SHSAT Sunset

FAQ Category: SHSAT FAQ

  • The SHSAT Exam Doesn’t Know Your Race, How Can It Be Racist?

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    Short answer: A policy being race-neutral does not preclude it from being racist. Long answer: A race-neutral policy is one that does not take race directly into account. And yes, the SHSAT exam is race-neutral. Also, for a long time now our courts have strongly preferred race-neutral approaches to diversity through a long list of…

  • Aren’t Most Specialized High School Students Poor?

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    Specialized high schools are demographically wealthier than almost all other NYC public schools. In other words, the SHSAT exam has found a way to favor wealthier students over poorer students. But the mayor’s 2018 proposal statistically increases the number of poor students at specialized high schools. According to DoE data, out of NYC’s over 500…

  • How can “Subjective” GPA Predict Success better than an “Objective” Exam?

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    This one seems counter-intuitive. That GPAs from many different schools tend to predict student success much better than a multiple-choice exam. After all, students take the same exam. Multiple papers on the SHSAT put the exam’s accuracy at about 20%. This means that a middle school student’s score accounted for about 20% of their high…

  • Aren’t Students Who’ve Earned SHSAT Offers “Hard Workers”?

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    There’s the common argument that students who get SHSAT offers have worked very hard, hence it’s unfair to replace the SHSAT exam. But that argument ignores the fact that students who excel throughout the entire year at school to be in the top 7% of their entire school probably worked just as hard or even…

  • How can an exam be racially biased or gender biased?

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    Aren’t everyone answering the same questions? How can an exam be biased? First of all, the bias we are discussing in this context is a Statistical Bias. This means that the exam is being influenced by factors that do not relate to what the exam writer intended to measure. For example, if an exam is…

  • We shouldn’t “FOCUS” on the test

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    There’s a common argument against replacing the SHSAT with multiple-measures.  It goes something to the effect, “We concede this test is a problem, but why focus on the test when we have bigger issues?“. Not all Black or Hispanic students need the same thing Just as not all White or Asian students need the same…

  • Isn’t the Problem Underprepared Students?

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    Why try to “fix” the SHSAT?  Isn’t the issue of the fact that only about 30% of Black students read at grade-level? The above question is a common, yet incorrect argument.  That some demographics “in aggregate” are not prepared enough to do well at specialized high schools.  Hence the test weeds them out. The argument…

  • What are the SHSAT Schools and Sizes?

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    siteadmin