It’s a little difficult to understand what Andres Alonso finds so “extraordinarily surprising” about the decline in minority enrollment in the city’s top high schools. This is bad news, surely, but not extraordinarily surprising to anyone who understands the pitfalls of relying on a single standardized test in assessing student achievement. Those of us who have spent our careers in classrooms understand that. Those who us who have not, like Mr. Alonso, don’t.
Using data supplied by the DoE, the NY Times reports that black and Hispanic enrollment has declined at Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech., and Bronx High School of Science. These declines parallel the Department’s change to a an admission policy that ignored student achievement as assessed by the teachers (i.e., student grades). And since standards on these tests are believed to be more rigorous than standards held by teachers, the inevitable conclusion seems to be that the test-only policy employed by the DoE was simply too rigorous for some minorities. Ironically, however, a test-only policy relaxes (rather than raises) admission standards, and cheats our best students, including some blacks and Hispanics.
In other words, the problem may not be that the test-only policy is too rigorous for blacks, Hispanics, or other students who do not make the cut. Rather, the policy is not rigorous enough.
This is not, of course, immediately apparent. The truth will come out on tests, the knee-jerk thinking goes; either the student can do the work, or he cannot. Heather MacDonald of the Manhattan Institute typifies this kind of thinking perfectly when she equates a single standardized admissions test with “maintaining legitimately high standards”. But like Andres Alonso, Ms. MacDonald is a non-practicing lawyer, and she has never taught in secondary schools. Ask a teacher about an admission policy that ignores classroom success and failure and you are likely to get a different answer.
That’s because teachers know that success on a test does not always translate into real academic achievement. Some top scorers, just like students at any level, may avoid new challenges, neglect to do assignments, and generally shut themselves off to academic experiences that could broaden and deepen their understanding of the world. And since this is the case, then how rigorous are admission standards that reward a student who can ace the test but who rarely writes a thoughtful essay or asks a thought-provoking question while in class? Does the high scorer who squeaks by with a 75 in middle school Social Studies deserve a seat at Stuyvesant? What kind of rigor is that?
To be sure, many high scorers are also excellent students. Nonetheless, smart students with indifferent attitudes toward academics are more common than one might think. And, since acceptance based on a single test must involve a cut-off score (let’s pretend a 93), then the student with the 92 who welcomes every opportunity to learn is pushed aside so that his less enthusiastic classmate can have the much-sought high school seat.
Thus, the problem with the test-only admissions policy is not that it discriminates minorities, but that it discriminates against all those students who have truly passed the “rigor” test by doing very well on standard tests and meeting the daily demands required for sustained academic excellence. What is more, however, once we consider both parts of the equation as factors in admission, then we may very well find that our most academic schools are not only able to maintain “legitimately high standards” (to quote MacDonald) but are also more racially diverse.
Of course, this is only one woman’s opinion (mine), and I am not personally familiar with any of these schools. Ultimately Klein and the DoE must seek the input of the school communities before any decisions are made about how, if at all, to change the policies in the specialized schools. Unfortunately, however, the chancellor has recently done precisely the opposite by imposing on one of the city’s best-performing schools (Staten Island Tech.) the testing system that his own statistics now show does not work.
Until this year, Tech employed a rigorous admission policy that accepted students based on a “power score” comprised of both standardized test scores and middle school grades. The result? Tech’s is one of the very best schools in the city, with scores and statistics that are in every way comparable or superior to those of Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, or Bronx High School of Science. But what is perhaps more interesting is that in a predominantly white borough with almost 50 percent fewer black students than Manhattan, and 66 percent fewer Hispanics, Tech. has the about same percentage of blacks and Hispanics as can be found at Stuyvesant.
The numbers are small, and Tech. is still not as diverse as the borough’s general student population. Nonetheless, by using both grades and tests, Tech seems to have been more successful at creating a truly rigorous standard that gave an enriched opportunity to a diverse population.
Unfortunately, Klein and Bloomberg have brought that admission policy to an end. In January of 2005 these two made a pit-stop at Tech to inform the school that it would have to switch to a test-only admission. When some school community members protested, Klein replied that the new policy would make the school more diverse. Thus we see the DoE at its most typical: imposing a policy without looking at the facts.
In the end, in a pro-forma meeting that would later give the DoE the opportunity of claiming it had been collaborative, students, parents, and school staff were given a choice. Accept the test-only admissions or see your funding cut. Accept it or eliminate any admission policy. Accept it or you will no longer exist.
So, Staten Island Tech accepted the test. And this September, for the first time since it opened its doors, those doors will only be open to students who scored well on a single test. It will be closed, however, to those who scored only slightly less well, but showed their teachers that they have what it takes to be great students every single day of the year.
23 Comments:
1 paulrubin
· Aug 24, 2006 at 10:03 pm
So let me see if I have this straight. The media and some politicians are complaining that the single test admissions policy has failed minority students in terms of entry to Stuy, Bklyn Tech and Bronx HS of Science and there is statistical evidence to back that up. And the response of the Chancellor and the Mayor is to employ the same failed system at a school that does a better job of bringing in minorities from a far more limited availability pool.
Well you’ve certainly go two very different issues at work. The first is to develop a better system to attract minorities to these technical schools to begin with, and the second is to realize that there’s more to academic success than performance on a standardized test. There’s nothing wrong with making the test the centerpiece of the admissions process but any process that doesn’t look at class grades, other tests, attendence, and solicitation of teacher opinions in writing is doing everyone a disservice. My years in the classroom have made me very well acquainted with the student being discussed in this piece, the one who can nail these standardized tests because they’re generally smart with innate test taking skills, particularly multiple choice tests. And to be sure that is a valuable skill. But the system is probably littered with these good test takers who are simply poor students. They can’t necessarily write well. Their oral skills may be lacking. There’s no test of their motivation or behavior. I’ve venture to guess that over the past 25 years, more kids have passed through my classroom into Stuyvesant (I take no credit given the nature of my school than from just about any other teacher in the system and I’m constantly amazed each year how many of this so-called terrific students based on the SHAT or whatever they call it now have no business going into an academically demanding environment. And it’s not the test. I’ve seen the test. It’s a solid exam. But if these kids’ had their grades looked at and required one or more teacher recommendations, or at least a simple sign off form that all their teachers would have to initial, two things would happen. The first is that these specialized high schools would get a little better by weeding out the kids who are likely to get blown away come 9th and 10th grade. The second is that you’d see a slightly more diverse ethnic population. And you’d do the middle schools a service in the process because the better kids who are interested in attending these schools would know their in school performance actually makes a difference.
2 Peter Goodman
· Aug 25, 2006 at 10:01 am
I was frankly bored in Middle School, and gave my teachers a hard time: they never would have “recommended” me to Stuyvesant, however, I passed the test.
As a high school teacher I sadly saw too many kids with very high Middle School grades: that were grossly inflated.
The issue is deeper than admissions requirements. How many Middle Schools offer a mathematics sequence that culminates in the Math A Regents in the 8th grade? the same for the Earth Science Regents?
Regents track in Middle School is zip code related!!
Low expectations, student programs that put kids in self contained classes, all day (lock-down) and the movement to K-8 is all related to discipline and control.
Superintendents and Principals of too many schools simply underserve their students … programs are targeting level 1/2 kids.
How many students of color are level 4 in Math and ELA? and, what are we doing for these younsters?
The Klein administration is antithetical to gifted education and has imposed a lockstep progream whereby Regions buy some all inclusive “package,” (America’s Choice, etc.) that dumbs down classroom instruction.
How many kids in “inner city” Middle Schools have ever heard of Stuyvesant? How many third, fourth and fifth grade classes are beginning to prepare kids for the specialized exams? and what does Stuyvesant and Tweed do to reach out to these kids?
The test is not flawed, it’s the system.
3 paulrubin
· Aug 25, 2006 at 3:03 pm
I with much of this. We don’t do enough to encourage minority students to pursue careers in math/science but that’s not just a school thing. While there are plenty of role models for such kids in sports and the arts, there’s not much out there for more academic pursuits.
We don’t do nearly enough target Level 3/4 students. Education in the past few decades is all about assuming (falsely) that the 4′s can do it on their own and the 3′s are good enough being adequate. Think about the kind of things our truly gifted kids could accomplish if we invested the same kinds of monies on them that we invest in special education kids on the other end. School systems don’t do that and there’s simply no excuse and it will come back to haunt us in terms of economics and national security down the line. Those are the kids who should be our leaders down the road and the ones who invest new forms of energy, better defensive oand offensive weapons, new types of entertainment. Much as I like David Wright, more David Wright’s aren’t the answer to what ails this nation. Neither are minority versions of the same.
Now what do we do with kids like you who can pass the admissions exam but haven’t demonstrated an ability to handle the classroom environment? This isn’t a black or white issue. This is a student-centric problem that plagues gifted programs across the board. These intelligent non-performers drag down the classrooms for the rest of the kids. They often are not doing a service to themselves. And when they hit that wall where that natural intelligence is insufficient and needs to be combined with hard work and a general sense of how to get the teacher’s attention in a positive way, they typically get destroyed. We need a system for those kids put in place. The high 4′s who don’t act like 4′s. Those aren’t the kids we should be pushing into Stuyvesant. There needs to be alternative programs for underperforming gifted kids. And therefore we’re getting away from the subject at hand which is how to encourage every available minor student who needs a little help to think about entry into the specialized high schools and then provide them with the extra help. And we need to put more gifted programs (especially where math and science is a primary component) into all parts of the city so that more minorities are pushed into math and science. That being said, our goal should continue to make our specialized high schools the crown jewels of the system without regard to race. Instead of hurting them directly, create more of them and put them into more accesible places city-wide.
4 jd2718
· Aug 26, 2006 at 7:50 am
I feel uneasy here.
(1) It does not look like the decline in minority enrollment coincides with the reintroduction of the test. The timing doesn’t support a cause and effect relationship.
(2) any criteria that involve evaluating student work,or worse, using student grades, will end up being unfairly subjective.
I have a few positive thoughts:
(1) require the Board to expand free SHSAT preparation programs in neighborhoods that are under-represented.
(2) set aside seats in the schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn for the best scores from those (badly underrepresented and underrepresented, respectively) boroughs.
(3) expand the already existing “Discovery” program. The Discovery program identifies the poorest students who narrowly missed the lowest cut-off on the exam, gives them some intensive Summer work, and places them into one of the specialized schools.
(4) more radical proposals might involve producing results of “Qualified” or “Unqualified” with some admissions/selection process to follow. That makes me nervous. The selection process piece might be open to abuse.
Peter and Paul both raised an annoying point about lazy students with good test scores. We need to give them alternatives. But that doesn’t really answer the question. How do you get them to take the alternative?
Any of this make any sense?
Jonathan
5 institutional memory
· Aug 26, 2006 at 9:57 am
PLAY IT AGAIN, ANDRES, I MEAN, SAM.Don’t miss the next episode of Tweed’s Amazing Discoveries: Students don’t like school lunches.
6 paulrubin
· Aug 26, 2006 at 11:12 am
The Brooklyn (at least) prep program for the SHSAT has been expanded. It’s my belief that all the programs have been expanded in recent years to involve more kids. I just got involved with it this summer here in Brooklyn. But there are still two issues that have not been resolved. The first is getting minorities to apply for it. That’s something that really needs to be happening at the local elementary schools and waiting til the end of grade 6 when kids are 1/3 of the way through middle school may be too late to change the mindset against it. As I see it, math and science are color-blind. I see no reason why society doesn’t realize that.
And then there’s an even bigger challenge. The typical kid who goes to a specialized high school like Stuy is generally in the mid to high 90′s percentile-wise, I’m guessing heavy on the HIGH 90′s. In some cases they’re already getting additional assistance in their middle school or privately funded by their parents. The percentage of minorities at that percentile rank (high 90′s) on standardized tests isn’t very high (which is a whole different debate and part of what NCLB is all about) which means you must find kids lower (I believe the cutoff is 75th percentile to be in the program) and try to make them competitive. As hard as I’m trying, and with all the best of intentions, you are not going to turn a 75th/80th percentile child (black, hispanic, white, asian, or alien for that matter) into a 99th percentile child with a part time program spread over 16 months (approximately 500 hours in duration). You will improve their scores,no doubt, and some of them will become competitive, but as long as we use this single SAT-like exam to be the end all and be all of this admissions policy, admissions are going to be restricted to the very highest test performers regardless of color. Now one can debate the merits of that separately but that is the reality which is why taking into consideration other factors MIGHT help. The alternative, of course, is to introduce the allocation of seats by ethnicity but that’s a direction the country has moved away from and is more likely a judicial question rather than an educational one. It really would need the support of a court order and I’m not seeing that on the horizon.
If you were to look at the admissions data from other special programs in the city like for Performing Arts, LaGuardia, etc., you won’t see the underrepresentation of the same minorities. I can think of lots of reasons but they don’t use a standardized math and english exam for admissions.
Basically this is really a larger, more fundamental issue. How do we get certain minorities and to a lesser extent, more girls, to pursue more technical careers. Some headway has been made with females but the problems are different and may require a different set of solutions beyond the scope of some test preparation program which is a good start but not the entire solution.
7 jd2718
· Aug 26, 2006 at 1:17 pm
Then maybe we should talk about expanding the “Discovery” program. It is already in place. Extra seats are allocated to the next-best scores based on economics, not race. Maybe at Stuy, where the cut scores are highest, the gap between Discovery and regular kids would be too great, so don’t do it there, just at the others.
But if you start looking at grades, ouch. We’ve got schools where we can’t even reasonably compare grading teacher to teacher.
And doing nothing should not be an option. We are looking at the result of persistent longterm racism and discrimination, and to say “playing field’s level now, go play” doesn’t cut it, at least not with me.
There is some location between equality of opportunity and equality that we should reach for.
Jonathan
8 phyllis c. murray
· Aug 26, 2006 at 8:24 pm
TEACHERS: THE DREAM KEEPERS
By Phyllis C. Murray
“Commencement at Morehouse College is a time of tradition and celebration -
but perhaps more so this year. Amid lamentations about the dearth of black men
in higher education, Morehouse graduated its largest class ever – nearly 600
educated African American men. No other institution in the world can match this
impressive number.” Morehouse College 2006
What has created this success story? How does this academic institution continue its legacy of excellence for over
one hundred years? And how is this institution able to produce such impressive alumni as: Martin Luther King, Jr., Samuel L. Jackson, Shelton “Spike” Lee, Dr. David Satcher, Maynard Jackson, Attorney Tyrone Means, Julian Bond, and James Nabrit from ever strata of society.
Perhaps the difference is that someone had a dream for each one of these men before they could dream. That someone might have been a teacher. And once the student reached Morehouse, “From the first day on campus, he was told he was destined for greatness and could achieve no less.” Errin Hehmen AP
There are teachers today, who like pioneer Mary McLeod Bethune (1875-1950), have “invested in a human soul “knowing that “it could be a diamond in the rough.” Because true educators know that diamonds, like our students, come in every hue.
Michael Lomax, UNCF believes in the myriad possibilities of making miracles happen in classrooms. Also when he said: “There is this beacon out there that says if you create a challenging, demanding, yet nurturing and supportive environment, if you show these young men the possibilities and you discipline them to realize those possibilities, you can turn these statistics about black men around.”
Surely, there are programs which earnestly address the Plight of the African American Male in Education: Programs which provide residents with a stone of hope toward removing the growing mountain of despair which plagues our nation. These programs provide our nation with the process for change indeed worthy of much praise and emulation. And that new trend: an infusion of exemplary programs which are already in place within Westchester High Schools which work daily, toward ameliorating an insidious problem which left unchecked negatively impacts society.
The Woodlands Individualized Senior Experience; Ossinings’ High Hopes Expectations College Track; Byram Hills’ Intel Science Program; and Mount Vernon High School’s Business Club, are proof positive that there are already solutions to the heightening dropout rate among African American Males in Westchester public schools. These programs should be replicated nationwide.
Peter Goodman, UFT . cites the following : “A Report issued by the Education Trust, (Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality, a major research institution, a vers “…research shows … that good teachers can have an enormous impact on student achievement.”
Yes, we know good teachers do have an enormous impact on student achievement. The teachers are the keepers of the dreams. And that fact is exactly what educators have known all along as they strive to teach often against the ever rising insurmountable odds. And, there are many success stories in New York City as students reach their goals and realize the dreams that they can now call their own.
Yes, “…teachers are the single most important factor in how much students learn ….” Education Trust So we say:
“Bring me all of your dreams,
you dreamers,
Bring me all your heart melodies,
that I may wrap them in a blue cloud cloth,
Away from the too rough fingers of the world. Langston Hughes “The Dream Keeper”
Phyllis C. Murray,
Chapter Leader
District 8 Region 2
9 paulrubin
· Aug 27, 2006 at 2:23 am
You’re making assumptions about grades that aren’t in line with what I’m thinking. The foundation still needs to be the test. You have to have some equalizing objective measure to start with and that’s priority one. The question is this. Who deserves to be in an elite academic setting like Stuyvesant more? The 98th percentile goof off who doesn’t do anything because he’s lazy or she’s bored or the 95th percentile kid who plays by the rules, works hard to achieve good grades in all his or her classes, and has a clear idea of what it takes to be successful. That is in fact precisely where I’m going and it’s not a particularly ethnic oriented idea though it is likely to have an impact on that. Do you really want to put the 8th grader who has a history of taking 30 or 40 days a year without viable medical reasons (but who’s really smart and can nail those standardized tests with their eyes closed) and who possibly comes from a family who can afford private tutoring or the kid who’s good not quite as good a test taker but who’s always in school, involved with all sorts of extra curricular activities, and maybe comes from a family who can’t afford the cost of private tutoring.
Bottom line, is no system is perfect, but a standardized test in a vacuum only tells you that the kid can perform on standardized tests. Some of us are good at it. Some aren’t. I was always great at those tests. My study skills left much to be desired and that hurt me in college to be sure.
And we don’t need to make it about slight differences in grades. Grades are in the computer. They can be averaged over time to take into account the high and low graders in every school. And courses and schools can be weighted so slightly lower grades in more advanced programs or at more competitive schools can be factored in. Or we can simply do the obvious and SHSAT scores don’t get counted unless the child’s record meets a fairly high standard perhaps in combination with a brief evaluation by some of the 7th grade teachers and the principal. This isn’t rocket science. The goal should be to get the best kids in first and foremost, not the best standardized test takers, and as a side effort, to try to tweak the system to begin getting more minorities in.
10 Math_Teacher
· Aug 27, 2006 at 3:59 am
How do the exam schools do with retention? Are there more issues with retention (or graduation) of lower-income or minority students? I’ve never seen anything on this, but I am curious.
Also, I am curious as to how the other NCSSSMST (ncsssmst.org) schools/systems around the country handle admissions. I know about one (my alma mater), which used standardized tests in the context of a broader process (including grades, teacher recommendations, an essay, and other components); it was much more like the (selective) college admissions process.
In Illinois, issues of race and of Chicagoland vs. downstate both played a part in the process too. I think such issues are real considerations for politicians — though I doubt their educational relevance (or, for that matter, their justice).
11 Jackie Bennett
· Aug 27, 2006 at 8:56 am
Paul Rubin, I agree. And you seem to be someone who knows whereof you speak because you said that students from your school went on to Stuy. It is the input of those of us who have direct experience that is sadly lacking from any policy formulation at Tweed.
Standard Tests tell us one thing, and grades tell us another. Staten Island Tech used a power score comprised of both cumulative averages and standardized math and reading tests. Now, because of Tweed that’s gone. I don’t think there are too many colleges out there that would just give an entrance exam and not even glance at a student’s record.
Standard tests are no panacea for the ills (or even perceived ills) of education. We need to stop bowing down at their alter. It irks me to see what we do degraded by Klein and friends into nothing but “seat time” where failure is as good as passing so long as you can pass the test. (keep your eye out for what replaces night school!)
12 jd2718
· Aug 27, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Look,
this is an important (and interesting) discussion. But real numbers have been missing. Take a look:
SCHOOL / % White / % Black / % Hispanic / % Asian /
Stuyvesant / 36 / 2 / 3 / 58 /
Bronx Science / 30 / 5 / 7 / 52 /
Brooklyn Tech / 24 / 15 / 8 / 48 /
HS for Math, Sci & Eng @ CCNY / 25 / 19 / 26 / 26 /
Queens HS for Sci @ York / 10 / 19 / 10 / 52
HS of American Studies @ Lehman / 32 / 23 / 24 / 20 /
.
Total for 3 large specialized schools (enrollment 9526):
/ 30 / 8 / 6 / 52 /
Total for 3 small specialized high schools (enrollemnt 1077):
/ 22 / 20 / 20 / 33 /
All six specialized high schools (enrollment 10,603):
/ 29 / 9 / 8 / 50 /
.
SI Tech / 80 / 1 / 4 / 15 /
.
% eligible free lunch
Stuy 17
Bx Sci 22
Bklyn Tech 24
3 large Spec HS’s 21
HSMSE 12
QHS for Science 15
HSAS 19
SI Tech 4
.
Totals are not 100% due to rounding and to omission of students with unreported race.
Source: http://schools.nyc.gov. The ethnic data is from the individual schools’ stats page (click register). They are supplied through ATS for Spring 2006. The free lunch percentages are from the school report cards and reflect the previous school year (2004 – 2005.)
There’s more to be said, but it helps to have numbers in front of us.
Jonathan
13 xkaydet65
· Aug 27, 2006 at 8:36 pm
How can one look at the free lunch numbers of these schols and fail to see that James Coleman’s research has a point?20 years ago I was teaching in Woodside IS with 52 languages. A good many Hispanic students enrolled at Brooklyn Tech. When they returned for visits they commented that a great many fellow Hispanics were also enrolled there. But as Asian population increased so did the pressures on these schools. Asian families are zealous in their committment to good education. They not only oversee their kids, but they pay for prep courses for these exams. As someone who many years ago took Mark Murphy courses for the Catholic CoOp exam I know these courses take money and time and committment. The proof is the rising cut off scores for these exams.
Now I teach in Whitestone and though my school has many able Hispanic students, the ones who qualify for the selective schools are uniformly Asian or so called white, i.e. European. Common factors? Economic stability and high expectation. This battle is not going to be changed by coming up with another formula for entrance. It’s going to take a major restructuring of how schools deal with families and family situations. Even then the effort may still fail.
14 Chaz
· Aug 27, 2006 at 9:41 pm
I have been reading the comments and have concluded that all the proposals have problems with them.
First, using middle school grades. Not a good idea since some teachers are easy markers and some are hard. Can you imagine the teacher shopping that will go on in the middle schools?
Second, using economic factors as a criteria. How would this be done? My understanding is that many of the Asian kids are quite poor and their families still emphasis education. Won’t they be the ones who just missed the cutoff? Will they be discriminated against in the Discovery program?
Finally, The emphasis of the article on race is disturbing. The test is race-neutral and the real issue is not the teacher but the family unit. It is certainly more difficult for students to make the cutoff if the student comes from a single parent houshold were education is not the priority than a two family unit were education is. How can use adjust for this? Do you penalize some groups to give advantages to others?
Maybe all middle schools should have 8th grade Regents Math A and Earth Science (Level 3′s & 4′s)and use the Regents scores as an adjustment to the test.
15 paulrubin
· Aug 27, 2006 at 9:42 pm
First off, I’m not quite sure what the statistics we’ve been shown tell us other than yes it’s a definite issue when you have a school with such a disproportionate balances of ethnicities. Though I’m in no way surprised.
I don’t see how xkaydet expects schools to deal with families and their situations. We have neither the expertise nor the resources nor most importantly, any solutions to what ails our family structures in the U.S. This country does very little to support the traditional nuclear family.
The bottom line is if you feel that the city’s most elite high schools should be more balanced in terms of race, there’s only three ways to get there: increase the number of Black and Hispanic students of very high percentile rank who apply (though I have no clue what that number might be), provide more free training and preparation to those same students who might be capable of succeeding in the specialized schools but 75%tile kids aren’t going to cut it, or establish quotas. Those are the only real direct solutions.
The concept of moving back to a more comprehensive admissions system isn’t really directed at getting more minorities in. It might. It might not. But it probably won’t make major changes. What it would do is make the selections more successful since it’s good students who are also bright who have the best chance of success. As though that’s really profound
The larger question might be whether this is, in fact a real problem at all, just because someone claims it is. Do we really have a groundswell of Black and Hispanic students who could succeed at Stuy, who want to succeed there, and who are being denied the opportunity. We might need to see more data from the actual tests to know. If 5% of the kids being accepted are Black and Hispanic and 10% of the applicants are, this isn’t really a huge issue. If 30% are, then this is a major issue that needs resolution.
16 Jackie Bennett
· Aug 27, 2006 at 10:21 pm
If you want to look at the numbers, you have to look at all of them . Percent enrolled needs to be addressed in terms of total population. So Staten Island, which has about 50% fewer black students than Manhattan does, and 66% fewer Hispanic students (gleaned from District report cards), has a smaller pool to draw from. Yet, it has about the same percent of blacks and Hispanics. You can see that same trend in the number of Asian students on the other end of the spectrum, once you factor in the total population.
Same goes for free lunch. How many are eligible borough wide? Once you have that percent, then the percent of how many get it at the special schools becomes more meaningful. Without it, it doesn’t mean a thing.
Another factor is transportation. SI is not hooked into public transportation in the same ways the other boroughs are. We’ve got it, but it isn’t good for all that much. Thus, the school draws more heavily from students who can get to it by car, or who are more local. Located in the old McKee building, Tech is not as accessible to the north shore which is far more racially diversified.
Let’s keep in mind that in insisting on a test-only system Klein told the school community that the reason for the change was that it would increase diversity. Given the diversty decline in test-only schools, go figure.
17 jd2718
· Aug 27, 2006 at 10:30 pm
Chaz,
Math A regents scores? Not a reliable measure of anything at all.
Discovery reaches mostly, but not entirely, Black and Hispanic candidates.
And Paul, the number of applicants who are Black and Hispanic is probably closer to 50%. I’ll see if I can get a real number.
Jonathan
18 jd2718
· Aug 27, 2006 at 10:58 pm
Jackie,
there are 6 Black kids at Tech. Out of 750. That’s 1.5 kid per grade. How could the test make the place less diverse?
The high school population on Staten Island is 54% White, 17% Black, 19% Hispanic, 9% Asian. The percent eligible for free lunch is 23%.
The population of New Dorp, just a few blocks away, is 53% White, 19% Black. Transportation is adequate.
Jonathan
19 Peter Goodman
· Aug 28, 2006 at 8:40 am
How about a different admissions system: half the kids admitted by the current system and the other half by the highest exam grades BY SCHOOL. Doesn’t CUNY use a similar system to determine admission to four year colleges? Legal? Any civil rights attorneys reading our disputations?
20 paulrubin
· Aug 28, 2006 at 9:03 am
If 50% of the applicants to the specialized high schools are Black and Hispanic and only 5% are getting in, then the system is flawed in a way that needs to be addressed. Or the number of seats needs to be increased. One doesn’t need to be a genius to see what’s happening. The state of math and science education in NYC is abysmal nearly across the board. For decades, math education at the elementary school level has been the unfortunate stepchild to reading and writing because the teachers in the elementary schools are lacking in this specific area. If 50% of the certification tests were math oriented, you’d fix that over a 15-20 year period but there’s no real effort in that direction so math vies with reading, writing, social studies, very basic science, and other areas and it’s relatively easy for a teacher of Common Branches to have a poor math background with a bad attitude about math almost a given. If you want to fix that situation faster, do what some suburban communities do and bring some level of departmentalization down to the elementary school grades. We don’t need to place these young children in 7-8 different classrooms a day but life will go on quite nicely if they do their math with a teacher trained specifically to teach math.
Trying to address the inequity in ethnic distribution in a math/science high school is like closing the barn doors after the cows have run off.
What we cannot do is expect a 75th percentile math child to excel against competition from the 99th percentile regardless of race. But if we provide a better math education across the board, there will be a more even distribution of ethnicities at each percentile. Maybe not perfect symmetry across the board because of factors outside the control of the classroom teach, but closer to the point where perhaps 15% or heaven forbid, closer to 20% of the minority kids have real shots at making a school like Stuy. But who are we kidding. We’d need to drastically redefine class size and we’d need to be attracting way stronger educators into the system and spend tons on workbooks, technology, etc. You want cheap. You get cheap. And you simply play into the hands of the parents who can better afford the extras that separate their kids from the pack when the time comes. Or you go back to the days of quotas and penalize our strongest performers.
21 jd2718
· Aug 28, 2006 at 10:04 am
I like Peter’s suggestion, though I think 50% is awfully high. And I think that there still should be some minimum qualifying score on the exam, though it could be lower than the cut score.
Paul is right, that 75th percentile kid should not be there. But if the cut is at the 96th percentile, dip down to the 92nd or 93rd to help balance. And this time I agree with Paul’s comments in their entirety.
One added point: perhaps the test prep programs, both Board of Ed and private (things like Prep for Prep and its imitators) do work. Lots of minority kids who do those programs make specialized schools. But the situation becomes even worse for the kids who don’t get the programs, who need to do it on their own.
Jonathan
22 Chaz
· Aug 28, 2006 at 7:41 pm
All of you keep tiptoeing around the issue. How to increase blacks and hispanics in the specialized schools. Unless you want to violate the Surpreme Court decision that race cannot be a major factor in undergraduate admissions you cannot take race into consideration without discriminating against another group. In this case asians.
The only way to legally improve minority representation is to get the families to emphasize education which is beyond the school systems ability to control.
23 paulrubin
· Aug 29, 2006 at 2:10 am
These aren’t undergraduate admissions. It’s a stretch to think the same rules apply completely. But I have to agree. Educational priorities begin in the home.