That’s the way it’s been, for a long, long time. But in 1970 or 1971, someone decided to study the admissions policy for the schools (at that time the Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical High School, and Stuyvesant High School). The New York State legislature responded by passing the Hecht-Calandra Act, enshrining the existing test in law, and limiting an already limited alternate route (Discovery).
https://jd2718.org/2018/08/26/specialized-high-schools-some-comments-should-not-matter/
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Admission Test’s Scoring Quirk Throws Balance Into Question
Mr. Feinman had stumbled on a little-known facet of the test: because of the complex way it is graded, a student scoring extremely high on one part of the exam has a sharp advantage over a student with high but more balanced scores in each subject.
“As taxpayers and parents, we should know how the test is graded — not necessarily with an eye to changing it — but certainly as a matter of public knowledge,” said Mr. Feinman, who lives on the Upper East Side. “It shouldn’t be hidden or disclosed only to the select few who have the advantage of test prep.”
Even some veteran test-prep tutors were surprised.
Barry Feldman, an owner of GRF Test Preparation, which tutored Mr. Feinman’s daughter, said that in 24 years in the business, he has never focused on the scoring method.
“I just really never thought about it before,” said Mr. Feldman, a retired junior high school math teacher and a 1964 graduate of Stuyvesant. “What are the reasons? Why do they do it how they do it? I don’t know. I really don’t know, and I never really thought about questioning it.”
Officials of American Guidance Service, a private company in Minnesota, said the test had been designed to the city’s specifications. Principals of the six specialized schools are not involved in developing or grading the test, much as colleges are not involved in administering the SAT.
In essence, the scoring system rewards students with more points per question as they get closer to a perfect score on either math or verbal. -
Challenge To the Concept of Elite
This was enough to convince many of the schools’ supporters that a lowering of standards was in the making. Such fears were aggravated by the fact that, for several years, some gifted and highly motivated disadvantaged youngsters — most of them black and Puerto Rican who might not have done sufficiently well in the standard tests—had been admitted as part of a “Discovery” program, similar to those long used by many elite colleges. Last fall, the four schools admitted 3,484 regular contestants in the competition plus 352 Discovery students. Over‐all, enrollment at the four schools, on the average, is 25 percent nonwhite, compared with 5.1 percent for all of the city’s academic high schools.
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ASSEMBLY VOTES HIGH SCHOOL CURB
This is one of the original New York Times articles reporting on the passage of the Hecht-Calandra law.
New York City Democrats split into emotionally charged camps to day as the Assembly passed a bill designed to limit the Board of Education’s power to alter the city’s four specialized high schools.
The measure passed, 107 to 35, and was sent to the Senate after minority‐group members led the opposition and accused white colleagues of seeking an exclusionary racial quota at the schools.
The schools, all highly regarded nationally, are the Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical High School, Stuyvesant High School and La Guardia High School of Music and the Arts.
Shouted accusations of hypo critical liberalism, racial prejudice and unfair intrusion by upstaters in city affairs echoed on the Democratic side during a three‐hour debate as members repeatedly jumped to their feet and interrupted one an other. -
Scribner to Name Unit to Study Special‐School Entrance Tests
School Chancellor Harvey B. Scribner announced last night that he would soon appoint a broad‐based committee to examine all the admission policies and procedures of the city’s four specialized academic high schools.
The high schools, all of which require a special entrance examination, are Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Technical and the Nigh School of Music and Art.
The tests, especially those for the three more technical schools, have been the subject of recent criticism that they discriminate culturally against blacks and Puerto Ricans.
On Jan. 21 Alfredo Mathew Jr., superintendent of School District 3 in Manhattan, charged that the exams for Bronx Science worked to “screen out” black and Puerto Rican students, and he asked Dr. Scribner to move against such policies.
No Immediate Changes
In a four‐page reply last night, Dr. Scribner told Mr. Mathew that after investigation and careful consideration: “I do not believe that it is possible for me to make a determination to change existing policies. I have discovered enough, however, to raise serious questions with reference to admissions policies in all our specialized high schools.”
And he said he would, therefore, appoint a committee to examine the present admissions procedures and to make “appropriate recommendations.”