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I'm at a panel to discuss the specialized high school test and the city's proposal to overhaul admissions to the elite schools. Here's more about the event: eventbrite.com/e/a-community-…
Syed Ali calls the schools "mobility machines." Whoever gets in, does well. Which is part of the reason for the uproar over changing them.
He also asks why focus efforts on this narrow set of schools when the city could be looking at screens more widely. (For those new to the admissions scene in NYC, screens basically refer to competitive entrance criteria that many schools use, often blamed for segregation.)
Moderator by Maya Wiley points to the impact of stereotype threat, where the way the test is talked about can influence who well a students performs on a test.
Josh Wallack says: city doesn't know if SHSAT is best way to identify kids who'd succeed in SHS. Evidence points to state tests and grades as better measures. Under city plan, students admitted would have about same GPA and test scores.
Wallack says "We know the SHSAT picks high achieving students, but there are better ways of doing that."
Jonathan Taylor, who has studied the SHSAT, says that students right around the test cutoff "you really just don't know anything" about how a student will perform in school.
Wallack explains why city wants to change Discovery, which offers SHS admission to students who scored just below exam cutoff. He says it's bc kids who scored just below look a lot like the kids offered admission, so Discovery expansion wouldn't increase diversity on its own
Asked about how students with learning differences would fare under proposal, Wallack says city knows there's work to do there. There's a tiny percentage of students with special needs at SHSs. (Also, like almost no students who are learning English as a new language.)
Asked about the impact on Asian students, Wallack says city needs to get he word out that "there are many, many fine high schools" that should be options for families...
Also says city needs to continue efforts to improve schools across the board "and trying to create more equitable, diverse high schools... as we succeed in that, there will be more schools where all of our students can succeed."
Asked about research that shows SHS don't really impact whether a student goes on to elite colleges, Ali says those studies don't look at very long-term impacts.
Asked whether schools could simply decide to change their admissions, Wallack says no. Audience murmurs. Many believe the city could act independently to change admissions at SHSs that aren't named in state law requiring an admission test.
City's position is that they would have to de-designate the other schools so they're no longer an SHS, and city doesn't want to do that.
Ali pushes back a bit, saying if you un-designate some SHSs, then you could change admissions and prove you can maintain rigor -- it'd be a powerful proof point to detractors.
Ali is now arguing that declining diversity had do do with elimination of accelerated programs and rise of test prep, and also large-scale demographic changes due to immigration.
Asked whether this plan introduces subjectivity to the admissions process, Wallack says multiple sources of data are better than one. (Sounds like the questioner thinks teacher-developed tests would be used for admissions. But city is proposing to use state tests.)
Ok we're wrapping up here. Basically, the experts agreed the SHSAT isn't a great measure of who will do well in SHS. But there were lots of questions from the audience about what changing admissions means for rigor at SHSs.
I will, of course, continue to write about these issues so please reach out with your story ideas/questions. cveiga@chalkbeat.org. G'night!
