New York City Specialized High School Admission Process Is Unfair

 

By Alan Singer 

The New York City Specialized High School admission process is unfair, but charging the test is racist or gendered based distracts from what can be done to make the selection process fairer and to ensure a more diverse student body that better reflects New York City’ student population. The current process is deeply flawed and can be changed without pitting ethnic and racial communities against each other or a change in state law.

In a school system where over 40% of the students are Latino and almost one-fourth are Black, under 7% of the students accepted this school year to one of city’s eight elite “test” high schools were Latino and 3% were Black. Stuyvesant High School, the most selective of the specialized schools, accepted 27 Latino students and eight Black students, combined, less 5% of students admitted to the school.

In the past, Democratic Party Mayoral candidate Zohan Mamdani, a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science which I also attended, championed abandoning a single test score on the SHSAT as the only criteria for admission to one of the select high schools and adding other qualifying measures including middle school class standing. Now under pressure from voters whose children have generally done well on the exam, especially Asian parents, Mamdani has modified his position and promised that his administration would study the specialized high school exam for evidence of bias. The problem is not the test, but the process.

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Source: Daily Kos

Alan Singer is a historian and teacher educator at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. His most recent books are Social Studies for Secondary Schools, 5th edition (Routledge, 2024) and Class-Conscious Coal Miners (SUNY Press, 2024). Blogs, tweets, essays, interviews, and e-blasts present his views and not those of Hofstra University.