Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that middle schools will drop their screens–e.g., test scores, grades, etc.–for admissions and will choose students by lottery if they have more applicants than places. The administration of Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein eliminated zoned neighborhood high schools and middle schools and introduced screens for admission; about 40 percent of the city’s middle schools have selective admissions. The Mayor and Chancellor Richard Carranza are taking advantage of the pandemic–which caused the cancellations of last year’s state tests–to turn the situation into an opportunity to promote racial integration in the city. New York State has the most segregated public schools of any state in the nation, according to the latest report from the UCLA Center on Civil Rights, which says “New York is the most segregated state in the country for Black students. The average Black student in New York attends a school with only 15% White students and 64% of Black students are in intensely segregated schools with 90-100% non-White students. While New York is the most segregated, Illinois, California, and Maryland and others also have extreme segregation levels.” Segregation and admissions tests are correlated.
Jillian Jorgensen of NY1 explains how the changes would work.
The city is making significant changes to the middle and high school admission processes due to the coronavirus pandemic — eliminating the use of academic criteria to determine admissions to middle schools this year, but allowing it to continue at high schools, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza announced Friday.
The mayor and chancellor argued that using screens at the middle school level was not possible when those students did not get grades or take state exams last academic year, in part because they are so young. Students applying to high school, they argued, had more data to draw from for screened admissions.
“I think the simple answer on high school versus middle school is, middle school just wasn’t viable. There was no way to do fair evaluation with a screen this year. High schools, there’s more factors to deal with for this year,” de Blasio said.
The controversial Specialized High School Admission Test, the sole criteria for admission to the city’s most prestigious public schools including Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech and Bronx Science, will remain in place and will be given in person in January.
Here’s a rundown of how admissions will work this year.
MIDDLE SCHOOLS
Middle schools will not use academic screens as part of their admission process this school year. However, middle schools will still be able to give priority for admission to students who live within the school’s community school district.
Keeping middle school screens would have meant admitting students based on their third-grade scores, and that’s the first year children take state exams.
“It’s just not educationally sound. But we do have other data points for the high schools and that was factored into the decision,” Carranza said.
The removal of middle school screens is so far temporary — but the mayor hinted it could continue.
“This is clearly a beginning. And what I think is clear is that unfortunately screens have had the impact of not giving everyone equal opportunity. And this is not our future,” he said.
If a school has more applications than seats, students would be chosen via a lottery.
Students will be able to apply to middle school beginning the week of January 11; a deadline will be set for some time during the week of February 8.
HIGH SCHOOLS
Academic screens will remain in place for high school admissions. However, those screens typically use tests scores and grades a student earned in the last school year, and public schools did not give grades last school year, nor were state exams taken. Schools will instead be able to use test scores and grades from the year prior — so, a student’s sixth grade year, as opposed to their seventh.
Schools will now be required to post online the exact rubric they use for ranking students; and that ranking will be done by the Education Department’s central office, not the school.
In a significant shift, the city will eliminate the use of district geographic priorities for high school students, a process that had come under fire in Manhattan’s District 2.
The city eliminated “zoned” high schools under former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, allowing students to apply for high schools across the city. But some schools still gave preference to students who live within the same district where the school is located, giving those students a tremendous edge for admission. That means students who live elsewhere are often shut out of these schools — some of the highest performing, and often least diverse, in the city.
All other geographic priorities — some schools have priority admissions for students from the same borough, for example — will be scrapped in the next school year.
Eliza Shapiro of the New York Times writes:
New York is more reliant on high-stakes admissions screens than any other district in the country, and the mayor has for years faced mounting pressure to take more forceful action to desegregate the city’s racially and socioeconomically divided public schools. Black and Latino students are significantly underrepresented in selective middle and high schools, though they represent nearly 70 percent of the district’s 1.1 million students.
But it was the pandemic that finally prompted Mr. de Blasio, now in his seventh year in office, to implement some of the most sweeping school integration measures in New York City’s recent history. They will be, by far, the mayor’s most significant action yet on integration.
With many schools shuttered, grading systems altered and standardized testing paused since the spring, the metrics that dictate how students get into screened schools have largely disappeared. That has made it next to impossible for many schools to sort students by academic performance as they have in previous years…
The changes, which will go into effect for this year’s round of admissions, will affect how about 400 of the city’s 1,800 schools admit students, but will not affect admissions at the city’s specialized high schools or many of the city’s other screened high schools.
Mr. de Blasio and his successor will no doubt face pressure to integrate those schools, which are among the most racially unrepresentative in the system. But integrating specialized and screened high schools has long been considered a third-rail in the district, and changes made there would no doubt be highly contentious.
The city will eliminate all admissions screens for middle schools for at least one year, the mayor will announce. About 200 middle schools, or 40 percent of all middle schools, use metrics like grades, attendance and test scores to determine which students should be admitted. Now those schools will use a random lottery to admit students.
Selective middle schools tend to be much whiter than the district overall. Mr. de Blasio is essentially piloting an experiment that, if deemed successful, could permanently lead to the elimination of all academically selective middle schools.
There is something ironic about this. Bloomberg killed off zoning and many good formerly zoned schools died with it. One consequence of that was to increase the flood of applications to the specialized high schools, heightening competition for seats and likely pushing out many black applicants. The zoned system was replaced by a choice system of screened schools. At the same time, Bloomberg grew the charter school segment, which provided lottery admissions without catchments. Now the screens are coming down, moving the city toward a model of . . . admissions by lottery without catchments. In a way, the charter model is taking over the entire city.
“the charter model is taking over the entire city.”
This is nothing like the charter model, unless I missed the fine print in which de Blasio announced that middle schools have no obligation to teach any of the lottery winners unless they want to.
Did I miss the fine print that said that middle school administrators would be highly rewarded for having 99% passing rates no matter how few lottery winning students they allow to remain in their middle schools and how many are now wandering the street in the “charter model” where all obligation to educate a student ends as soon as the middle school gets them out?
But you raise an excellent idea. NYC public middle schools will teach whichever of the lottery winners behave and learn according to their standards, and all of the charter schools will teach the rest.
That would be allowing the “charter model” to take over the city, with the charter schools there to teach all the students that the public schools don’t want to teach.
This is the same Bill DeBlasio whose police force is currently evicting families into the cold during a pandemic. Gee, at least those now-homeless, cold and COVID-infected kids won’t have to worry about placement tests! That DeBlasio is one generous guy!
No, it’s the same Cuomo who did not listen to de Blasio’s pleas to extend a moratorium on evictions. Which de Blasio is on record asking for over and over and over again, from March on.
And it’s really laughable to hear the NYPD being referred to as de Blasio’s police force. Are you now opposed to police unions? This is the police union’s police force. Ask any NYPD policeman if de Blasio is their boss!
Although this tweet is so vague that it is not even clear who is being evicted from where.
The NYC news media hates de Blasio with a passion, but they do tend to report facts:
From the Queens Daily Eagle, Aug. 7, 2020
“Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday urged the state to institute a long-term eviction moratorium for tenants who may lose their homes as a result of the COVID-19 economic crisis.
A new state law halts evictions for tenants who prove they have not paid rent as a result of COVID-19, but not for roughly 14,000 households whose cases were adjudicated before March 16.
An executive order signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo Wednesday allows the state court system to continue halting evictions, but does not outright stop landlords from jettisoning tenants whose cases were settled prior to the pandemic. A spokesperson for the Office of Court Administration said the statewide stay on eviction remains in effect, but did not provide a timeline for when tenants may be evicted once again.
“I’m calling on the state court system, please, aggressively follow up on this executive order to protect tenants who simply can’t pay the rent because they lost their income due to the greatest crisis in generations,” de Blasio said Friday. “We need the court system to come in and then we need the state in general to address the bigger questions here.”
De Blasio criticized piecemeal measures to prevent evictions, including a series of executive orders and court directives that have expired.
“It should not be something that just has to be renewed all the time,” de Blasio said. “This needs to be ongoing for the extent of this crisis, and then for several months thereafter, as people hopefully consistently get back on their feet and have the money to pay the rent.”
He also urged the state and federal government to increase rental assistance for tenants impacted by the economic fallout of the pandemic.”
I am looking forward to 2022 when a new – presumably “real progressive” Mayor replaces de Blasio.
I want to see if that Mayor tackles school integration and fights to end the SHSAT admissions exam.
Mayor de Blasio is doing something good — he is taking the heat for addressing the policies that caused more segregation in NYC public schools.
I’ve yet to see the comments from the progressive Mayor candidates saying that they wholeheartedly embrace this. In fact, very few of them want to touch this “third rail” of politics that de Blasio did in trying to make public schools more integrated.
and in too many places the kids who do not take the state standardized test give their school a “zero” score and thus help prove that their public school is failing…
This is a step to provide greater equity for middle school students. It will also promote much needed integration.
The success of their plan depends on how they implement it. I attended a large “integrated” junior high school many years ago, but the integration was in name only. In those days many educators supported homogeneous grouping. There were fourteen sections of students in ascending order by ‘presumed ability.’ I was in 7-1 and 8-1, and I had two black students in my class. By the time the school got to 7-7 or 8-7, the classes were all black and brown. This model promoted racial strife more than justice. If middle schools track students to some degree as many of them do, they should try to only do it for English and math. Cross mix students for science, social studies and all minor subjects. This approach provides opportunities for different students to be together. It is a much better way to truly integrate. The way in which my junior high tracked students created homogeneous islands that moved through the halls together, but never really integrated.
I agree. These kinds of policy changes need to be thought out.
I saw one very large NYC public middle school (450+ students per grade, high poverty, diverse) with a very wide range of incoming students’ abilities.
And while I know many on here hate computer learning, this middle school used a “School of One” math program that seemed excellent. Students came in and sat at computers to learn math at their own pace, but there were teachers who came around to help AND there were regular small group lessons of students with a teacher where students at the same level were being taught the same concepts.
What I thought worked so well with this is that it allowed a student who might not have had a good elementary math education but who turned out to have an affinity for math to quickly move ahead. Even if that student started out learning basic concepts, if he got them quickly, he moved on quickly and did more advanced math concepts, and so on.
I thought this worked particularly well with math, although not with other subjects.
Cross mixing students by abilities in other subjects is relatively easy — but I think the real issue is how one cross mixes students by motivation and behavior. “AP for all” is meaningless, but AP for all who want it, regardless of a score on a test, is not. Motivated students who might not be particularly advanced academically make far better classmates than very smart, unmotivated, disruptive students.
Even in virtually all white high schools, students are tracked in many classes. Tracking happens in private high schools. But I think tracking by motivation is a better system than tracking via a test or a class grade.
Yes!. Some computer learning/programs is/are valid & have actually been enjoyed by students. I recall using “A-Z,” & some of the kids who appeared to have trouble w/pencil & paper math really took off. Also, a Lexia Reading Program, which worked really well–& was enjoyed–by our middle school ESL students. We kept close data on all these programs, & there was remarkable growth (it was NOT measured by “standardized** tests: it was baked into the program for immediate evaluation & feedback as done by teachers, who then could set the programs to more challenging areas (such as w/Math: there was Basic, levels of Algebra, Geometry, etc.), or dial it back if the results showed areas that needed to be remediated.
Of course, this was, as you’d said, NYC, monitored closely “by teachers who came around to help…students …were being taught the same concepts.” That is the key to the success.
And, also, hours do not drag by with students consistently sitting at computers. It’s a good mix & was really exciting for many of the students who’d, before this, struggled in math. Two students I’d had did so well that they advanced into 9th Grade Level Math lessons.
Both they & their parents were very proud!
“This is a step to provide greater equity for middle school students. It will also promote much needed integration.“
How will this provide greater equity? How will this promote integration? I am a current NYC public school parent and see this as having a negligible effect on the schools.
Well, it surely will promote a much-needed heightened sense of chaos for parents trying to plan their children’s education.
@FLERP! I was looking for a response from @retired teacher. LOL
FLERP!,
If anything, isn’t this system much less stressful for both parents and kids?
Is it really preferable for 10 year olds to feel that the only way they can attend a “good” middle school is whether their 4th grade teacher gives them good enough grades and if their 4th grade test scores are good enough, and for 10 year olds to know that their failure to get into the “right” middle school is entirely their own fault?
I do think that this needs to be done with middle schools being cognizant and thoughtful about how to accommodate a range of learners – which is a very big issue, I agree.
But honestly, given the pandemic and lack of grades and test scores, what would your preferred system be?
How can this be done better? I really am curious as to what you think would work?
Lottery assumes that different students have different preferences and that most students will get their highest ranked choice if there is room.
Since this mess is Bloomberg’s doing, the heinous segregation the pandemic has now put a tiny dent into should be called New York’s Stop and Frisk School Admissions policy. Want to go to secondary school? Reach for the sky and hit the wall!