Don't lower standards to increase minority numbers. Instead get to the root of the problem - the family (or lack thereof).
114
Until we can have an honest discussion about the culture that produce Stuyvesant-level students, we will never address the problem.
6
Agreed, don't lower standards. Include more standards that measure a broader range of talent that is not measured by so well by tests. I was good at tests. I consistently scored in the 99+ percentile with no prep. To me they were puzzles to find out what the test writer wanted me to answer. It didn't make me a better writer or artist or mathematician or musician or problem solver. It made me a better test taker. It was just a trick in my mind. It seems like a very limited view of intelligence.
2
Until we havge a discussion about the culture and history that produced systemic poverty, we will never the problem
4
As a Black American, I am appalled by the fact that politicians pandering for our votes now firmly believe that everything in our society must be "dumbed down" in order for us to participate. No test is a perfect predictor of future performance, but the NYC testing system fairly seeks to admit the most objectively qualified students into the elite schools. We as a Black community have it within us to meet the test head on. The Asians have proven that. But we see little if any energy around internally-focused efforts to to build high-performance cultures into our families, to demand that our children are held to high standards in school, to build cost-effective alternatives to for-profit test preparation, to drive drug use and single-parenthood out of our communities, etc. Those approaches are disdained because there is no way to take political advantage. So, instead, we passively wait for politicians to solve the problem with some program or edict.
The SAT has proposed a perverse solution to this problem in the form of an adversity score. It will award extra points to a student's score based upon how much dysfunctional and pathological behavior exists in the student's family or community. How sick is that?
230
Asians in New York would have to support, or at least not block, programs that would make these schools harder for their children to get into, by increasing competition. As parts of a society that values fairness they would tend to do this, but our society values beating the system or winning within the system more than fairness, unless fairness means letting winners win and losers lose.
People used to give at least lip service to a level playing field. Now we talk about how clever people figure out the tilt and how to use it to their advantage.
3
Well said!
One of the most interesting aspects of any racially tinged issue is how logic is the first casualty of the conflict.
Mom's age old advice is to not run around with a bad crowd. Why? Proximity to wrong-doing can present situations that can lead you astray.
Two of the main ways in which discrimination effects your life are economically and spatially. I live the SF Bay metro area and as the southwestern part (Silicon Valley) of the greater metro area becomes ever richer, the area's black population is shifted more and more toward the northeast.
The notion of off-setting cultural and economic disadvantages (See Dark Ghetto, Kenneth Clark (1965)), by area weighting is not a sick one but, an intriguing one that might be difficult to implement.
I notice that AR Clayboy hails from Scottsdale. While there are undoubtedly neighborhoods in Scottsdale where Latinx folks and Native Americans live on the margins, I doubt that his home is in the heart of the 'hood.
1
The New York Times
As of fall 2018 there were 1,135,334 students in the NYC school system, only 15% (170,300) of whom are white. There are 1,840 public schools (including charters), with an average of 617 students per school. (Source: NYC Dept of Ed)
The tiny percentage of white students means that the closest NYC can come to integrating its schools is to place an equal number of white students into each of the City's schools, which would mean an average of 93 white students per school and an average of 524 non-white students per school.
The Mayor and the School Superintendent seem to believe that mixing white students with minority students is the only way to improve educational outcomes for all students, but I don't think 93 white students per school is enough to accomplish that goal. (And isn't it insulting to minority students to suggest that they need exposure to white students to improve or succeed in school?)
Unfortunately, if the Mayor and Superintendent make further attempts to force integration by busing or by re-zoning school districts or by lowering admission standards for specialized schools, further white flight to the suburbs or private schools is inevitable.
There are simply not enough white students to spread around NYC public schools; the solution to the problem of variable student outcomes and opportunities is to acknowledge that residential and economic segregation exist and focus efforts and funds on improving education at ALL public schools.
70
During my junior & high schools years I & my friends went to fully integrated schools. Our parents who were FDR liberals welcomed it. We had no problems with it. Forced busing changed that equation forever. It only had one result - those that could, left & went to private schools. The parents & the kids didn't leave because they were racists. They left because it was highly disruptive to everyone. Kids are on buses much longer than necessary. Parents getting involved with school activities requires a much longer time commitment. Teachers end up taking the brunt of frustration the whole thing creates. It was good for no one. Also, the basis for forced busing was flawed. It is not about making all schools better. It is about trying to make all schools the same in terms of racial balance. What is wrong with working to bring up under-performing schools to same standards? Nothing. When the best we can do is put kids on a bus adding an extra two hours to their day then something is dreadfully wrong. Instead of fixing the schools nearest to the students politicians decided it is cheaper to bus them. Insane. Mind you this was more of a burden on black students who were bused more often and further to achieve some magical racial balance. There is no defensible argument for this position. Only leftist fanatics believe in forced busing today. Most liberals, conservatives, and everyone who lives in suburbia are 100% against it. We're never going back to this failed policy.
33
In regards to your comment that "isn't it insulting to minority students to suggest that they need exposure to white students to improve or succeed in school?"
It's been shown in studies that it helps both minority and white students when they are exposed to one another, not only socially but academically. All the more, I imagine, in our ever globalized day and age.
2
"It's been shown in studies that it helps both minority and white students when they are exposed to one another"
Can you please reference the studies? Which ethnic groups were exposed to each other in the studies? E.g. how beneficial was the exposure of Blacks to Caucasians vs Caucasians to Asians, and Asians to Blacks?
7
Why aren’t black and brown kids doing better on the SHSAT tests?
The first places to look are the poor quality of the lower feeder schools and the limited SHSAT test prep available to these students.
Improving just these two factors would definitely increase the number of black and brown students who pass the entrance tests, and would be cheaper and much more feasible than trying to change the values and culture of these students’ parents, who in general do not place as much emphasis and value on education as do, say, Asian parents.
Eliminating the SHSAT tests and dumbing down the curricula of the Specialized High Schools is ridiculous and counter-productive, and will only serve to reduce even further the proportion of white students (now at 15% of NYC public school enrollment).
29
As a graduate of Bronx Science and an Asian American, my message to all of you who are complaining about the lack of diversity at the elite high schools in the city is this: The SHSAT is here to stay. Deal with it!
And to those students who will be taking the SHSAT in the future: Study harder!
And to The NY Times: Enough already!
29
Our older daughter graduated from Stuyvesant in 2017 and younger daughter will graduate from Bronx Science this month. For six years I’ve been an active parent, with a term in the School Leadership Team and volunteering regularly at school event. Each time I set foot at these schools, I’m appalled with the lack of racial diversity.
However, I don’t think the problem is the test (SHSAT). Because in selective high schools, like Bard, Beacon and Townsend Harris, who do not rely on a single test like the SHSAT, the lack of diversity is only slightly less dreadful than in the specialized schools.
I believe the problem lies in the preparation for these schools during K to 8. Gifted and Talented (G and T) programs feed these high schools and they have been decimated or eliminated entirely from large swaths of the city. Even where they still exist, like in my community in Queens, information on attending these programs is woefully lacking. When it was time to enroll our older daughter in our local G and T program, it took my wife, a stay at home mom with two masters’ degrees, weeks to figure out that while we were zoned for PS 49, the test was offered in PS 87 and the preprograms was housed in PS 153.
This article places an outsized emphasis on test preparation. Although access to preparation is a factor, availability, access and information on G and T programs is far more important.
17
I did not grow up in NYC but I am one of those Asian-American kids who did well academically starting from being enrolled in gifted public school programs when I was six. And my family were refugees with no friends or relatives to begin with in America. My mom was a single parent due to my dad's early death.
I think we have to start very basic, even something as simple as consistent adequate housing, clothing, food, healthcare, parental love/ attention, etc. Growing up, we were poor but I never doubted nor experienced struggles with knowing where I was going to live, if I was going to eat, or whether my parent cared about me. My mom pick the safest neighborhood she could on her budget and paid attention that it was across from a playground and near the library. My mom didn't drink, smoke, take drugs, or take home anyone she dated until she met my stepfather. Our "job" essentially was to study and to play and that was that. I don't know how we can expect kids to concentrate on academics when they are struggling with basic issues growing up.
Probably a number of factors have come together to cause the disintegration of Black families including the crack epidemic, high rates of incarceration, unemployment issues, etc. I have friends who are Black and academically/ professionally successful: some are African-Americans and others come from families immigrating from Africa or the Caribbean. To a large degree, they came from stable families.
24
'Asian immigrants have embraced the specialized high schools as tickets out of poverty' These schools lead to top colleges and improve your opportunities to a better economic life. Asians regard Education as the sure way to access a better life and put all their effort behind it. Many may not be able to compete in Athletics. Art and Music are valued but not viewed as a means to meet your economic future. Just what I have seen.
The solution is to have more such schools and broaden the admissions criteria and have a curriculum in the Highschool that gives equal importance to sports, arts, and music. You cannot make an academic/aptitude test as a criterion to get in - then it will be mastered by some.
Even college admissions are going to the 'Aptitude Test' masters. Colleges are making their decision process more logical, but it does not have to be.
4
It depends on what generation of Asian-American and whether they came from wealth or not. Recently arrived or first generation immigrants are much less likely to take chances and so pick stable, well-paying careers where one's ability to network, communicate in English, etc. is not as much of a factor in career success. The often advise their children to do the same eveb as their children -- like me -- are on par with US-born citizens in their language skills. (In fact, my writing/ speaking skills have been noted to exceed co-workers born in the US.)
By the 2nd generation or later, the kids start expanding what they do. My foreign-born friends who came to the US as children are in mostly tech fields like medicine, dentistry, computer science, pharmacy, accounting, etc. whereas my friends who were born in the US and /or came from wealth went successfully into fields like graphic design, modern dance, journalism, law, business, etc. In either case, almost everyone has at minimum graduated from college and many of the foreign-born have masters and doctorates (we have to make our own way more).
6
The Asians try harder. They invest time and money in learning more sooner because they want it more than the other kids. It's cultural not racial. It's also an immigrant thing, most of the Asian kids are newer to town than the others. The parents are more involved too that's part of the cultural difference. Most american kids I meet (regardless of race) spend a whole lot of time taking selfies, imagining themselves as stars. The Asian kids seem to just spend that glamour time hitting the books. There's a price to be paid for believing in a star system.
25
One thing stood out for me in the article:
"...Asian immigrants have embraced the specialized high schools as tickets out of poverty"
In addition to asking why the elite schools have fewer and fewer black and brown students, why not ask why there has been an upsurge or domination by Asian American students, who are often immigrant and poor?
Maybe then we'll figure out a solution, rather than employing artificial social engineering.
21
I think the headline of this article is incorrect, and both the Times and DeBlasio are asking the wrong questions. The headline pits Asian Americans and their success against Blacks and Hispanics, and it's indicative of this country's stance on Asians in general - that the success of Asians is never something to be applauded, but instead something to be feared. What I see, is an incredible success story of one minority group of immigrants. Instead of asking how can we reduce the number of Asians in this system, why aren't we instead asking what is it that these Asian parents are doing that other parents can copy?
38
The biggest change has been gentrification. Large swaths of white and asian parents are coming back to the city and sending their children to NYC public schools this creates more competition from those who are able and willing to invest in their childrens education.
There needs to be a realization that too many black and hispanic parents lack the resources and there is also a large population that don't put as much emphasis in education
2
The article makes it very clear; black and Hispanic students at the specialized high schools have not been replaced by white students. They have been replaced by Asian students, many, if not most, of whom are poor and immigrants or the children of immigrants.
This is not a story of white privilege or of the legacy of discrimination against minority groups or of rewards for the affluent. It's a success story about poor Asian immigrants. The only "problem" with the admission process that the article (and its many predecessor articles in the NY Times) can identify is that blacks and Hispanics do not, as a group, succeed.
It would be blatant racial discrimination to try to "remedy" this result by changing the admission criteria. It would be more productive to try to learn why Asian students have been so successful at these schools and to see if there are lessons that could be shared with others.
I am a 1962 graduate of Stuyvesant High School and a beneficiary of the education it provided. The quality of that education depends at least as much on the ability and motivation of the students as the quality of the faculty. The educational opportunity that these schools provide should not be jeopardized by gerrymandering the admission process to ensure a result that satisfies Bill de Blasio's (and the NY Times') notion of political correctness by admitting less qualified students.
43
I went to a great college prep school in Chicago (we call them selective enrollment here) and am Hispanic. I came from a bad neighborhood but managed to gain admission, a lot like the stories the people in the article had. I enjoyed my time there because you had people of all races, all areas of the city, and all income levels. Looking back, it's impressive they managed to accomplish it.
Honestly, I couldn't spot a difference in ability between those who had test prep courses and those of us who came from the bad side of town. We were all intelligent and among the best students in the city, which our teachers made sure ALL of us knew, no matter our race or income level. I'm very grateful to have gone there and be in college now. Having said that, I think something can be done to ensure black and brown kids in NYC have that same shot I once had. And it can be done without taking away for those low-income Asian kids, because I know they work hard as well. The solution lies in smart policy proposals. NY has always struck me as a great and progressive city, and I hope they'll be able to fix this issue and provide opportunity to all of its kids.
3
NYC should let their mayor put his money where his mouth is and implement the proposed changes. Personally, I think blaming the test is like blaming the scale for the fact you are overweight, and this new plan would only weaken the academic performance of these institutions. However, implementing the plan may also move the national conversation towards the real root causes of under-performance (it's not the test), and the prestige of a few institutions may be worth the price.
3
So, destroy the specialized schools in order to prove that our public middle schools don't provide good education, which we all already knew. Not sure that's the best plan.
16
Fortunately de Blasio does not have the power to implement his plan; the State legislature took it away years ago.
And it's not only the prestige of a few institutions that would be lost, it's the upward mobility provided to, perhaps, 2,000 students per year through an education far superior to what is otherwise offered in the NYC public school system.
11
DOn't only discuss the outcome/ admission stats. Discuss the pipeline. Discuss what happens in 4th and 5th grade. Discuss how the highest performing students reach or don't reach this coveted spot in a specialized high school. Some average student with extensive test prep make it, and gifted students without test prep don't. Any student seriously intent on being admitted must go through a test prep program for a year or more. Any student with high academic achievement (and their families) must be made aware of the programs by their school's guidance office, and offered an effective prep course opportunity that is affordable for the family. Currently that is not the case.
7
It's clear from the data that enrollment for white students has decreased by approximately the same factor as for black and Hispanic students. But the article seems concerned only with the decline in the latter two groups.
Do not white students, families, and alumni get to feel a sense of loss? In other words, cannot white, black, and Hispanic students alike feel as though they need to improve to be academically competitive with Asian students? Why not focus on Asian performance over ALL other groups, rather than just some of them?
24
The increase in Asia enrollment cannot be explained by the difference in the economic background among families because of most Asia immigrants came with nothing in addition to their language difficulties. It can only be interpreted that they spent more time on preparation and the families have placed more emphasis on academic studies. There is a direct correlation between efforts and outcome. In the NBA, 90 percent of players are black in spite only 13% of the population is black and 10 percent are white who represent 50% of the total population. In the use and disuse theory of Darwin- an organism can pass on characteristics that it has acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime to its offspring.
12
Other than the fact that taking the SAT or similar tests several times - or doing equivalent test prep - gives someone more comfort with the test and how it is constructed, I don't think test prep makes that much difference. Yes, testing experience may raise scores 100 points or so, but no one is going to qualify for any of the elite high schools just because of test prep classes.
12
The issue here is that most schools don't provide students the opportunity to excel, not that too few students get into the best schools.
There was a big push a while ago against ability grouping within schools, which means that all students in the same building are basically taught at the same rate.
The reaction to this has predictably become ability grouping by building. So if you don't get into the right building, you can't get a good education.
Good students should not be held back because they are stuck in classrooms with less accomplished peers. Full stop.
11
Any ready of Fivethirtyeight should know that aggregating multiple measurements producers better results than any single one. So why not have multiple ways to get into Stuyvestant, etc? X% of each entering class would be the kids who scored best on the test, and they'd be joined by tranches who got in via various other ways to measure talent. This would increase both excellence and diversity. I'm a Stuy alum, if that matters.
2
Mayor DiBlasio and Chancellor Caranza are asking the wrong question. Yes, diversity, by itself, is valuable. But the low Black/Hispanic numbers in the specialized schools is only the symptom. Instead, we should focus on why so few Black/Hispanic kids from poor neighborhoods pass the SHSAT.
First, cultural differences are real. Admission to top Chinese and Indian colleges is based only on a national exam. China's college acceptance rate of 1% makes Harvard or Yale (5-6%) seem like a cakewalk. When Asian parents immigrate to the US, they bring this mentality of academic competition with them. New York will never be able to address these cultural factor.
What about test prep? Yes, private test prep contributes to inequity, but poor Asian families willingly choose to pay (see above). Making it free still won't solve the problem: kids still have to put in the hours of practice in addition to schoolwork. It can't turn an underachieving student into an overachiever.
The only thing NYC can change is how gifted Black/Hispanic kids are nurtured. More G&T programs or charter schools are a few possibilities. But the DOE needs to better manage current resources and eliminate low-performing teachers before expanding its budget.
Quotas aren't the solution. Fixing the DOE is.
17
I wonder what insights into this problem would be gleaned by not treating Asian-Americans as a monolith. Do students whose parents are relatively well-off, educated people from East or South Asia perform at the same level as students whose parents came here as refugees from the farming and laborer classes in Southeast Asia?
Culture is important, to be sure. But culture never develops separate from politics and power. To my mind, the cultural pathology responsible for the segregation of New York City schools has little to nothing to do with how much Black and Hispanic people value education (answer: a lot) and everything to do with how much rich white folks, explicitly or implicitly, value a system that keeps them at the head of the table and everyone else fighting for scraps below (answer: a whole lot).
4
I absolutely hated the idea of test prep when I was in school many years ago. I was livid when I found out that some students "cheated" by doing test prep. I still vehemently object to it. I have children. I am doing my best to create in them the broadest possible repertoire of abilities and talents that they can apply in a modern hyper variable world. Spending time on test prep is a waste and confers no permanent improvement in their ability to thrive in university and especially in real life. I would rather they spend that time playing basketball with their friends or mountain biking.
It's seems understandable that Asian students do better on tests because of their Confucian derived educational philosophies and a focus on examinations. For many opportunities, you have to ace your one chance to take the big exam.
However, my experience is that the Asian approach often produces an overly narrowed focus that does not work as well in a job that requires an ability to create and adapt in real time to real problems. It's not necessarily bad. The Chinese are incredible at manufacturing but it might explain why they have not been very successful at creating their own chip designs. They still depend on imported electronic chips.
We should be working to enable the broadest possible range of successful approaches to learning and its application to adult success. That demands a willingness to accept differently abled children from different cultural backgrounds.
4
How on earth can studying for a test be viewed as "cheating"? I teach at the University of California, with many Asian students in my classes, and I can assure you that not only do they study assiduously but they are highly creative, individual, and delightful students. The world is not going to be improved by playing basketball: it's going to be improved by the engineers, doctors, artists, and scientists I see being trained around me every day.
35
@ J.I.M. I would like to hear your take on why there are so very few blacks and Hispanics at these schools since you seem to be an expert on minorities.
3
I don't think the answer is that difficult. They didn't get sufficiently high grades, SATs and essay answers, so they didn't get in. Study hard and you will be rewarded.
6
The unanswered question is how things went from 50% Black and Hispanic enrollment at Brooklyn Tech in the 1970s to many in today's Black and Hispanic communities not even knowing about the existence of specialized schools? Even if we attribute some of the differences in current enrollment to a growing and competitive Asian population, that does not fully explain what has happened. It seems that admittance to specialized high schools may not be equally appealing to all groups.
6
I don't think folks understand that Asian Americans in NYC tend to be of immigrant and/or low income backgrounds. For many Asian Americans students who make it to the Specialized Science High Schools they have had to overcome a low income background, language barriers, non-existent guidance from immigrant parents who do not understand how to navigate the education system and/or refugee status. We've all got our challenges. But to discount the challenges facing Asian Americans is at best unconscious bias/cultural insensitivity and at worst outright discriminatory.
37
I found the article quite misleading, because it chose a base year when there was a vigorous affirmative action process for the specialized schools. That was a somewhat brief phase; stats from my era (BxSci '62) would have shown something quite different.
Also, the article assumes without evidence that all the test prep is substantially effective. That parents are convinced to pay for it is not evidence.
Neither of my points should be taken as opposition to some degree of affirmative action.
19
Commercial test prep schools for the specialized schools may a matter of recent decades, but test prep is not. When I applied to Stuyvesant, over 50 years ago, coming from a mediocre junior high school in a working class second-generation immigrant neighborhood with few college grads, it was understood that one had to study for the test. I and others who applied studied assiduously, using test preparation books available at the public library. I assume this is still an option for students, and that these materials are also available on-line. Their guidance counselors should help them access these materials. Scrapping the test and admitting unqualified students is not the answer.
16
I would like to see whether tracking, or more specifically tracking of the gifted and talented kids, still exists in public elementary and middle schools in predominantly lower income Black and Latino neighborhoods. It was pretty much standard practice during the period of 1975-1995 in elementary and middle schools.
I would also like to see whether public middle schools for the gifted and talented still exists today in a number of lower income districts in NYC as it did in 1975-1995. Many of these schools drew in gifted and talented students from lower income communities, particularly Black and Latino communities, in NYC. These schools provided challenging coursework that simultaneously prepared students for the SHSAT. Homework of up to three hours were not unheard of and students in some of these middle schools were required to read books even over the summer break and provide book reports.
I get the sneaking suspicion that this is no longer in existence.
5
It's interesting that the title of the article doesn't reflect the data of the Graphs inside: Namely that Whites have lost a Greater Percentage of student enrollment than Hispanics! in all 3 elite High Schools. Hispanic enrollment has dwindled from 5% to 3% at Styvesant, while White enrollment has dwindled from 70% to 18%. That's a 75% decrease for white enrollment, compared to a 40% decrease by Hispanics.
Also interesting to note is that the factors which affect Blacks seem to affect whites equally. Whatever factors there are at play here. So this is not a problem of "Equality".. "Racism".. "Privilege".. or Money. All the Usual assumptions don't apply here.
Unfortunately-- the issue seems to be characterized by the "need to Integrate" the elite schools better. This is absolutely the wrong approach. Basically, it is a false and very misleading assumption that lack of integration is the issue. But it's a favorite of Liberals. If you look at the DATA-- it's not a lack of integration at all. It's a lack of EDUCATION.
Solutions based on "greater integration" only serve to LOWER the Standards of acceptance into these schools. Because they are only focused on superficial metrics. But that's pretty typical of Public Schools.
24
I have a friend whose son attends Stuyvesant, and she said the entrance exam favored the students (like hers) that excelled in math. Naturally, he did extremely well on the math component, but also did well on the English segment, because the multiple choice ELA questions can be approached from a logic standpoint. It sounds like a flawed test.
1
Or, perhaps, a smart kid.
All exams favor those who can apply strong logical/analytical skills to the questions.
10
Not really, logically analyzing and answering questions in the English section is still indicative of intelligence and academic ability.
7
What troubles me is the issue and articles such as this further pit minority groups against each other. The people who are taking this test are financially on the same playing field. They may have one or both parents working more than one job to put their children through school. These parents are relying on a good educational foundation for their children to advance in life. Even if there was the same specialized programs in each middle school to prepare students for the SHSAT, it still requires the students to put in the hard work and effort. Looking solely at shifting demographics and finger-pointing only creates more division.
11
"[M]any accelerated academic programs in mostly black and Hispanic neighborhoods have closed as Asian immigrants have embraced the specialized high schools as tickets out of poverty."
Forgive me if I do not understand the causal relationship between these two phenomena. What are Asians doing to cause programs to be closed in other neighborhoods?
"And in a school system that remains severely racially segregated, many black and Hispanic students have been left in struggling middle schools that sometimes do not even notify them that the elite schools exist."
This. Is. Utterly. Shameful. I would consider this a prima facie violation of the civil rights of those students: Unequal treatment with a racially disparate impact. In an enterprise that spends BILLIONS of dollars monthly, not providing a glossy, informative booklet to every seventh grader in the city, published in every supported language, explaining in clear terms the options NYC has for high schools (including charters, as they are tuition-free) would cost what? TENS of THOUSANDS? In a year's time, the schools spend that on paperclips and pens. I am DISGUSTED.
6
And I should point out, the first question is directed to the editors, not the schools. The use of the word "as," of course, implies only correlation, not causation. But as causation requires correlation to be detected, even MENTIONING correlation raises the possibility of causation. A far better edit would be to separate the two thoughts into two sentences without the "as." The fact that both are occurring simultaneously would then be implicit, not explicit, and attenuate the possibility of causation by not immediately linking the two. As written, it links two separate processes in the mind (in the single sentence and for what stylistic purpose?) whereas they are related only in time, as far as I can imagine.
This is a heated, fraught topic. Only the best research, writing and editing will suffice: Kids' futures are at issue and they do not get do-overs when adults make mistakes.
10
i'm a harvard grad and black. i recently toured a chess campe inadvertently. i was actually taking the kids to paint pottery when we passed by it. i noticed on the walls of the school were pictures of indian and asian kids who had recently won tournaments along with one or two white kids. i also recently noticed that when i drop my kids off at their elementary school to play with friends before their school starts, i always see one asian girl sitting in the car with her mom reading in the backseat until the last sec when the bell rings. i don't know if i value playing with classmates more than reading at this age or if art is more important to me than chess. i do know that cultural differences are real. most americans do value education, but some families emphasize test taking games and skills over playing and the arts and this starts way, way before high school prep testing. we all need to figure out a way to balance it all. my kids will learn how to play chess first at home and then at this school so we can add some black folks to that wall! for now we are going to paint pigs and frogs and see what kind of designs they create ! balance is key.
32
For what it is worth, as an actively involved Stuy alum ('81), that's exactly the question I've been asking: how did this happen. I am not sure this article answers the question, except where it notes that there are far more Asian and Asian-American high school age kids in NYC than there were 35 years ago, and that test prep has become nearly universal. I've been following this argument for years, and I have to say that none of the proposed responses seem fair, or useful, and I am not sure I have any better ones of my own....except perhaps for the City to offer high quality test prep in all high schools.
22
Both of our bi-racial children attended a specialized HS in the early 2000's and both benefited greatly from FREE prep programs offered by the DOE. The article states there are only 200 slots available citywide for these free programs geared towards preparing all deserving students for the SH exam. Maybe that's part of the problem?? 20 years ago There was a program in each borough. Each elementary school principal could nominate a small number of their 5th graders to participate (my memory is only two or three per elementary school) with over 800 public elementary schools in NYC that would be over 1600 slots! Not all students nominated chose to participate as The program was two years long mandating extra classes on one weeknight and Saturday during the academic year and daily over two summers. The work was intensive, and not all students finished, but we saw our kids both struggle as well as thrive. Being part of this program was a large commitment for the students, for the parents and for the city, however it seems the city has not been able to sustain this program given how small it has become. expanding and supporting these free programs would be another avenue to support all students that have the drive to attend these schools.
7
With all the slicing and dicing of the data the article demonstrates said decline. Would not it be logical to at least attempt to suggest why that has happened? As a parent of Stuy student (class 2012) I see only explanation: the parents who care to get kids in those schools - regardless of being rich or poor - are generally able to get a kid in elite school. For poor parents it's even easier - their kids can concentrate more on classes and prep work and less on entertainment and gadgets. If one can afford at all to live in NYC $500 is not price to high to get kid prepared to compete with the same kids. Let's be honest having kid in Stuy is something the parents want - as they realize the value - and it is a lesser value for kids who would leave their neighborhood and friends and just spend typically 2 hours or more to get to the school and back.
2
It's easy to say it's easy to get $500 when you have the money. Many families do not. What should families do? Short the rent and hope the landlord doesn't kick you out? Skip the electric bill, but it's hard to read in the dark. The article noted the basic classes actually cost $1000, that's a lot t put togehter at once when you live paycheck to paycheck.
2
No test is objective when some students have access to quality grade school, middle school education, and test preparation. The mayor and the board of chancellor (if that's his title) are correct in re-evaluating whether the current system is fair. This is not a dumbing-down of the admissions process. It is a recognition that the process is long overdue for change. Only seven Black admits to Stuyvesant is a HUGE problem. The world is far more diverse than that and we are producing students who will be ill-prepared to navigate a world that is increasingly diverse, something a ridiculous quantifier such as a test score cannot predict. We need to stop relying solely on test scores for admission and support admissions standards that examine the whole applicant.
10
You mean like college admissions?
1
"Only seven Black admits to Stuyvesant is a HUGE problem."
I don't even see a small problem here.
"The world is far more diverse than that and we are producing students who will be ill-prepared to navigate a world that is increasingly diverse..."
Do you have ANY proof that students from Brazil (one of the most ethnically diverse countries) are more competitive than ones from Japan, Korea, or China?
Btw, are you also alarmed by the "HUGE" problem of only one (1) Asian in the NBA? Do you also believe that our basketball players are ill-prepared to take on more diverse teams from e.g. Spain, Israel, France?
13
I am an IS 383 (Bushwick) and BxSci grad. The problem is NOT cultural or economic. NYC DOE has systematically DESTROYED the feeder middle schools and magnet programs that "supplied" most of the Black and Latinx specialized high school student body. iN THE 1980's IS 383 was entrance exam only, rigorous with high standards (including expectations for behavioral maturity for those of you that believe "we" just have a lack a discipline) and thorough in its preparation of students to sit the exam not only for the SHS but Hunter High Shool and prestigious boarding schools such as Philip Exeter.
Fast forward to today: IS 383 and other programs like it fight for space and resources in their own buildings with predatory Charter Schools that have ZERO intention of living up to the standard that IS 383 created so long ago. It is a deliberate, surgical plan to decimate feeder programs; the successful diversity inclusive of Black and Latinix had to be stopped since it was working so well without excuses, crutches or changing the rules for us. Any suggestion that lack of ability, social pathologies and laziness on the part of Black students/parents not "getting in" and wanting lax standards to do so are ugly racial tropes that informed people should be embarrassed to repeat.
36
Short memory. Most of these pipeline programs were dismantled based on the misguided demands of the community, which was angered by their "elitist" and "discriminatory" nature. There was a powerful local groundswell against tracking.
20
Another 383 alum here: The lessons I learned there served me well not only in my education, but in dealing with the world as a whole. Knowing IS 383 is being decimated -- along with other similar schools -- breaks my heart. Bloomberg started it, but deBlasio has failed to make real change so that charters don't squeeze out existing, successful schools.
2
I think in liberal NYC the testing of younger kids for these advanced programs was destroyed, as you say, in an effort to not divide kids into smartest and less smart, the thinking being we're all blank slates - a popular view years ago, and possibly now - and that ALL students should perform at a high level. That's what happened, and the article doesn't really address it.
5
This problem is not about achievement or that Black and Hispanic children are not hardworking. It is about economics. Black and hispanic kids do not always have the resources or conditions to be as competitive.
In high school I was taking double math courses and consuming all of the science that I could get. But what my peers did not know was that I was essentially homeless multiple times, sometimes living in one room with my 4 family members in a shelter.
I would have never told anyone, and the stress and distraction it caused cannot be measured. I am not saying that Asian students do not have challenges, but my family rose from slavery in one branch. The other branch was American Indians who were literally runoff of their land in the 1930's. That should count for something.
11
Many Asians come from very dire circumstances too - from war, political oppression etc. Poor Asians do better than other minorities at the same income level - why?
32
No, the reason for this disparity is not simply economic disadvantage. My wife and I are both minorities, she went to Bronx Sci, I went to Stuy. Both of us are from immigrant families with parents that made below minimum wage when we were kids. The difference to our peers? What our families did with the money we had.
My middle school classmates wore new clothes, brand new air jordans, went on vacations to Disney. and ate out at restaurants. I wore hand me downs and bargain basement sneakers. We never ate out (first time ever was my middle school graduation) and our idea of vacation was a weekend at a friends house upstate. My classmates had cable TV, we used an antenna and old TV thrown out by a neighbor. Where my parents DID spend money was my education. Prep school every summer and weekends.
So no, my wife and I succeeded from the same economic situation as our peers because our parents choose to invest in our future rather than luxuries with the little money they had. THAT is the difference.
Perhaps there are simply more Asian parents willing to make these sacrifices than other minorities, resulting in a higher representation in these schools. Perhaps it's a completely different issue.
Regardless, the fact that Asian children, equally as poor as other minorities, can get into these schools fine, invalidates your argument of an economic cause for this disparity.
40
My grandparents were fishermans forced to be refugees due to a conflict between China and Taiwan. My Asian parents came to America and struggled to build a life here for themselves, my three siblings and I. We were of low income background and I remembered winter days without heat. I was placed in ESL till 4th grade even though I was born here because my parents did not know how to navigate the education system. We overcame poverty, language barriers... That should count for something too.
8
As a parent who have spent thousands of dollars on SAT and ACT prep classes offered by Kaplan and Princeton, Test prep only tells part of the story. Students who take those classes have to be motivated to learn from their mistakes, and to study on their own after figuring out why they keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Students who ace the SAT in my neck of the woods are those who bought the $19.95 book of 10 SAT and are motivated enough to take and retake the 10 SAT test until they score a perfect score every other time!
Some students and families simply do not know the importance of a good high school and college education and what benefits they may offer. Once the students and their families realize that there are other career options besides being an athlete, actors, rapper, singer, dancer, and other potentially even more prestigious professions they may also be more motivated to study on their own.
23
@Elizabeth you say "once the students and their families realize that there are other career options besides being an athlete, actor, rapper, singer, they may be more motivated to study on their own." Although you don't specifically state it, it is clear you are referring to Black kids. How do you expect black and brown kids to think there are numerous career opportunities for them when the world they live in teaches them differently? Would you also ask Asian students and their families to consider that there are many career options outside STEM that are just as honorable and reputable? It baffles me how people are quick to judge and blame the underrepresented minority groups and not the majority groups. I'm sick of it.
2
If you're not up to the task of getting yourself a book and preparing on your own to take the exam, then you're not up to the level of work that would be expected of you in these schools.
20
This piece masquerades advocacy for the Mayor's reform plans as journalism, and promotes disparaging views of Asian families for the successes of their children. The awfully low enrollment of Black and Hispanic students at the city’s SHS's is again used as an indictment of the SHSAT and an opportunity to softly stigmatize the commitment of Asian-American children to prepare for a school test, abetted by the test-prep industry. The author hides from the reader evidence showing that enrollments at the SHS’s mirror the performance of NYC school children in the 2018 State Tests. Black students account for 6.9% and 9.3% of the students achieving level 4 in Grade 7 Math and ELA, even if they account for about 22.5% of test-takers (corresponding numbers for Asian/Pacific Islanders are 42.7%, 37.4%, and 18.1%). These differences in test results are already visible in Grade 3. Black students account for about 10% of those achieving level 4 in either Math or ELA even if they account for about 20% of the test takers. By comparison, Asian/Pacific Islander students represent more than 35% of the students achieving level 4, but only 18% of the test takers. The Chancellor and Mayor (unfortunately assisted by a handful of hypocrites posing as journalists) want to make sure that the public attention is consumed by a phony debate about the merits of the SHSAT while they do nothing to address the needs of nearly 250,000 Black and Hispanic students in the NYC public schools.
28
I was stunned to see that the white student share of the specialized schools had fallen faster than the 50% drop in their share of the student body overall.
6
Lots of praise here about the exceptional work ethic and better family structure of students of Asian descent (which I am not debating in the least). The undercurrent of these comments is that many black and Hispanic students lack these traits, which is patently untrue.
But what I wonder is why these exceptional people are stuck, like their black and Hispanic counterparts, under a glass ceiling in the workplace when they arrive there? I can only venture to guess that it’s because it’s easy to pop off a bunch of half-truths about slots in a specialty school from your suburban enclave in wherever, with its small, non-threatening numbers of students of color, but harder to give well-deserving nonwhite people true equality and access in the workplace, where the stakes and money are so much higher. There, I fear, is where the “model minority” myth takes a big hit—when it comes time to putting your money where your mouth is and awarding exceptional talent and not just the people who look like you.
I am not fooled by any of these arguments in the least. The success of students of Asian descent is an easy battering ram to use against black and Hispanic kids—until it’s time for white folks to give up their access, privilege, and power to the adults these model students become.
2
I had an Asian American friend who went to a Private Catholic School and attended private preparatory for the SHSAT. During the start of the Fall semester he told me about the math concepts he learned through Kaplan and the likes that was going to be on the SHSAT. I remembered having no idea what he was talking about. My parents were immigrants from Asia, we were really poor and I was put in English as a Second Langugage up until 4th grade. All I could do was spend 10 dollars on a Kaplan SHSAT prep book. When the results came in, I got in and he didn’t . At the end of the day you can take a horse to water but you can’t make him drink it….. it’s about individual merit. What Bill de Blasio is calling for is designing an admission plan that will drop Asian Americans from 60% to 30% with no change to white admission rates is downright racists.
24
"The specialized schools would be nearly 50 percent black and Hispanic... That would be a significant blow to the Asian students, most of them poor, who have replaced white students as a majority in the specialized schools."
The NYT fetish with highlighting the experience of systemically oppressed "black and brown" children has resulted in them committing a comically obvious error; that so many of the "overrepresented" Asian students are as oppressed as their "black and brown" counterparts. How is a Nigerian immigrant worse off than a poor Cambodian one? Is the son of a Sudanese taxi driver any more oppressed than a Chinese waiter? Does systemic racism apply if you are not the descendant of slaves in the Americas? Does fleeing poverty in the third world compare to being born in Puerto Rico?
The NYT needs to make up its mind - are Asians privileged or oppressed? If privileged, show us! If oppressed, why are they overrepresented at these schools? Are the tests culturally biased in their favor?
For each of the long-form profiles the NYT has run for black and latino students, if they had covered even one of the poor Asian students who received admission, I bet we could all learn a lot about how they passed the test without having to resort to ethnic stereotypes. The big folly of all this is that the NYT casts all races into monoliths but only denies Asian students the opportunity to look like individuals.
35
This article lays it out in a very straightforward manner: the decrease in black/hispanic enrollment correlates with the increase in test prep programs.
It's obvious. Anyone continuing to deny that the test is unfair is being wilfully blind. No, Asian students are not smarter than black students. No, Asian students are not working harder than black students. To anyone who thinks they are, including many top commenters here: the racism lies with you.
Asian communities are very, very familiar with test-taking. They know that investing in test prep will be worth the money. Families in the community share this information with one another. They know how to guide their children to practice for a test so they can get in. Parents prioritize paying for test prep because they know it pays off. This has translated into over-representation of Asian students in the specialized high schools.
This is cultural knowledge that black and hispanic communities simply do not have. How can people in this city be so wilfully ignorant? If a single test is providing such wildly skewed results by race, how can it *not* be racist?
1
And it's everywhere. Just look at the results of the National Spelling Bee last week. After whittling the group down to 8 they were unable to eliminate any more and had to declare 8 "winners." Apparently the majority of the "winners" participated in a new spelling bee prep program.
3
So surprised that this article is somehow passed on as a news article. This is more of an agenda driven opinion article that has been mis-classified. This is journalism without integrity. If you read the bottom it clearly states “Two of the editors of this article, Dodai Stewart and Destinée-Charisse Royal, are black alumnae of the Bronx High School of Science.” No Asian representation among the editors? No Asian input for a balanced view?
31
Wouldn't the idea of having just the top students from every school get to go to the selective school also be leaving all other children behind in a worse off school? Wouldn't raising the overall quality of education in all schools a better solution at leveling the playing field rather than select a fortunate few while taking away from some deserving ones and still leaving the majority behind? There's something not quite right in this equation if it's really about equality.
4
How quickly we forget the Open Admissions experiment with CUNY in the late '60's-early '70's to increase racial diversity in the NYC university system. Once considered some of the finest examples of public universities in the country, the reputations of Queens College, Brooklyn College and CCNY drastically declined when Open Admissions allowed unqualified students to enter these schools. Unprepared for the rigors of higher education, the schools were forced to provide remedial English and math classes for incoming minority students, professors had to lower their standards and "dumb down" their courses and many students ended up as dropouts. What makes anyone think that the Specialized High Schools will not suffer the same fate under the proposals of deBlasio and Carranza? The DOE needs to address the root cause of the problem which is educational inequality that persists in the elementary and middle schools in certain neighborhoods.
17
I remember that well and it is what makes me hesitate when I hear what the mayor and Carranza recommend.
I agree more needs to be spent on existing "regular" high schools. Not all successful people went to these "elite" schools. Look at people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Didn't she go to a regular Brooklyn high school?
Further, if I were a parent trying to get a kid into Stuyvesant or Bronx Science, I might check my expectations as to what that would guarantee the kid in terms of college. Not all of these kids are going to Ivy League schools, and I wouldn't be surprised if that wast due, at least in part, to the schools' getting savvy to all the test coaching etc.
5
Without knowing the actual racial makeup of the student population, it's hard to say whether the increase in some groups is due to their numbers in the general population or other factors.
One would assume that if the percentage of Asians in the population was high, their numbers in the specialty high schools would roughly correspond.
If there were less whites in the student population in 2017 compared to 1976, you would expect to see corresponding reductions to their numbers in the specialty high schools.
We also do not know what the racial makeup is of the applicants to these high schools.
It would not make sense to blame the difficulty of the test, or the use of prep courses, if certain groups are simply not applying to take the test.
You also have to consider how the high cost of college impacts one's feelings about high school. If you can't afford to go to college, your goal in high school is to graduate, not excel.
3
DeBlasio's plan will not make a significant difference. My son's STEM school accepts top test scorers from each township in the county, and some townships are predominantly Hispanic and Black. Guess how many students of color in the schools 80 student freshman class every year? One. The problem is that the students whose parents are busy working many jobs, or simply don't care, are short-changed by their teachers and administrators who do not bother to inform them about the test. The test is not difficult by the way, all you have to do is show up. But show you one can do, if one does not even know what's out there for him/her.
2
Yeah, so why is no one asking why there are "elite" public schools in the first place? Why again are we not making the investment to just make all of our public schools as good as the "elite" ones? More importantly, why aren't we even asking that question?
5
What makes the "elite schools" elite is the students.
It's not, why can't we make all the schools as good as the elite ones. It's why can't we make all the students as good as the ones in the elite schools.
And any time spent in any school, ever, tells you that's not possible.
12
Tell me that after you have toured Bronx Science and then toured Frederick Douglas. Everything is different. The teacher to student ratio, the classes offered, the entire pedagogy, the physical plant, the materials available, the number of support staff per student and so on and so on.
3
And what happened, pray tell, to all of the gifted Jewish students who once made up a great majority of the student body? And by the way, my father who graduated from Stuyvesant in 1939 and who was president and vice-president of several clubs and organizations of the school, came from poverty and his preparation for Stuyvesant was Public School 65 on Cypress Avenue the Bronx. He had no special preparation or tutoring. Nor did he have any other admission concessions. He took the admissions exam and did exceptionally well and was accepted on his performance not because he was a minority or a member of a disadvantaged socio-economic class. I also went to PS 65 and 64. My dad didn't make it in business until after World War II in 1961, sixteen years after the war ended.
Why are we demanding special exemptions and considerations for any students of any class? "Today, it is almost unheard-of for a current student to not have prepared for the test ". Why are we allowing this? Not everyone can afford tutoring and test preparation. Surely my dad and his fellow students never had that opportunity and that begs the question? Would they have truly done better? Are we unwittingly toppling gifted students who should have had a place but didn't have special preparation?
Let's give the 1930 admissions test to un-tutored students and see what happens. Doesn't tutoring and test preparation benefit some students and place others at a great disadvantage? How is it fair to students?
6
If high priced test preps are a problem. Why is 50% of Specialized Science High School students from low income background?
30
A tale of two cities. I live outside of New York City, but my husband went to Stuyvesant. We live in an affluent city. Go to the test prep/after school tutoring center, e.g. Kumon, and you'll see almost all East Asian and Indian students. Go to the batting cage and the ratio is flipped with few East Asians and Indians. Both activities are investments in time and resources. Sacrifices are made by parents and students in both circumstances. This is just one example, but surely there are many more. We should all have a fair chance to succeed regardless of race or socioeconomic background. If so, the choices are ours to make.
17
Why not predicate entrance on the top 5 -10% of students from every middle school in NYC? Meaning, if you are in the top x% of your middle school class you are an auto admit?
RE - The stunning increase in Asian attendees the past 30 years - Which countries are these Asian's parents from?
Sadly, a significant number of middle schools have fewer than the mayorally proposed "top percentage" of students who have achieved even grade level mastery on the state tests. So you would be throwing remedial students into a school designed for advanced students.
9
I have heard rumblings that this is how our next Olympic team might be chosen, the fastest sprinter, highest pole vaulter, best soccer team, etc. from each school. Those schools without a soccer team could put forward fast runners who might become great soccer players.
4
Once test preparation courses are widely used, they defeat the purpose of the test unless they are available to all. Middle schools can prepare students to succeed at school and in life, or they can prepare students to pass high school entrance exams.
In general, schools can prepare students for life or give them the credentials they need to succeed in making it to the next level. In competitive situations (and our country is based on competition), winning is what is important. The most-prized talent is figuring out what the rules are and how to use them to gain an advantage. Whether the rules make sense or have anything to do with the ostensible purpose of the institution are irrelevant considerations; considering them without a large tolerance for irony will be detrimental to success by sapping a single-minded focus on mastering the rules to win.
Schools compete for good students, and what they get are students who are good at projecting the school's image of good students. Some will project that image by being it, while others project it in other ways like being coached or cheating. For Stuyvesant, the image is simple -- doing well on the entrance exam.
In any competitive situation, the competition itself comes to rule the situation, and often damages the values the situation ostensibly promotes. So Stuyvesant promotes not only opportunity but also limits on opportunity, equality but also the advantage of mastering the rules for individual advantage.
I had two young people working for me who had the highest scores on the CPA exam in the state. They were good test takers, but, not very good at their jobs. My point is that test scores are not necessarily a good predictor of success. Obviously, it is an indicator, but, it is not the end all. In addition, my son was a Teach For America teacher in an inner city school. Lousy school, lousy parental participation, lousy resources. We used to talk about if you can do well at this school, you deserve a chance to move on to a better school. My takeaways from these things are that it would be better to take some percentage of the top kids from each school, at least in a couple of these schools, and see how it goes. In addition, improving all schools and increasing parental involvement are a must, tough to do I know. Finally, unless you get broad backing for schools like these, they will die. People will think, my kid cannot get in there, so, do not use my tax dollars for this.
3
If the purpose of the mayor’s plan is to reduce the number the number of “over-represented white and Asian students in New York city’s elite public schools, it is a violation of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It states that “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
14
The specialized high schools make the news for their lack of diversity. But they educate and lift out of poverty a lot of students. Most of the students are not the kids of rich white people. This completely ignores the public schools that fly under the radar, that are havens for rich white people. Those ones should be integrated better, and no state law needs to be involved for that.
3
A very misleading headline. In almost every case shown in the charts, the number of white students has dropped much more precipitously than hispanics. Rather strange to lump them in with the black population. Why wasn't this article titled to reflect the massive influx of Asian children show in the data?
Why are so many of us afraid to confront the readily observable truth? Intact families with an emphasis on education and hard work seem to thrive just fine in this so-called racist society, no matter what ethnic heritage you come from.
I suspect that white families with rates of fatherlessness similar to black families would score in the same range. It would be much more instructive to research into what other factors play into these low scoring kids. Rather than prescribing equal outcomes of participation by lowering standards for some groups, how about we work on elevating their performance by incentivizing studying and working harder?
40
What changed is immigration patterns, more than anything else. As Stuyvesant has become less black and hispanic, it has become largely Asian, not white.
Changes to US immigration policy in 1924 meant, for example, that Harlem went from being a neighborhood largely populated by recent arrivals from Russia and Poland to a neighborhood largely composed of recent arrivals from Virginia, South Carolina and Alabama. By comparison, in 1900 NYC was only about 1% African-American. Similarly, changes to the 1965 immigration law led to an influx of immigrants to NYC from all over the world. By 1989, this meant students who were in NYC after having been born in places like Kazakhstan, Pakistan, India, China, Belarus etc.
9
This article poses more questions than it does answers. If we are to believe that "poor areas" just need more access to test preparatory classes and the financial incentives inherent, then any initiative is doomed to failure. Time and time again, we are reminded about culture, IQ, and motivation. I fear a highly politicized, liberalized educational system is glossing over the holy triad; we are in fact as a society, dooming many to mediocrity and reducing our competitiveness abroad. Again, we have to get back to the basics. Cultivate a culture for learning, learn how to navigate the inherent qualities of individuals, and by all means, motivate them and put these children in a safe environment--both at school and at home.
12
Rather than replace the specialized high school entrance exams, the city should offer to pay for Prep classes for all students whose families qualify from a low-income standpoint and where the student has demonstrated reasonable academic competence (GPA B or better). That would help level the playing field, assuming the access to Prep courses are a key factor in obtaining entry into the specialized high schools.
4
NYC officials probably thought of adding test prep to the curriculum of its feeder schools, but rejected the idea because they know it would make little or no difference. Instead, they are gambling that federal judge will pretend that accepting a percentage of students from all schools isn'r a substitute for racial quotas.
6
Let x = the number of students citywide who qualify for admission to an advanced science school
Let y = the number of available seats in advanced science schools
If x > y, provide more seats.
Why is this so difficult?
Why is ethnicity even an issue?
And what is this?
"And in a school system that remains severely racially segregated, many black and Hispanic students have been left in struggling middle schools that sometimes do not even notify them that the elite schools exist."
Mayor Bill: you want to be President? How about you take care of your own constituents?
6
Check out a documentary film called Thunder Soul. It doesn't explain what's happened since, but it does open a window into the lives of post civil rights era kids and how important education was to their parents and why. The events happened in Houston, but it's very representative of the nation at the time. It's a great, great film. 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Jamie Foxx was one of the executive producers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-bSBqgJbTQ
This is again, the NYT and the Chancellor's office are overly concerned with elite institutions. All communities, including African-American and Latinx, would be better served by improving all schools. Reading at grade level, comprehensive and the ability to compute and analyze should be the right of all students in the NY school districts.
16
A standardized aptitude test designed to gauge the academic placement of different students should not involve test preparation. That’s a bit like putting the cart before the horse.
As much as ‘tracking’ may be a dirty word in educational circles, it’s the only viable method to optimize efficacy in regards to which students might excel in atypical teaching environments.
We can argue over whether children should be treated differently until the end of time, and there will never be an answer which is satisfying to those who seek “equality.” If all children were the same, then society would have collapsed in on itself much sooner than is presently occurring.
3
Thanks for the interesting article.
One nit-picking comments is that the demographic charts might be more informative if they were based on the total number of school -aged children of the various ethnic groups (rather than the percentage attending NYC public schools), to take account of the disproportionate demographics attending private schools.
My guess is that many wealthy families focus on specialized high school prep tests, and then resort to expensive private high schools when they don't make the cut.
2
I didn't see the explanation for the shift, but it must be that over time the test score cutoff for admission has been steadily increasing and the raising of the bar has been driven by the scores of the Asian applicants?
1
The graphs show declines in black and white enrollment in these magnet schools, with very high growth in Asian representation, and by percentage, Hispanic enrollment staying relatively even. So the title is misleading, although I do understand the comparison to demographic changes in the city.
There are plenty of studies now corrleating IQ scores, SAt scores, college drop out rates by major, and career success based on all three.
My question as an outsider would be who are these schools supposed to serve and what is their admission process goals?
if it is simply a matter of test scores, Asians routinely come out on top of all other demographics.
In 50 years mixed race will be the largest demographic by the way.
5
I went to Stuyvesant in the late 1960s. The article neglects to point out how heavily Jewish the white population was, another sensitive cleavage. In 1963, I moved from an East New York shtetl to overwhelmingly Irish / Italian Staten Island. I was shocked by the hostility to school among my new Catholic friends. Going to Stuyvesant felt like going home to a culture of kids who loved learning. On our second day our homeroom had to elect President, Vice-President, and Treasurer. Our class elected the only non-Jewish kids – an African-American, a Puerto Rican, and me. I remember thinking that this must say something profound about Jewish culture. I don’t have the solution, but I do see that Asian parents (my sister-in-law is Chinese), like Jewish parents, are overall more focused on education. The schools MUST be better integrated, for a thousand reasons. My own kids are African-American in a white district and I see the damage to all. But the school system must intentionally instill a culture of education from the earliest ages – high school is too late – and especially for the children of families for whom, for whatever reason, it was denied them. To not see the historical reasons why many African-American families were denied a culture of education is blindness. Reparations for slavery should correct this gravest ongoing crime: Instead of spending less - as we do now – we should massively over-invest in the early education (from pre-school) of African-American children.
3
1963 was before the Verrazano Bridge was completed! Overwhelmingly Irish/ Italian Catholic at the time?! 1963, East New York was a shtetl! ?!
2
Looking at the graphs and stats, the question that interests me, is what happened to the Black and Hispanic specialized HS grads of yore? For example, according to one graph, Brooklyn Tech had 50% Black and Hispanic enrollment in 1976. Where did they go afterwards? How is it that many families currently living in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods don't even know about the entrance exam? If nothing else, it seems that more Black and Hispanic students in specialized schools, while likely a boon for the individuals admitted, did little to impact those minority groups overall, at least with respect to creating a desire to follow the trails they had blazed.
2
Congrats to the hard working Asian kids who are outcompeting these other groups. This is the new normal -- the competition is only going to increase for the top spots (globalization and automation) and you have to put in the work to get where you want to go. NYC should create more high caliber schools instead of locking people out.
22
They got rid of tracking in the regular middle schools. That's what did it.
10
This story's is a little better in regard to AAPIs, but like most articles fails to humanize them. A few sentences on how poor and foreign the community has become. To me the story is how much the demography of the city has change and how little advocacy there is for Asian Americans. I am personally sick and tired of Asian Americans of being privileged just because certain sectors perform in academia and in high incomes. Unfortunately white washing AAPIs because their achievement defies logic in poor NYC schools where other students are not faring as well does not work. These gift students prove the schools are failing when they have to spend years of Saturdays to prepare for an entrance exam. The scores don't lie and there is a direct correlation to that and long term success at the HS level. That is something the city kept out of it's report. The school would be better off giving funding to these prep services than using racial populism to divide the parents and children of this city.
1
Nic Kristof in a piece published in this paper a couple days ago:
"The 10 percent most disadvantaged Shanghai 15-year-olds score better in math than the 10 percent most privileged 15-year-olds in America."
The enrollment issues highlighted in this story is a result of 1) the educational desert that is our middle school system and 2) the rise of Asian immigrants in New York.
I am outraged at the first point. Our city is strengthened by the second.
18
This is the first comment to mention the failure of our public school system - especially our middle schools -- to prepare minority students for success in high school.
2
“The situation we’re talking about now is just magnified” from what it was when Mr Noisette entered the specialized high school over 40 years ago. Which means it’s much worse? I can’t for the life of me understand why people continue to focus on the same failed solutions to lack of racial diversity in education. It always the same things: rundown schools, racist classmates, teachers, tests, inferior books and materials, long commutes and on and on. Could it be the students who are unmotivated and unprepared for whatever reason, be it parental neglect, administrative indifference or just plain racism. There are minority students who have done very well in the higher level schools, this article cites many of them...what did they do, how did they prepare, how were their lives different? They obviously have overcome. To create an artificial system that elevates unprepared students to a level where they will likely fail will damage those students with false confidence and inflated egos. Stop tinkering with societal order, those minority students will rise up on their own with time, and when they do their achievements will be genuine not contrived.
9
We can change the test or admission criteria, but what if Asian students keep aceing the new standard too? Would it be better to convince Asians not to be so successful?
Also, why are poor Asians able to overachieve on these tests but other poor groups fail?
17
Imagine if say black American families emigrated to say China, Japan, Vietnam, etc. Then their kids with great effort and difficulty learned enough Chinese, Japanese, etc to compete with native born Asian citizens and end up beating them in selective high school exams.
Now let's imagine that the Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese politicians would feel compelled to tinker with the tests because black American immigrant students were doing too well on them.
That is exactly what DeBlasio et al want to do.
We need to celebrate the incredible success and pulling yourself from the bootstraps that Asian immigrants and their kids have achieved. They are beating native born New Yorkers at their own game. More power to them.
28
The white student fraction fell from 54% in 1980 to 24% in 2017- more than a factor half. Over the same time, the Asian fraction increased more than fourfold
The most forward explanation of the fall of Black and Hispanic student is that they could compete easier with white students than with Asians.
Those Asian students raised the bar for all .
America is the land of opportunity - nothing wrong with it.
11
Thank you for posting that 1982 yearbook page. It is HILARIOUS.
2
This article leaves out key details in why there is a demographics shift. And its fairly obvious; being that the motivation by families to have their children be excellent students and scholars is much higher in Asian populations. That's the reason for lack of test centers in the Bronx. This article only answers what's going on ..not why. Probably out of political correctness. And it's a shame.
It's not racism. It's meritocracy in work. Ethnic minorities such as Italians and Jews had the same motivations 70-100 years ago. Many Asians (including Indians) have the same ethos today. Quotas wont stop it either.
14
So what's the answer to the question posed in the title? The article gestures toward G&T programs and test prep, but provides no analysis to back those suggestions up. Also, is there a differential rate at which "Whites" and "Asians" participate in G&T and test prep that would explain the 2.5 times greater representation of Asians (16% of school population) as opposed to Whites (15%)?
2
I believe the title of the article should read: "How New Yorks' Elite Public Schools lost their Black, Hispanic, and White students. As a former Stuy grad, and parent of Bi-Racial children, I have no issue with the ethnic composition of the school. It is the best of the best. No compromise. No buying your way in. Work your butt off and make it happen. I am preparing my 6 and 9 year old children for it already. If you want to make a change, offer the top 2 students in every middle school and option to attend.
7
test prep and all the other advantages that middle and upper middle class kids enjoy is a way of buying their way in, don't kid yourself.
The solution is easy. Offer free test prep to all students in middle school. That includes nights and summers. Publicize the existence of the schools to all kids. And make sure poor kids have food to eat not just during school hours but all the time, including during test prep.
4
My contact with school age children is very limited, but from that possibly unrepresentative sample, I believe that for many children raised by financially limited parents, there is implicit training that day to day survival is more valuable than honorifics and delayed earning potential.
The parents know that a dollar today pays the bills and a dollar tomorrow is too late. This attitude is absorbed by osmosis, and the children are directed to goals of current status and social value, rather than delayed gratification.
Schools can only milk human potential if they can create an alternate environment where academic achievement has a real current value. Family life used to allow such valuation, but there is less and less such buffering in our current society. So some of the differences reported would seem to be a reflection of our current society and not of the school system.
3
Seems pretty clear from the charts why certain enrollment is declining. It's called competition, and a certain group is eating the other groups' lunches.
15
Important context to consider.
1. There has been a big change in private school (day and boarding) admissions. Most private NYC schools and East coast boarding schools are trying to diversify their student body - and offer extensive financial aid.
So instead of seeking admission to Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science or any of the other test schools, some students are going to private school.
2. There are now other good and popular public schools, such as Eleanor Roosevelt or Millennium, which have screened "portfolio" admission - not a test.
5
I am a new immigrant (my husband is from NYC). I am saddened by the fight over the few specialized high schools when majority of the schools are in a dismayed state. I feel bad for the minority students here as technology will play a big role in shaping the workforce. How will they find employment in the future with the current education they are getting ? As an outsider, the behavior of the school Chancellor is appalling. Instead of spending more time and energy to lift up the standards of public school kids, sending educators to Europe and Asia to study what is in their curriculum or even working with Big Tech companies to create interest among the school kids. He is talking about white supremacy ........ Let's spend our energy to create more stem focused schools that caters to children of different needs so we will have a large base of educated workforce.
10
You may not understand this, but white supremacy is a negative factor that impacts both the qualities of schools and all other institutions that impact the lives of kids of color. I for one and very happy with the chancellor's efforts to diversify, there are no easy answers and you cannot work on this without angering some people.
1
This is an interesting and valuable piece.
However, the key fact -- that black and Hispanic enrollments used to be ok but have declined precipitously -- still seems in search of an explanation.
Did test prep really make the difference?
One would guess there are deeper reasons. When different groups perform differently over time on merit tests, perhaps that has something to do with the quality of the lower/middle school schools? And differences in family structures and culture and support for the intensive individual effort needed for successful test scores?
Yes, these are difficult issues to talk about. They challenge current views of what is politically correct.
But I would guess most people reading this article have a clear sense of why Asian immigrant children do better on these tests than other groups.
7
Shouldn't there be some mention of the drop in the number of white students at the elite schools, in addition to the declines for blacks and Hispanics? The actual numbers are hard to extract, but for Stuyvesant there appears there was a larger percentage drop in the number of white students than for blacks and Hispanics! [70% to 15% vs 14% to 4%]. And NO MENTION is made of Charter schools which certainly draw many of the top black and Hispanic students away from traditional public schools.
12
Getting into Stuy requires a lot of hard work. I barely made it in. Kids with parents who help them work hard will have an advantage over kids who don't. My father made me write a one page essay each week when I was young and regularly gave me books and had several newspapers in the house each day. I scored exactly the cut off on my second try (you could apply in 9th grade when I was a boy).
4
I graduated from a public junior high school in Flatbush Brooklyn that at the time wasn’t the greatest, with acceptances to Brooklyn Tech and boarding schools in New England through a program similar to Prep for Prep. My family couldn’t afford prep courses for the SHSAT or the SSAT (required for private schools), but I was able to prepare for both exams through the support of a math teacher who came early and stayed afterschool to ensure promising students performed well on the exams. There were about two dozen mostly Black and Hispanic students between 1993-1996 who studied for those exams - many of them, like me, ultimately opted for a boarding or independent school instead of the SHS. My decision was the right one, as I was given the exposure to a new environment, rigorous curriculum beyond math and science, engaged teachers, smaller classes and connections that continue to impact my life, rather than being just a body in a crowded Brooklyn Tech. I never got the opportunity to thank my math teacher, but I would encourage teachers and SHS alumni to get involved by volunteering with current students to prepare them for the exams. I would encourage parents/ students to seek opportunities beyond the SHSs - while Stuyvesant is excellent, there are programs that offer access to schools that provide better opportunities for students of color by looking beyond a single test score.
5
Over the past few years, I've chimed in on this issue, but one thing I never saw, until recently, was the percentage, by ethnicity, of students who TOOK the exam. As a proud alumnus of Stuyvesant, one of the best things about my time there was the diversity across socio-economic and racial lines. Rich, poor, Christian, Jew, Black, Asian; I became friends with kinds of people I had never interacted with before. So, while I believe a single exam is as good a test for a meritocracy, I wanted to see how kids fared on the exam. The results were horrifying! For 2016, the most current year I found, 22% of all SHSAT test takers were African-American and 22.5% were Hispanic. Their success-rate compared to other ethnicities was abysmal. The solution is NOT a simple one and it may very well involve looking at early reading programs in the communities as well other issues that differentiate the school experience of Asian and African American students. Changing a meritocracy because the "wrong" minority is impacted is wrong. Raise the water, don't lower the boats!
18
The DOE should focus more on ensuring that ALL middle schools are actively identifying and recruiting students who have the drive and academic potential to succeed at the specialized high schools. A concerted effort is especially needed in poor, predominantly Black and Hispanic middle schools. That said, there are some excellent high schools that combine diversity with academic achievement, but fly under the radar because they are not "specialized high schools." The DOE needs to focus on replicating the formulas for success used in those schools.
1
The article tells us that both the Black kids and the Asian kids live in poor families. Yet, more Asian kids are winning places in the elite schools. What's going on here? The article does not closely examine cultural differences that each group of kids experience in their families and milieus that could explain the differences.
41
No single standardized test can measure brainpower or academic potential. Elite ivy league schools realize this, and their admissions process have *NEVER* been a simple SAT cutoff. For the specialized schools to rely on a single test is moronic and blindingly counterintuitive.
Remove the test. Find a new system that rewards thinking skills and potential over test-taking ability (a valuable skill, to be sure, but not a crucial one for accelerated learning). For the life of me I can't understand why critics choose to cling to this test that creates a de facto racist outcome, instead of devote real resources and energy into finding an admissions system that works, and that contributes to the school system servicing its student population equitably.
3
Dear Cal,
Once a different system of determining students' potential is found, then the test should be dropped in favor of that new system. Since there is no such system developed yet, and nobody seems to have any idea what such a system would be like, we have to stick with the imperfect test that does often predict success fairly well.
9
Dan,
It's simply not true that 'nobody' knows what that system might be. In fact, my post starts off with the example of the best universities in the country creating such systems through years of work. Also, Texas has a college admissions process that rewards a top perecentage of the students in high schools across the board with admission to their top public universities. Miami gifted programs do not rely on a standardized test to fill its classes. Proven and tested ideas abound.
I don't think any serious educator believes that a single high stakes test is the answer to *any* problem related to ensuring parity in academic outcomes and resource distribution. This SHSAT worship is as simpleminded and destructive as anti-vax conspiracies.
1
I went to an inner city high school and graduated fifth in a class of approx 350. I couldn't speak any foreign language, had minimal understanding of geometry and virtually no science. I could read at grade level which put me far above the average student. (I also had no kids in high school).
I would have been woefully unprepared for a highly competitive educational environment.
12
Alumnus
It's silly to say there is bias in the test when a group that is non white and non affluent manages to take over the exams and succeed. I don't think churches, or the schools themselves, (guidance counselors), push black students to take these tests. I have never seen a public notice about these tests, not even on the subway PSA ads. The many, many, NYT articles NEVER tell how many even took the test, maybe many black students did not take the test?
I also see these articles emphasizing/pushing another pay-by-subscription industry created to do what SCHOOL is supposed to do: prepare children/students to pass a test they take in school.
8
The analysis from this article, as well as several other reports would seem to indicate that the weakest link in NY City's educational system are the middle schools. "many black and Hispanic students have been left in struggling middle schools that sometimes do not even notify them that the elite schools exist." That is a damning sentence, and the outcomes and results for those schools should be scrutinized so that efforts can be directed more strategically and effectively. Each middle school should have an exam prep program for its highest achieving students. The guidance counselors at those schools should be steering those students to the program. No child can achieve without goals and encouragement and instruction and guidance. Low income parents may not be aware of these programs however the middle schools are the terrain where future students are developing. Also it is impossible today to be a competitive exam-taker for those schools without extensive exam prep. That is an expensive proposition, again putting low income parents at a disadvantage. Getting a unique academic opportunity for a specialized high school slot has become an extreme sport, and Black and Hispanic contenders are out of the loop during the years when they should be prepping. How is that being addressed ? What resources are there ? What is the outreach to parents of promising students ?
8
So taking a test prep at Kaplan is the sole difference for acceptance? And the inference is that poor Asian families somehow come up with the money when poor black and Hispanic families cannot? If it really makes such a difference, then have the schools offer Kaplan-style test prep for free.
12
The title of this article should be “How New York’s Elite Public Schools Lost Their Black, Hispanic, and White Students.” And the straightforward answer, in one sentence, is that New York City welcomed an influx of smart, hard-working Asian immigrants who studied hard, aced the entrance test, and proved that race and economic background can be overcome.
63
My son attends one of the specialized high schools in NYC. He's mixed white and Asian and has gone to NYC public schools most of his life.
Here are some of the problems with our school system from my point of view:
1. There is a huge gap between good elementary and middle schools and bad ones in the city. Kids need a good start. By the time they get to high school they are either ready for a rigorous academic curriculum or they are not. Every kid in the city should have access to a great school.
2. Parents have to struggle to navigate a highly competitive system to get our kids into those good middle schools. All this energy could be focused on making the entire system better, but we're basically competing against each other for rare spots in great schools. That's the root of the problem, there are too few good schools in lower grades.
3. Parents need to be heavily involved in their children's education for the kids to succeed. Financial AND cultural pressures are at play here. How do we begin to have that conversation, and how can we help communities that are struggling?
In short, our schools need to be much, much better in most communities starting at pre-k. It's a long journey to high school, and kids need support and help every step of the way.
16
Just couldn't wait to see who would be blamed for this one.
12
This really shows the impact of test prep business and culture. A compromise could be reached where some percentage of the class is filled with top test scores, maybe 20 or 25%, and rest is filled with students from every middle school as proposed, provided they have a minimum score on the test, either the mean or some amount above. This would keep the test and apply it more fairly. Top scorers would still get a seat no matter what. Do very poorly, lose your seat. Also, provide test prep booklets to every school for free! Kids can use these and the internet to prepare themselves if they simply know that they should do so.
2
Stephanie,
I like your hybrid approach. However, it will not solve the low percentage of blacks or hispanics in the elite schools. Asians are quite resourceful. To get into the elite schools, many Asian families will just move so that their children can attend the lesser middle schools to improve the chances of their children being admitted to the elite high schools. But there will be an unintended benefit ..... middle schools which are more diverse.
6
One of my neighbors is a Math teacher at Stuyvesant HS and he has a lot to say about why admissions are so low for minority students. He complains that the Bloomberg administration made the radical decision to rely on test scores without ever speaking with the actual teachers and he believes this is the number one reason why minority students are being left out.
There is always this sense that somehow well "they" just need extra help. That we "make" concessions and neither is true. It perpetrates racism at its very core.
I always want to apologize when I complain about Bloomberg because he can be a very generous decent person who was such a relief after the unbridled bullying of Rudy BUT and the big but is he only had yes people around him. He was out of touch about the many cultural drives of the city and what made NYC so special. He stayed too long and a number of decisions have bad results.
Many admission fairer isn't about punishing the students whose families can afford tutors and test prep - it is about giving all kids a chance and our policies need to be fairer across the board.
7
As a teacher, I second your neighbor's complaints. I met Bloomberg in an academic setting. He seemingly had no way to process being around educators or students of color. He also complained about having to go to parades and meet people. What really struck me, as someone who went to a posh school surrounded by lots of rich people, is that he had the rich person thing of "you don't really exist unless you can do something for me" which is really not a great qualification for public service.
5
The specialized school test predates Mayor Bloomberg.
Enrollment of black students at these schools was dropping before Bloomberg ran for Mayor.
This is not a consequence of Bloomberg's decisions, as you implied
18
True as there is also what some of us call the "All Children Left Behind" Act. And Bloomberg and Levy made many decisions to close schools, cater to charters, and hammer standardized testing, in grade school, among other decisions. Arne Duncan bought their crap hook line and sinker too.
1
The crux of the matter is this sentence right here, "Ms. Lennon found out in March that only seven black students had scored high enough on the specialized school entrance exam to receive an offer to attend Stuyvesant."
By all means let's try to increase the number of black students who are getting into Stuyvesant... by scoring highly enough to do so. Thee current trend towards tokenism serves all of our children of every race poorly. Let's increase mentorship programs to make up for absentee parenting. Let's increase the number of guidance counselors at middle schools to help them steer black and Latinx children through the complicated high school application process. Let's make test prep free for all. Let's improve all of our middle schools.
But let's not lower the bar or arbitrarily deny high achieving children because those with their skin color are deemed to be "overrepresented." Modern "progressives" betray MLK's vision of a world where we're judged by our character not our skin color, sexuality or self chosen gender identity.
32
How many bright and capable students get left behind as early as K - 6? We have to give every child the opportunity to develop well. We need volunteer tutors, high school and college kids to help, everyone in the community involved in helping at the elementary schools.
It costs money but if we volunteer, it costs only time.
1
I wish the writers explored more in-depth how poor Asian and Asian-American kids have access to test prep and not poor Black and Hispanic kids. Because if all these minority groups struggle financially, then what is it about Asian and Asian-American experience that impacts their access to test preps. Broadly speaking, changing the yardstick that Asian and Asian-Americans had nothing to do with setting up, does not get to the crux of the problem. The City has left behind the vast majority of Black and Hispanic students by stripping away resources and classes that could help elevate larger numbers. Instead of focusing effort on changing the admissions criteria to these 8 schools, how about tackling the other hundreds of schools overall. Finally, the elementary school my son will attend in the fall is nearly 80% White. I don't see the urgency around trying to change the admissions to that school. Which makes me wonder when it's 80% White, that's ok, but God forbid it's 80% Asian.
29
The Times recently ran a piece about a survey of African-Americans that measured their trust of various people and institutions. Schools & school districts were not included in the survey, but I suspect they would have been rated just as low as most other "perceived to be white" institutions.
Here in St. Louis, my former local school district is about 80% black. It recently made some huge changes to try and improve learning opportunities and test scores. It converted one high school (where previous parent-teacher conferences generally drew 10-20 parents for 700 students!) into a magnet academy for arts and science. It also opened dedicated schools just for sixth graders and a special school for gifted students. The response from the community? OUTRAGE.
Some black parents claimed this was a plan to purposely HURT their children. Others suggested it was a devious scheme to "save the good schools" for the white kids, spearheaded by the 4 (of 7) school board members who are white.... even though the black superintendent supported the plan.
Anger, distrust, cries of racism, school board meetings that devolved into near chaos....all because the district tried to do better for its mostly black student body, using approaches that are widely used and are often successful. I don't know. Perhaps the black community needs to look within and examine its own views and biases with regard to education? Maybe the "system" is not the problem?
49
Much of the reporting here is familiar, but the most important statistic is the vast increase in the Asian American population in NYC over the past 30 years. Many of these immigrants come from countries (China, India, Bangladesh) where high-stakes testing for top schools is normal. They also have the lowest percentage of single-parent families in the city. Combine a historical focus on academic achievement and intact, often multigenerational families laser-focused on their children's success (read NYT article on how South Asians came to dominate the national spelling bee) and you have the story not of "white privilege" but of a rising immigrant group leaving poor, struggling minorities behind.
61
Could this be about which groups are downwardly mobile and which ones are upwardly mobile in the US in the last 30-40 years? Has our economy hurt the social standing of blacks and latinos? I grew up in NYC in the 80s and 90s and I now see the erosion of African American communities happening in my current city of SF. We have a widening income gap. And with wealthier families raising the stakes for achievement. I and my 3 siblings got into Stuy as working class, immigrants without test prep and zero enrichment. As a parent now, it feels like I couldn't get away with that if I want my kids to get ahead.
2
My father was an Intermediate School Guidance Counselor in Washington Heights from the early 70's through the 90's. A primary function of his job was to place as many of his students in specialized and elite high schools as possible. He developed relationships with the parents of the students that he was helping to ensure that everyone was on the same page regarding the tests and the application process. On days off from my own school, I would sometimes accompany him on his rounds travelling to New York City High Schools, watching him solidify relationships with the school staff. He believed that the benefits of a Stuyvesant or Bronx Science admission along with LaGuardia would benefit the students, their families, the Principal, the Intermediate School and the community. I know he was not alone in prioritizing high school admissions in that era.
3
Cultures, communities, and families that emphasize particular areas of life tend to experience disproportionate success in those areas compared to those who don't. To take a few examples, African-Americans experience disproportionate success in basketball and music, Indian-Americans in spelling, Caucasians and Latin Americans in baseball, and Chinese-Americans in math and science.
Success results in positive role models, which leads to additional emphasis and further success in those areas within various communities. We can pretend that all demographic groups and communities value all aspects of life equally, but that's not the case. On the other hand, it's easy to go down the road that's it's all about motivation and family/community support and it's your own fault if you don't succeed. But another reality is that money makes a difference -- it buys you good teachers, good coaches, and good facilities/equipment. Ask any affluent family why they live where they live, and why their kids attend the schools they do.
4
If $1,000 test prep programs really are making the difference, the answer is obvious: free test prep for those who don't have that kind of money. It's not as if smart kids are suddenly scarce in the South Bronx.
3
There have been articles written that the free prep classes offered in low-income neighborhoods are frequently undersubscribed. The solution needs to start from grades 1 on to emphasize the importance of taking advantage of the programs offered to the students and their parents.
11
1) I am of Puerto-Rican descent and came from a poor inner-city middle school. I took the test in the mid-90s, without preparation, and was accepted to Brooklyn Science. I decided to go to a local high school instead. I regret that decision in that I am sure I passed up a more rigorous education. Sadly, I did not know better and had no adults in my life that were savvy about how important high schools and colleges are in determining one's life outcomes.
2) It's strange that despite this article being about 1) the large role that test prep plays in enrollment numbers, 2) the lamentation of today's situation by black and hispanic alumni, and 3) the historic trend of enrollment numbers; a large number of comments are about attacking some form of what they seem to describe as "High School Affirmative Action." Are Asians seen as a racial buffer between whites and blacks?
5
The article is illuminating, in part, for what it betrays about how little NYT journalist (and frankly their peers) know about charters or testing. Charters, overall, perform no better than ordinary public schools, but they are gimmick-ridenm and always sound good to people who think they know about education. Testing is meant to sample areas of knowledge that represent achievement and predict future performance. Those qualities have been eroded by teach to test approaches, cram schools, etc. The national tests used in No Child Left Behind were hasty creations by people who should known better about what they were being asked to do (a couple major developers are past acquaintances of mine). Asian education systems long have emphasized testing and cram schools are a common feature not only in China but also places like Thailand---of course Asian parents will be prepared to do well in this kind of system. Regardless of social background, this isn't encouraging achievement, it's perpetuating class structures, advantaging people who have a narrow set of skills and having test-prepared kids crowd out those who are ambitious and curious. Teaching to tests has been around for decades--my older cousins had the Regents exam held over their heads in the 50s and they didn't even live in NY State! Getting rid of tests or rethinking them so they are not gamed by cramming curricula (harder than it sounds!) is really the only alternative and not just for elite schools but for everyone.
2
Test-prepared kids can be just as ambitious and curious, and have just as wide a range of skills. It's just that they've also prepared for the test!
7
Besides 7x increase in the NYC Asian population and the cultural differences noted by the article and commenters, the increase in single parent households in the African American community over the same period must be a contributing factor. Whatever your aspirations for your child, it must be nearly impossible to keep them on an academic path if you're a single parent and need to work 2 jobs to get by in NYC.
Studies have shown that, regardless of race, children that are read to, exposed to music & art, where homework is reviewed and supervised do fare better in schools. The solution to increasing minority participation needs to be holistic - adjusting the test or providing a more subjective paths to entry is only part of the answer.
11
The article seems to imply that poor Asian students somehow have more access to test prep courses than poor black students. But it says nothing about why would that be true. It also mentions that there are fewer "advanced academic classes" for black students, but studiously says nothing about whether or not the number has dropped for Asians as well.
This article is actual better than most on the subject. But you still seem determine to imply that some unfair advantage exists for Asian students without spelling out clearly what exactly it might be.
88
This is a great point:
"The article seems to imply that poor Asian students somehow have more access to test prep courses than poor black students. But it says nothing about why would that be true."
I don't know if I have seen anyone else raise this question.
I've had 2 of my 3 kids go through these schools and my view is:
The admissions process may not be perfect, but its objective.
If you change the admissions process it will be a mess and still imperfect.
Have we not learned this enough from the current college admission scandal and the general fraud that that admissions process is?
10
I'm a Stuy grad, and this has been a major topic of debate on our alumni group on FB. Everybody recognizes that it's a problem. Nobody is claiming that there aren't enough minorities in the specialized schools, because that would contradict the facts, the majority are a minority, Asian. But everyone acknowledges that there are far fewer Black and Latino kids in these schools, and that this needs to be fixed.
Very few people are in support of de Blasio's plan. We mostly realize that bringing the top students from a woefully inadequate middle school will leave them unprepared for the rigors of the specialized schools. Either they would have to take a lot of remedial classes, and feel segregated and hate it, or the schools would have to drop their standards.
Some claim that the cultures these kids are coming from don't value education, and that may have some truth to it, but it doesn't matter. The overwhelming problem is that the schools these kids go to are not preparing them for success. The supplies are nonexistent, the teachers underpaid and mostly apathetic, and the schools in poor neighborhoods function more as detention centers than as institutions of learning.
De Blasio's plan would artificially force more Black and Latino kids into the specialized schools, and force Asians out, but in doing so it would worsen the quality of those schools, making everything worse for everyone. The repair needed is the earlier schools need to be improved drastically.
65
I'm so disappointed in alumnae of these specialized schools, many of them people of color, who insist that admitting more African American and Latino students would be an insurmountable catastrophe. The same tired, prejudiced, arguments were put forward when elite colleges went co-ed, and when students of color were admitted to elite universities. Get over yourselves. Put the work in. All of that brainpower and you can't see that the brainpower is there in these communities of color, it's simply untapped? If the specialized schools need to run programs and offer ameliorative resources to new pools of highly talented students, then do it! The alternative is to do nothing and see this ugly classist and racist system perpetuate and magnify itself into the future.
Dear Cal,
I said nothing about admitting these students leading to catastrophe. There are plenty of intelligent students in poorer communities, but they're just not getting enough education to be able to deal with the level of academics at specialized schools. Putting them into the schools without adequate preparation would result in the schools dropping their standards, or the students flunking out. The way to get more Black and Latino students into the specialized schools is to improve the middle schools they're attending, then they'll do well on the SHSAT and be prepared to deal with the level of education at specialized schools.
8
Dear Cal,
You're creating a straw man argument here, I didn't insist that admitting more people of color would be a catastrophe in the slightest. I said that admitting students who had not had adequate education would require that the specialized schools' standards would be lowered, or the students would have to put in a lot of time in remedial courses getting up to speed. These are rational and obvious conclusions. The way to reduce the impact of the current classist and racist system is to improve earlier education across the board, when students have excellent earlier education they will pass the SHSAT with ease.
6
Nothing will work.
If they get rid of the test and admit top students from all schools, then the students who were only at the top relative to underperforming middle schools will not succeed in the elite high schools, and the arbitrary admission standards combined with poor outcomes will result in these schools losing their elite status in the eyes of most parents.
If they try to provide free test prep to students who can't afford it, they will find that a disproportionate number of Asians from poor families will also benefit from the program and the racial statistics won't change much.
If they try to use other standards for admission, such as an essay or extra-curricular activities, they will find that students with strong essays and participation in extracurricular activities tend to be high achievers who would pass the exam anyway, and will still be disproportionately Asian.
4
it looks like that structure of current test is beneficial for Asian students (for any reason). It does not mean that they are better prepared for the school. I think it would be wise to create few additional streams for admission , which are not based exclusively on standardized test scores but additionally account for creativity, social adaptability, ect.
As a Canadian, you are perhaps unaware of the many, many selective and quality NYC public high schools that have the additional streams for admission you're talking about. The test-only selective schools constitute 8 out of more than 700 high school programs. Understandable, as the other selective schools are largely excluded from press coverage of this issue as they fail to further the desired narrative.
18
The specialized schools' enrollment is often compared to black and Hispanic public school enrollment. This is misleading because many white and Asian parents flee the system for private and parochial schools due to significant quality issues in the earlier grades (even though many families can scarcely afford tuition even with financial aid).
Black and Hispanic kids comprise about 53% of total students (public and private), with whites being 32% and Asians 14%. Racial picture at specialized schools is still lopsided, but not as extreme as the article presents.
2
Test Preparation Courses are a way-of-life. How many Medical Doctors or Lawyers pass their Professional Exams w/o such courses? I took Review Courses for both the NYS Bar Exam and the Patent Bar (USPTO) Bar Exam. Review Courses did not exist when I was in Ninth Grade in 1965. Of course the question Now is how to Pay for Courses for ALL. Perhaps NYC and Mayor DeBlasio should divert $$$ devoted to making NYC a Sanctuary City.
10
When I was having trouble with the care my late mother received from interns/residents at at Manhattan's "number one" hospital, at one point I said to myself: "hmm, maybe they got into those elite medical schools and elite residencies through coaching and aren't so smart after all." You see so many stupid doctors, lawyers, etc. around, you can't help but wonder what their REAL credentials would be if they hadn't been coached through life.
The answer is really really simple. There was an influx of students from a culture that put academic success above all. These students have parents who, though every bit as poor and with even less personal resources ( because many don’t even speak fluent English) than others, are willing to sacrifice everything for their children to get into these schools.
It is important to note that several years ago the schools offered free weekend test prep. Who went? The poor Asian kids. Not, in proportion to their demographics, Black or Hispanic students.
The fact is that prior to test prep naturally gifted Black and Hispanic,students could get in to these schools. They weren’t held back because of cultural adaptations that favored others over them.
96
Test prep is a waste of time and should be discouraged. Test prep does not impart permanent improvement in any skill. It temporarily improves the test score. So now because of this bad idea everyone has to do test prep to level out the playing field. What a waste. It's like when you go to a concert and someone stands up to see better. So you can't see so you have to stand up whether you want to or not. Then people stand on their chairs so now everyone has to stand on their chairs. Dumb. Tests should be administered on random dates at school like a lottery. "Announcement, the following students will report to the test center for their entrance exam."
Specialized school enrollment is often compared to black and Hispanic public school enrollment. This is misleading because many white and Asian parents flee the public system for private and parochial schools due to significant quality issues in the early grades (even though many families can scarcely afford tuition even with financial aid). They gladly reenter the public system when presented admissions to great specialized schools.
Black and Hispanic kids comprise about 53% of total students (public and private), with whites being 32% and Asians 14%. The racial picture is still lopsided -- including white enrollment underindexing for student population -- but not as extreme as the article presents.
3
Don't we have to know how many Hispanic and African-American kids took the test? If the same number are taking it, but far fewer are passing it to qualify for the schools that's a different problem than if far few are even taking the test in the first place.
38
Have experts considered how the Prep for Prep Program, founded in 1978 might have impacted the enrollment of high achieving minority students in NYC’s elite public schools?
Might Prep for Prep be “diverting” talented minority students to independent high schools to the detriment of the public schools?
5
Prep for Prep is only one of several siphons that have been diverting high achieving black students in recent years. Arguably charters (many of which don't like losing their star students back to the DOE system and thus don't encourage the SHSAT) are a bigger one. There are also Oliver Scholars, and school-specific affirmative action and scholarship programs at various private schools. Many of my professional-class black and Hispanic colleagues seemed surprised that we were not actively pursuing private school for our son as our primary objective.
9
Yes, the very article you're commenting on discusses the impact of Prep for Prep. You can read about it in the paragraph that starts with "Prep for Prep"....
2
Bring out the playbook. Call out something, someone, anything. Just don't foolishly expect or call out well funded organizations purporting to assist communities of color. Take an active role participating in better results? Set up outreach programs and test prep classes targeting the communities for and out of which they supposedly exist? National Action Network? No greater misnomer than that second word in the title. Why bother when you can just blame and lecture. Much better for its leader to sit scowling imperiously in Sylvia's receiving Presidential candidates than to actually do work. Nothing but a complete, absolute handout will do.
5
Developing the stamina to study for a profuse amount of one's waking hours at the expense of play and social time is an acquired skill for a young person that requires a great amount of parental oversight. It's possible that black and hispanic communities don't feel that this sort of childhood is particularly healthy or desired. So this article doesn't shed any light on differences on child raising between racial communities and how they play a role here. A well-rounded childhood includes athletics, academics, music, fine art, performing art, and communication skills. Perhaps testing should be amended to cultivate young candidates that possess more skills than just academics?
4
There appear to be two common denominators endemic to this issue if the article is accurate. One, the majority of the Asian, Black, and Hispanic children who are candidates for the elite schools are poor. And two, test prep courses at places like Kaplan appear to be instrumental in getting in.
The article says a basic test prep course costs $1,000. So let's say a better than basic costs $2,000. The article also says that Asians, mostly poor it claims, are deeply committed to these courses and see them as the key to getting into the elite schools.
Why doesn't the city put together a public-private philanthropic partnership to provide funds for these courses to low income families, whether they be black, Hispanic, or Asian. Wouldn't that level the playing field? All outstanding students would have the opportunity to take these courses free-of-charge in places convenient to their homes and schools.
Then wouldn't it all just come down to one deciding factor? The will to take the prep courses and stick with them?
7
NYC offered free test prep on Saturdays several years ago. Free. Still couldn’t get the Black and Hispanic students to attend in proportion to their demographics. Poor Asians turned out in droves. So free test prep is not the answer. That’s not the answer. I. Not sure what is other than getting away from the test itself
11
Why do we have "gifted and talented" programs and "selective" public high schools? What social purpose do they serve? Do we have the means to distinguish the "gifted and talented" from other students? What does "gifted and talented" mean?
No one wants to address questions like these, largely because they don't have good answers.
Properly funded and staffed neighborhood schools are the answer, combined with a commitment to provide every child with the education he/she needs.
1
Imagine being a child who reads at a fifth grade level and is comfortable with math up to algebra being made to spend every day in a remedial classroom where students are still learning the basics of beginning to read and doing single-digit addition. Think that child will learn anything besides boredom, hatred of school and tuning out? It's no better than putting a child at a first grade reading level into a fourth grade classroom. Different students have different educational needs. This is why gifted programs exist.
32
Yours is the standard reply. The cold hard fact is that we do not have the means to distinguish children who are so talented that they cannot prosper in a normal classroom. The fact that test preparation provides a significant advantage demonstrates that the test being used measures achievement not aptitude, in other words, it does not measure talent at all.
There are many schools across the country that readily accommodate students of many types in their classrooms. If you school fails to to this, you need to push your school board to provide the necessary funds, teachers and curriculum.
1
Here's your answer: Gifted and talented means that a child has an IQ 2 standard deviations above the mean -130 - It means that their brains work differently - processes faster and absorbs more. It means a kid reading Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings while their classmates are reading Pat the Bunny. If you can understand that a child with an IQ 2 standard deviations below the mean -70 - brain works differently, you should be able to understand gifted. And providing gifted and talented services ensures that gifted kids get the education they need just like providing special education to a child with Downs Syndrome and an IQ of 70 ensures that child an appropriate education. This is not hard.
12
The most logical solution seems to be to make the prep programs available for free to all students who wish to take them, publicize the existence of these magnet schools widely, and to ask teachers to identify promising students early enough so that they can be properly and adequately trained for these entrance programs. That would be fair to everyone. I don't see how the tests by themselves are discriminatory.
7
Nowhere else in the world are the best schools being asked to lower their standards. No wonder we're no longer leading the world in education and science.
55
There is unfairness in the process but there are some assumptions which are never addressed. We saw with NY's Amazon debacle the false promise that every kid was now destined to become a highly paid programmer. We assume that because a child does not get into a specialized high school, they are destined to a life of wage-slave drudgery. There are over a million kids in the NYC school system and very little though is given to how they are supposed to live satisfying adult lives.
Many of NY's bright kids could flourish just as well with decent vocational training and apprenticeships. It may seem the last thing on our planner's minds but small scale, high-tech manufacturing is one area in which a person can earn a decent wage, acquire marketable skills, and produce tangible products in which they can be proud. Contrast that with office work, where it is acknowledged that 99% of what you do is a meaningless farce. New York, with it's insatiable luxury market would profit immensely from having much of that market supplied locally, from food, to furnishings, to art. Instead, Bloomberg and de Blasio converted the entire industrial zone of the East River, from the Brooklyn Bridge to Astoria into an unbroken wall of luxury condos. Manufacturing has been ghettoized into a few "theme parks", like Industry City and the Navy Yards. These are large complexes, but not nearly large enough and have already been subject to the same rental pressures afflicting everything else here.
3
I see no data on the test scores. Are we talking thousands of students separated by a single point on a test? Is everyone scoring so high, that among those who get in and those who just miss the cutoff, their differences in test scores are statistically insignificant? Or have scores among Black and Latino (and White) students dropped or stagnated, while scores among Asians have skyrocketed?
7
The success of these Asian students is something we should aspire to, yet I don't see much writing on how they achieve the incredible results. When athletes consistently perform better than others, we study their approach to try and replicate the result, but when Asian families perform well in school, commit fewer crimes, and have more successful marriage rates, we all pretend like it was just chance (or racism!) that lead to those outcomes.
I suspect too many Americans just don't know enough Asian-Americans. Because they don't know them or get to know the same outcomes for themselves, they resort to conspiracy theories to explain the discrepancy in results. Studying, work ethic, parents who are involved and sacrifice short-term gains for long-term gains, a community of people who share the same values and can therefor ensure their kids are being raised in a disciplined fashion.
If we want more kids to attain the outcomes that many of these poor Asian families are getting, it's time we take an interest in their approach. More Americans should get to know their Asian-American and Pacific Islander neighbors and come to realize that there is nothing to fear in raising children in an environment that prepares them for the rigors of adult life.
163
Agreed. I wish there were more interaction between people of different ethnicity. We can learn a lot from one another.
1
My kid - white - goes to an elite private school. I'm am a lawyer and my husband is an engineer - we're nerds. I also had an unabashedly "education is everything" Jewish mom. My kid is definitely in the nerd crowd of high achieving kids - her clique is heavily Asian and East Indian - and by virtue of that I am friends with these Moms. - Very simply school comes first - not being cute or popular or having a boyfriend - school. And as a Jew - your "conspiracy comment" really resonated with me since the Jews have always been accused of this. So the big Jew/Chinese/ Indian conspiracy is school comes first.
21
Asian, especially Chinese, culture and it's emphasis on ritual and family are definite advantages when navigating the processes of education but not necessarily learning when applied to real world problems. I don't think that we should deliberately discriminate against Chinese people in order to reduce their representation. To me the higher representation of Asian students is a repudiation of the test system that is used as the sole measurement of a student's merit. Test prep is not useful except for taking a test. It does not contribute to the overall success of a student when measured by the long term outcomes. We need to enable the broadest possible range of talent that can benefit from more intensive education designed to take advantage of those talents. But not all talented students are the best test takers. If they don't have time or resources to do test prep they are put an even greater artificial disadvantage. And if all this emphasis on tests were really the best answer, then why don't Asian people dominate all of the professions. They don't. I believe that it is because of their emphasis on arbitrary measurements of fitness are based on a very limited view of what they value in education. Certainly some amount of memory, language, arithmetic and math skills are essential but there are many other abilities that contribute to producing the best possible adults both in life and the workplace.
I'm saddened by the number of people who think this situation is not a problem. And worse--that the problem is just a matter of black and hispanic students not trying hard enough (or their parents not caring enough). Do you really think people are born knowing how to work the system? Do you really think that resources don't matter?
It's a vicious cycle. Minorities in poor neighborhoods often don't receive a high quality education from day one. They don't have as good of resources or support systems as their white counterparts. Saying that if poor Asians can overcome those obstacles then anyone can is just an excuse to do nothing about the existing problem for blacks and hispanics. That's racism. The problem for blacks and hispanics is real, and doing nothing just exacerbates the wealth inequality based on race in this country (and the hostilities).
The mayor's proposal could help shake up the system and give these students a chance to thrive. And don't forget: It will still be harder for them because they didn't receive a good elementary and middle school education. But at least this way they have a *chance* to catch up. And their children will have better resources. Their children will have it easier and be taught how to navigate the system. That's called a virtuous cycle, folks.
This issue says more about the elementary and middle schools in black and hispanic neighborhoods. These schools owe their students the level of education to enable their students to qualify for the elite schools. Fix the problems at their root with better teachers, after-school tutoring opportunities, better facilities and parental guidance.
8
Our country has been built by the best and the brightest, including those willing to work harder than what seems necessary. This continued attempt at filling racial quotas does nothing more than dumb down the whole process of learning.
As has been said, "You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink." So, if you can do well in your school, score well in specialized tests and think of your own future, you should be admitted, no further questions need be asked.
25
Nowhere else in the world would you be asking the best schools in the country to lower their standards. Our standards are too low as they are. That's one big reason that as a country we're getting left behind in the world order.
105
Remember what happened to City College, the one time "poor man's Harvard."
6
We are the only country in the world that has effectively expunged the word "no" from our politically correct vocabulary.
3
For once the NYT has contributed something useful to this issue. The data show that Black and Hispanic enrollment as SHSs was much higher in the 70's and 80's. There are a few potential explanations for this result:
1. The test makers have intentionally changed the exam over the years to make it harder for Blacks and Hispanics to score highly.
2. Black and Hispanic students have become less intelligent over the last 30-40 years.
3. Blacks and Hispanics are perfectly capable of doing well on the entrance test as long as they are aware of it and prepare for it.
Explanation number 1 is unlikely and explanation number 2 is even more unlikely, leaving explanation #3 as the most likely. Whether the authors of this article intended it or not, this means that the answer to increasing Black/Hispanic enrollment at SHSs is not to get rid of the exam but to increase access and preparation. How hard is is for every elementary/middle school teacher in the NY city schools to identify bright students and guide them to applying? And how hard is it to provide test prep for them? Income status shouldn't be a barrier, since many of the Asian students at these schools come from poor families [although I have yet to see in NYT or other sources an actual numerical breakdown of this].
However, once again, as with many public policy decisions, we see them being driven by a preconceived conclusion without any desire to incorporate facts and reasoning.
27
That's how I read this article, as well. Well said, Bob.
3
This headline is quite misleading. Yes, the number of Black students has plummeted, and this is worthy of understanding. The number of White students has also plummeted. But the percentage of Hispanic students has not changed much over the years. Combining Hispanic and Black students into a single category is misleading.
At the same time, the plummeting of the number of White students is treated as a curious afterthought, as is the skyrocketing percentage of Asian students. The heterogeneity of these other groups (Are the Whites Italians? Irish? Eastern Europeans? Are the Asians Chinese? Korean? Japanese?) would be far more informative. Whether they are "over-represented" may depend, in fact, on who 'they' really are.
135
Great point!
5
The enormous decrease in the number of African-American and Hispanic students in specialized high schools is shocking. The use of standardized testing as the main criterion for admission into these schools is the major obstacle cited in this article. The number and location of test prep centers (not to mention cost) by borough demonstrate the inherent bias against these students.
Perhaps a rational solution could be found by offering the top two performing students from each middle school across all 5 boroughs an invitation to attend the specialized high schools. This would would be similar to the Texas Education Agency's offer of a freshman-year scholarship to the valedictorians from each high school in the state.
Of course, this would mean that test prep centers would take a major hit, but it would simultaneously incentivize students in all middle schools to do their best academically.
The dearth of information at schools in the boroughs where students of color would also need to be addressed by ensuring that all schools were saturated with this revised policy. This would help to overcome the omission of such options in middle schools where the possibility is not even discussed.
It is incumbent on NYC's Board of Education to ensure that equal opportunity and educational equity reigns as its topmost priority. Something is awfully awry in its current admission's policy and need to be corrected - pronto!
I want to thank the New York Times for brightening up my day. If in the early 1970s if you told me that white privilege would be eradicated and minorities would go from a minority of the specialized school enrollment to over 90%, I would never have believed you. Moreover, the specialized schools have never represented a higher portion of poor and disenfranchised students as today. A great way to start my week.
26
The elite school racial balance or imbalance is the wrong issue to focus on. The real problem is the dismal quality of education in every non-special school. It is analogous to focusing on the mood lighting in the den instead of fixing the rotting wooden floor.
While the special schools that foster talent should undoubtedly continue, the far more worrisome point is the quality of education the average student gets.
65
It seems that the main cause of this change is simply the increase in the total number of Asian students. Asian students went from 3% of the share of all students to 16%, more than a 5X increase. When the highest performing group rapidly increases in size, of course that results in less of the other 3 races getting in to the top schools. Asian students have the same odds of getting in as they used to, there's just a lot more of than there used to be, and the number of total seats available in the schools hasn't increased at the same rate.
35
I would love to see people stop framing proposals for greater integration as Asian students "losing" their seats. Those seats do not belong to anyone until they have been accepted. Nobody is going to get kicked out of their school to make room for Black or Latino students.
If we must persist at acting like one group or another owns these seats, then based on the history offered here should we instead frame this as Black and Latino students taking back the seats that historically belonged to them?
I would love to see a deeper study into the test prep industry. It starts with G&T in pre-k. I was shocked to hear other parents of four-year-olds talking about the great lengths they had gone to to prep their children for the test.
6
What an incisive post: Yes, there does seem to be a sense of entitlement over those seats, when in fact it is the system who decides who gets them. The seats don't belong to any group. They belong to the schooling system.
Moreover, you're right that test prep is just magnifying already existing inequalities that these children inherit.
2
@ Noah,
Seriously?
The elite schools have long used a test to determine eligibility and right now, Asians are doing well on the test so that we represent over 70% of the class.
Now the Deblasio administration is seeking a huge change to the system with the sole intent of adhering to racial preferences.
Maybe a way to frame it so you can understand is that the best scorers (irrespective of race) on a system that has been in place for generations are at risk of "losing" their seats in order to pander to racial quotas.
14
No race or ethnic group "owns" these seats and none of these seats should be distributed based on one's race or ethnicity. Keep the test and select students based on the contents of their characters, not their skin colors.
6
My husband (white) graduated from Brooklyn Tech in 1968 with a full scholarship to college. He grew up in Queens. His American-born father in Queens never went beyond 8th grade, his mother finished high school in Germany during WWII before coming to the US. He attributes his success getting into Tech to the special programs that he benefited from while in elementary and middle public schools in the 1950-60s, programs that recognized bright motivated kids and provided a more challenging curriculum...and his grandmother who did math and spelling drills with him after school. Test prep wasn't a thing then. He is appalled at the drop in black and hispanic students, and blames the public school system for failing them. Don't make it easier to get in by lowering entrance standards. Make it possible to get in by raising education standards.
27
Time out! Speaking for myself, and a slew of other folks who went to the NYC elementary and Public Junior High Schools in the 1950’s through the 1970’s, we recall no such special programs existed! Unless this comment is referencing the SP classes and placing each student in classes based on ability, that part of the comment is not true!
1
Glaring proof of reverse racism. Students who are very smart and come with high test scores should be admitted on their merits, not their race. My brother attended years ago and rightly so; he was an excellent student who earned top grades.
91
One single standardized test doesn't measure brainpower or potential, it only measure your ability to take the test.
2
"One single standardized test doesn't measure brainpower or potential, it only measure your ability to take the test."
This is the best test you and I know. It makes no sense complaining of the best without offering a better.
Besides, it does correlate with IQ, which is still the gold standard for measuring intelligence.
The truth is that what liberals want is equal outcome (it's all about equitability, equality isn't good enough), not equal opportunity. The only way to equal outcome in a competitive world is to oppress the brightest and the strongest, aka the communist ideal.
We've seen how it worked out in pre-capitalist China, USSR, N. Korea, Venezuela, and Cuba.
Good luck NYC!
5
al,
I agreed with you until you started slamming liberals with your blanket statements. I am a liberal and I firmly believe in equal opportunity. I have never heard about this "equal outcome" nonsense. I don't know what kind of liberal folks you're been talking to (if any) but I don't know of any liberal who supports "equal outcome." By the way liberalism and communism aren't interchangeable.
1
Went to Bronx Science from 1967-1970. No test prep, just took it and did well, probably because the NYC public school system in the late '50's and early to mid-'60s empasized education and dedication, as did my parents.
You need to take a look at the deterioration of the elementary and middle schools and the family structure.
81
Why are the students and families of the admitted students not studied for best practices? Why does our government not encourage these best practices? The problem, in my opinion, is progressivism, which eschews personal achievement and extolls victimhood, all under the guise of "caring."
5
Maybe, you should convert or build more schools into higher performing schools. You could just do it by location. All middle schools have a designated high performing school of destination. High schools don't create high performing students, they are the recipients of high performing students. Just like colleges are. Harvard doesn't make students smart, they are the recipients of smart students.
3
The often-stated assumption that one needs to pay for expensive test prep classes is getting tiresome. Test prep books can adequately prepare a qualified student for the SHSAT. My friend tutored her son solely from books and practice exams, and he did great. I know others who also relied on test prep books. There is no magic potion or other secrets to be gained from test prep classes. The test prep classes force a student to take the time to prepare for the test. This could be simulated at home, but many people do not have the time or ability to prep their child. The city could step in and fill this need. It does have the Dream program, but not everyone can get a spot in the program. Expand the Dream program significantly, advertise it better, and make it more accessible (perhaps in everyone middle school?).
74
I have to say this discussion is getting a bit tiresome.
I went to Bronx Science because I first took the exam and for whatever reason passed.
Every NYC student can take it, you have to make the effort.
163
One more article blacks and hispanics in the specialized schools, and one more article that entirely ignores the incredible success of the city's top 100 private schools in diversifying their student body. I will guarantee you that, if they were high schoolers today, the majority of those alumni cited (ie. Assistant Director of the Duke Medical Program) would have taken a $30,000 in assistance to attend the best private schools near them, rather than do a specialized school. This article is not about the highly motivated, it is about how do we convince those (students and parents) who are not interested in the specialized schools to put in the time and effort to get accepted.
49
This article does not ignore it. The author wrote:
"Prep for Prep, a training program that helps high-performing black, Hispanic and Asian students get into prestigious New York private schools, accepts only about 200 students a year. Some have argued that Prep for Prep recruits smart black and Hispanic students who might have otherwise attended a specialized school. But even if every Prep for Prep student were accepted into a specialized high school, they would still represent only a small fraction of the schools’ 5,000 or so offers for freshman seats."
The numbers for Stuyvesant and Bronx HS look correct.
I attend Brooklyn Tech from 1962-1966 and it was overwhelming white and Jewish. I estimate blacks and hispanics only made up 5% of the students and even if you added Asians it only jumped to a total of 15%. I took a rough sampling from my year book.
How in ten yrs. did it dramatically go from 5% to 50% black and hispanics while the other two schools with the same test had far less minorities in 1976?
6
If the purpose of the mayor’s proposal is reduce the number the number of “over-represented white and Asian students in New York city’s elite public schools, then it is a violation of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It states that “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”
186
Admission to an elite science school should be based on merit...end of story. I can't believe in 2019 this is even a conversation. The plan to scrap the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) is flat out racist. Because you are taking away seats from Asians students who have earned the right to be there by studying harder. We have no obligation to diversify our best schools if it means better qualified kids will be left out. Such a system punishes kids who got better grades & test scores. Let's have all admissions based on grades & test scores. At least a majority of the best & brightest would be going to our top schools. Isn't that what we want? By the way this idea has already been tried with great success in California. For decades Asian Americans here had complained that they were being short changed & in some cases discriminated in UC college admissions. In 1996 voters amended the state constitution by voting for Prop 209, to prohibit state institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, in public education. By law admission to UC colleges now had to be race neutral. Prop 209 restored & reconfirmed the historic intention of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The premise of Prop 209 is that every individual has a right, & that right is not to be discriminated against, or granted a preference, based on their race or gender. Prop 209 ended pitting one group against another in our colleges which perpetuates social tension. This is an idea who's time has come.
222
Did you even read the article?? 'Studying harder' isn't the issue when some student have access to the now practically mandatory, and expensive , test-coaching courses, and others don't. These schools used to enroll smart, hard-working black and Latino kids, along with white and Asian kids. Now they don't. It's not because there are fewer such kids or that they don't work as hard as they used to. Those demographics still lag far behind *economically*. As so often is the case, it's about money: who has it and who doesn't.
1
Students partly earn the right to be at Stuyvesant by being able to afford, and knowing the importance of, test preparation courses. When I took the exam, back when the school was mainly Jewish and I was one of the few WASPs, I did not take any preparation course or practice exam, and do not know if they even existed at that point. This was a fairer time, since the native test-taking ability (whatever that means) of the applicants was not enhanced by "artificial" measures not available to all or known about by all.
2
Your argument is completely reflexive and self referential. You define merit by the score on a test. Then you rail on that not using that standard is a violation of the standard. That is exactly the point. The merit of a student should not be solely based on the score on a test, especially one that can be gamed by preparation. I went to school with some kids that studied extra hard and crammed and prepped for their SAT's. They were often no more capable, and many times less, than other smart students that participated in music or art or other useful activities that weren't on the test. They deliberately narrowed the scope of their interests to those that would directly contribute to getting a grade. They were still idiots in my opinion. They did well on tests but that was about it. They were dull because tests and grades were the only thing that counted. They gamed everything for the purpose of producing the best grades.
1
Is the problem structural or cultural? Some measure of both?
A sizeable number of students would need either one of two things to pass the test:
1) college-preparatory curriculum that is inspiring, conceptually interesting, and which emphasizes grammar and written expression, with broad and interesting exposure to standard english (with full respect given to traditional African American Dialectical English as well as Jamacan Patois and Hatian Creole). The teachers need to understand and master english expression at this high level.
And/Or 2) An environment of family, media, and American culture that replicates it.
1
When you design an entire schooling system around a zero-sum game--well, this article documents the end game of a zero-sum game. You create pyramid, based on narrow set of academic skills, that elevate a small number of students to the top and leave most behind. Even the language used in this article--"gifted and talented"---really!!! Why not start with the premise that all students who enter our schools bring with them unique talents, abilities, and interests, which, a school system should not only be able to accomodate, but, enhance. There is not enough room in this comment box to elaborate on the inherent problems using standardized tests as a judge of future academic and occupational success---suffice to say, what the research tells us is a student's transcript will tell us more about his or her academic futures than any standardized measuring instrument, which, in recent media articles, has revealed are becoming easier and easier to game. One last comment, I find the entire concept of four or eight or whatever specialized high schools for the "gifted elite" repulsive in a democracy whose aim should be quality schooling for all.
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You may not be familiar with the vast and varied NYC public high school system. There are many types of schools with different admissions rubrics, styles and specialties. There are portfolio admissions, educational option schools, early college programs, schools with focus on performing arts, history, aeronautics, you name it. Huge ones and tiny boutique ones. The schools everyone is fussing about constitute 8 out of over 700 high school programs. There are many selective and quality schools that don't base admissions on a test. For students who don't test well, or who are bright but not prepared, there are solid options. This is all political hooey.
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There are several other pieces of information that might be worth considering, as they have undeniable impact on student learning. What have the relative rates of homelessness been, both percentage and duration, among students over this time period? And, a related but not identical factor, what have the rates of student mobility in elementary and middle school been, that is, how long they remain at a given school?
Education for all, I personally believe that is the basis for public education in NYC and everywhere.
The New York City schools that my parents attended in the 1940s and 1950s were considered the best public schools in the country (not just the specialized schools, all the schools). That changed about 50 years ago,
New York City has some of the most segregated schools in the country in 2019 and that is a shame. Everyone should have access to an excellent education regardless of race or economic status. Unfortunately, I do not have a solution, but I know it is a problem that needs to be addressed. Our children, and children after them, deserve better.
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This has been a hot topic in town halls and parenting groups. As far as I can tell, there are two main reasons for black and Hispanic underrepresentation in SHSAT schools. The first is the elimination of pipeline G&T programs in heavily black and Latino neighborhoods (this was largely at the request of communities, which argued they were harmfully elitist) which leave students less prepared, and the second is the rise of programs like Prep for Prep or Oliver Scholars that cream the strongest students from these communities in to the private school system instead. Charter schools are also more popular in these communities, and they do not tend to encourage their students to pursue SHSAT high schools. The test itself has been reduced in difficulty, containing less material that is beyond what is taught in middle school curriculum. Any motivated, bright student can pass it with a review book from the library and Khan Academy. The prep class myth is just that, and a waste of money for most people who use them.
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For reference: Prep for Prep program began 1978, Oliver Scholars 1984, and charter schools began in NYC in 1998 (and have since increased from barely 3000 students to over 100,000 students).
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You're absolutely right about the private schools. Once they became 'committed to diversity,' they offered scholarships to the strongest students (who traditionally would have gone to the Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, . . . .), from these communities.
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Re test prep courses: there is heavy attendance at the classes in neighborhoods where many Asians students reside and the results speak for themselves,...
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The criteria for admittance to one of the specialized schools is the same since the '70s, the test prepping seems to be the only difference. The City should expand the gifted and talented programs where needed and offer free test prepping to all lower income students using the funds from be Blasio's failed Thrive program.
The smartest 30% of China's population is equal to the entire U.S population, the same can be said for the bottom 30%.
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Well - no - this not the only thing that has changed - and this is overlooked in the article:
There are simply more Asians now as a percentage of the total NYC population in the past three decades - up almost 85%.
At the same time - the Black share of the population has been shrinking.
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My child went to a very diverse UWS middle school. During the summer before she entered 7th grade, we received a school wide letter from Stuyvesant High School begging families to consider having their kids take the SHSAT exam the following year, in October of 8th grade. I therefore contacted the school at the beginning of my child's 7th grade to inquire about how they would prepare the kids for that entrance exam. Answer was: nothing until the spring of 7th grade. By then all 7th grade kids took a mock exam but a lot of them didn't know about the SHS schools and didn't care for them. My child reported how a lot of students just bubbled in answers randomly to be done with it faster. But a lot of kids got interested, and took advantage of the free tutoring offered during the subsequent months and during the summer. A lot of them got excited during 8th grade, hoping to get into a SHS that they didn't know existed 6 months earlier. None of my child's friends got into any of the SHS. As for her she was admitted, having prepared for the exam by herself (no tutoring, no prep class), and above all having started a year in advance.
In other words, for all of these students it was too little too late. The most shocking thing is that I came to realize that the school didn't believe that SHS were a good match for its students anyway, and basically made the decision for them. The whole school administration by the way was black and latinx.
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A sad story doomed to be ignored unless we face the reality that this is a systemic problem. I am so sick of the lip service we pay to an interest in education when the truth is we could care not a whit unless our own children are involved and we have the personal resources to do our best for them. Other people's children, let them sit in crowded classrooms , let them have the weakest teachers.
This country has the money to invest in education. What would that mean? A start would be to reduce class size in elementary schools to 14-17, an idea supported by a landmark study in Tennesee back in the 1970s. Set some rigorous standards for entry into education programs. Make sure those teachers know how to take advantage of smaller classrooms. Get parents involved as soon as children enter school. Shore up the infrastructure so some children aren't sitting in dirty, under- or over-heated classrooms and in buildings where the bathrooms don't work. There is plenty that can and should be done.
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However one wishes to frame this problem, as lack of diversity or even an admissions process that has zero grounding in psychometric science, test prep is not the answer. Lack of test prep isn't a root cause. Our schools and educational systems have better things to do, than to prepare students for aptitude tests. In fact, focus on test prep is among the failures of the Common Core Curriculum. One contributing factor that most seem to ignore, is the *overabundance* of special schools and GATE programs in NYC.
Richard D. Kahlenberg recently opined in the NY Times, "You’ve set up a system of competition among high schools in which the easiest way for a principal to win is to select the students who are best prepared."
"*One in five* [emph. added] middle and high schools in New York, the nation’s largest school district, now choose all of their students based on factors like grades or state test scores."
But, "In Los Angeles, the country’s second-largest district, there are only two selective high schools and two 'highly gifted' magnet schools..."
NYC's continued proliferation of preferential treatment for GATE candidates reminds me of the whole McKinsey & Associates strategy that led to the fall of Enron. It is as if the system is *designed* to exacerbate and proliferate inequality. Yet there are those who insist doing more of the same will yield different results.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/nyregion/public-schools-screening-admission.html
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