I’m a Yankee fan, so I hate the Red Sox, I’m a Jet fan so I hate the Patriots, and I’m a Knicks fan so I hate the Celtics. I don’t much care about hockey. The point is that I’m a New Yorker and Boston is our “natural enemy.” But I have to give the Boston School Committee credit. It seems to have solved one of New York City’s most intractable problems, an admission system to elite academic high schools that largely excludes Black and Latino students.
At its July meeting, the Boston School Committee voted unanimously to change the admissions criteria for the city’s three selective exam schools, Boston Latin Academy, Boston Latin School, and the John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science. The new admissions system will still count test scores and grades, but the school system will be divided into eight zones based on the socioeconomic conditions of neighborhoods. An equal number of high scoring applicants will be accepted from each zone. A similar system is used in Chicago to fill seats in its elite academic schools.
Gabby Finocchio, a 2019 graduate of one of the elite public high schools testified before the Boston School Committee that she made it into her school because her parents had time and money to spend on the admission process. She recognized that in a more equitable admissions system, she might not have gotten in, but she said, “I’m OK with that.”
In April, New York City announced that based on high-stakes testing only eight Black students received entry offers for the upcoming September school year at New York City’s Stuyvesant High School that has 750 spots. Overall, only 4% of the Black students that took the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) were admitted to one of the eight tests schools, Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant High School, Brooklyn Technical High School, Brooklyn Latin School, High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College of New York, High School of American Studies at Lehman College, Queens High School for the Sciences at York College, and Staten Island Technical High School. Only one Black student was admitted into Staten Island Technical High School. The percentage of Black and Latino students at Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Technical High School is a record low.
Opponents of the SHSAT entrance exam argue the test is racist. I don’t think so. What is racist is making test performance the only basis for admission. Supporters of the current admission policy claim student performance on the exams is a valid measure of how they will do in elite academic programs, although there is not evidence that students who score just above the cut score will do any better than students who fall just below it. There is also no evidence that a particular score is predictive of how a student will do in high school, college, or in life. In fact, there is no passing score for the test, only a limited number of seats. The reality is that New York City rations educational opportunity and students from more affluent families that can easily afford tutors and test-prep classes, or from immigrant working-class families willing to pay for multiple-years of tutoring, buy their way into these schools.
The difficulty diversifying the student population at New York City’s elite public high schools is political, not educational. If the city could establish that these schools provide a special curriculum only mastered by a few and could demonstrate that a specific score or composite evaluation is needed to perform in this elevated setting, every student who gets the requisite score should get the education. There is no justification for a competitive exam that denies a seat to otherwise qualified students.
City officials wring their hands and claim the admission policy is imbedded in state law, so they cannot do anything about it. But of course, the state law only mandates using the test for the three original specialized schools. The city could easily and immediately change the admission policy for the other five.
There is also a way around the 1971 Hecht-Calandra law that requires admission to Bronx High School of Science, Stuyvesant High School and Brooklyn Technical High “be solely and exclusively by taking a competitive, objective and scholastic achievement examination.”
During the Bloomberg mayoralty, New York City closed and then reorganized over 150 schools. The city simply has to “close” Science, Stuyvesant, and Tech and create “new” schools at the same sites using different and fairer admissions criteria, perhaps reserving seats for top students from every middle school in the city as part of an admissions package.
Other than fairness, there is another reason to take these steps. New York City’s young people must be prepared to live and work is diverse settings. Ghettoized schools, even elite academic ghettos, do a disservice to young people by not preparing them for their futures.
While New York City continues to stall, Boston has acted to end racial imbalance at its elite high schools. I may have to start singing "Sweet Caroline," the Boston Red Sox rally song.
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