New York City has a peculiar high school admissions system. To gain admission to the city’s five most elite high schools, one must excel on a highly competitive examination called the Secondary High School Admissions Test. Nothing else counts but that one score on one test. I am not aware of any selective institution in the nation that relies on only one score for admission.
Every year, the media reports with shock how few Black and Hispanic students were admitted. This year may have been the worst yet. Only seven Black students were offered a place of 895 admitted to StuyvesantHigh School. Last year, it was 10. Valerie Strauss wrote about the results: “For 2019, Stuyvesant offered admissions to 587 Asian students, 194 white students, 45 of unknown race or ethnicity, 33 Latino students, 20 multiracial students and nine Native Americans.”
At the meeting of the Jackson Heights Parents for Public Schools on March 16, the discussion of the specialized high schools became heated when a debate erupted between parents who said the exam was exclusionary and racist, and Asian parents who held up posters saying that criticism of the exam is racist. Asian students study hard for the test, do well, and don’t want it to change.
Jose Luis Vilson, who teaches middle school math, has no doubt that the exam is racist.
He writes:
“When news broke this week that only seven black students were accepted into New York City’s Stuyvesant High School, an elite public school that supposedly only takes the most advanced students in the city, I wasn’t surprised. In my 14-year career as a middle school math teacher in Manhattan with majority black or Latinx students, I’ve had thousands of kids who were rejected from magnet public schools like Stuyvesant. It breaks my heart every time.
“Every year, sometime in March, thousands of New York City adolescents receive a letter that tells them which high school selected them. That school day is always a tough one. Some students run up and down the halls, excitedly telling their friends about where they will be spending the next four years. Others, disappointed in their placement, sit solemnly or find a comforting shoulder to lean on.
“I’ve had to console far too many brilliant students who didn’t get chosen for the high school they wanted to go to. They checked off all the proverbial boxes: great attendance, high grades, strong work ethic, and had positive relationships with adults and peers. They studied hard for the Specialized High School Admission Test — an assessment given to eighth or ninth graders for entry into eight of the elite magnet public schools in New York City — for months. Because a student’s score on that test is the only criterion for high school admissions, the stressful three hours spent taking this exam could determine a student’s future.
“As a teacher, I try to assure my students that they will be fine regardless of which school they attend. But I often wonder if we educators are doing a disservice — and perpetuating the lie of meritocracy — by continuing to tell kids that if they work hard and excel then they can get what they want in life.
School segregation in New York City is reaching emergency levels
“Make no mistake: New York City is burning. But unlike the literal and metaphorical burning of the Bronx in the 1970s, the latest fire is happening in our education system as schools continue to segregate at alarming rates. Only 190 of the 4,798 slots, or 3 percent, in the eight major specialized high schools went to black students. This is in a city where a quarter of NYC’s public-school students are black.”
My view:
First, I think it is absurd to base admissions to any academic institution on a single test score. No Ivy League school does that. They ask for grades, essays, teachers’s recommendations, evidence of student interests and passions and service.
Second, when my next grandson applies for high school in New York City, I will actively discourage him from taking the exam or applying to one of the specialized schools. In my view, they are too large and they are academic pressure cookers. I hope he listens to me and applies to a school that has a balanced curriculum and gives him time to explore his interests. I also hope he goes to school with a diverse student body. Oneof thevaluesof public education is exposure to many kinds of people, with many kinds of talents, not just one dimension.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Has anyone else noticed the trend of shocking policy-related events that are in plain sight? There is no need to keep up appearances anymore.
“The Emperor’s new closed mind”
“The Emperor’s naked!”
The child, she implored
“The testing is racist!”
But elders ignored
Or perhaps this is what the elders had in mind all along?
Ignored the child
It would be interesting to see what the breakdown is by family education level. I would bet that Stuyvesant probably skews extremely to students from families with college education, cutting across all race & ethnicities.
That result would be to shut down opportunities for social mobility.
While I could not find family education level, 43% of students at Stuyvesant are classified as economically disadvantaged (This is less than the 72% average for the district). I would expect family education levels and family income levels to be positively correlated. (see https://data.nysed.gov/enrollment.php?year=2016&instid=800000046741)
The exam is the sole criterion for admission.
“I would expect family education levels and family income levels to be positively correlated.”
There are valid instances where one can be lower income and be college educated. Where I live in California, family education level is often noted, but isn’t used conventionally as a marker for potential “achievement gap” intervention.
the cultural norm: building national school expectations and policy around those who have privileged backgrounds
Folks interested in thinking about other admission models might be interested in this working paper from the Research Alliance for New York City Schools: https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/media/users/sg158/PDFs/Pathways_to_elite_education/WorkingPaper_PathwaystoAnEliteEducation.pdf
Among the interesting points made are that 1) high achieving female and Latinx students were less likely to take the exam than other groups of high achieving students and 2) plausible changes to admission criteria were unlikely to increase the share of African American students admitted, largely because other proposed criteria are all highly correlated with SHSAT scores.
This is an extremely divisive debate in NYC. I won’t go into the merits of the Mayor’s proposal, although I disagree with it for several reasons. I will just say that while it true that these schools enroll very low percentages of black and Latino students, the idea that the schools do not have “diverse student bodies” is not true, in ways that are obvious to anyone who is familiar with the schools. My daughter goes to one of the schools where “white” students make up less than 20 percent of the student body. Her classmates and friends, which critics of the schools love to portray as a monolith of “Asians,” come from an incredibly diverse set of backgrounds, far more diverse than the classmates at her selective middle school or zoned elementary school. They are often first-generation English language speakers (this became very clear to me when I attended my first fundraising dinner and most of the parents I spoke to were non-native speakers who struggled with the language). They are interesting and talented, and the notion that these students are “one-dimensional” is, quite frankly, offensive.
I think you make very good points right up to your concluding sentence, which mischaracterizes what Diane wrote. She did not use the term “one-dimensional”. She wrote, “…not just one dimension.” I read “one dimension” as being high-stakes standardized testing, not as a reference to human beings. I read your concluding sentence as being unfair and not relevant to this discussion. I would hope you also condemn high-stakes testing, which, based on your many cogent, incisive comments in the past, I think you do.
That’s not how I read the post. This post doesn’t just say that standardized tests only measure “one dimension” of a person. It says (I don’t want to make this personal to Diane, but I’m just repeating what the post says) that Diane hopes her grandson does not attend one of these high schools because they do not have a “diverse student body” and that she would prefer he attend a school that exposes him to “many kinds of people, with many kinds of talents, not just one dimension.” I read that—quite reasonably—as contrasting people who have “many kinds of talents” against people who have “just one dimension.” To me, this echoes many, many things I’ve heard from people who criticize these schools, who express (consciously or not, I don’t know) the view that Asian students are test-taking robots who are otherwise not well-rounded, interesting people. But if Diane didn’t mean to suggest that the students at these high schools are less “multi-dimensional” than students elsewhere, then I apologize for my inference.
I meant to say what I said. If my grandson listens to me, I will discourage him from applying to one of the “specialized” high schools. I hope he attends a school with strong academics where he meets all kinds of kids, not just the super smart.
FLERP!,
You make a very interesting point about the diversity at Stuy.
The bottom line is Stuy is incredibly diverse! The students come from a huge variety of socio-economic backgrounds and ethnicities. You are absolutely correct about that.
However — and this is a big however — almost none of those students come from the African-American and Latinx population that comprises something like 66% of the NYC public school population!
Those missing populations are ALSO very diverse — the students who are Latinx and Black come from many, many different diverse backgrounds. Many of them are first generation, too.
I truly do not know how to address the fact that the “diversity” at specialized high schools — and you are correct to note those students are diverse — is about diversity within some backgrounds but leaves out groups that comprise 2/3 of the NYC public school students.
In my opinion, SHSAT only admissions is not working. And when the only discussion allowed is “more test prep and better K-8 schools” because having a single exam – the SHSAT – as the only way to admit students to specialized high schools is absolutely sacrosanct, then something is wrong.
The culture of test prep — for ALL students regardless of background — to get into those schools is terrible. It favors the wealthy and puts huge pressure on students who have spent 3 years being excellent students who are led to believe their self-worth is tied only to their score on the SHSAT. It is NOT HEALTHY. Stack ranking children by their performance on a single day exam and making that the sole determinant of admissions is not healthy. Not even for the students who are fortunate to get seats there.
Remember, the admissions process makes it all about the kid. If you don’t score high enough to get in, it is entirely your fault. Everyone understands that a school like Beacon or Townsend Harris takes a lot of factors into account, and lots of great students end up not getting their first choice.
But when it comes to specialized high schools, if you are 13 and you didn’t get your first choice, you have no one to blame but yourself. It is all the fault of the kid. Sure he may have worked hard throughout middle school and has top grades and great state test scores, but he was NOT DESERVING. If he was “deserving”, he would have had a higher score on the SHSAT.
And if you think I am not telling the truth, just read the comments whenever there is any talk about changing SHSAT-only admissions. It is the only way to make sure the most deserving and only the most deserving students get seats.
I have met some of the most incredible students at specialized high schools who manage to travel as long as 2 hours each way to attend, while simultaneously working a job and helping out with family obligations. I stand in awe of them and their ability to succeed academically while juggling more responsibilities than most middle class students can even imagine. I would never want to change admissions so that those students are not still there. But having specialized high schools whose definition of “diversity” excludes students from backgrounds that comprise 2/3 of all NYC public school students needs to change.
I would love to see a counter to de Blasio’s proposals. Something that includes expanding Discovery, perhaps only seating 40% of the students via the SHSAT-only standard and 60% using other factors, and the establishment of one or two new “big” specialized high schools. But just having more specialized high schools doesn’t address what to me is the elephant in the room. Making all admissions based entirely on a one day exam is not healthy or good for anyone.
FLERP! said:
“To me, this echoes many, many things I’ve heard from people who criticize these schools, who express (consciously or not, I don’t know) the view that Asian students are test-taking robots who are otherwise not well-rounded, interesting people..”
I have never heard anything of the sort spoken by critics of the SHSAT-only admissions policy. I’m not saying that someone might have said it, but the majority of people who have issues with it have never characterized the students who are admitted as that.
Also, many NYC parents know that a lot of the students admitted to specialized high schools via the SHSAT are affluent white students — including those from private schools.
Making these kind of statements that mischaracterize what people who oppose SHSAT-only admissions is exactly what is wrong with the debate.
It is impossible these days to be in favor of using anything — anything at all — other than “a student will take the SHSAT and that score will be the sole determinant of admissions. If you even suggest that SHSAT-only is not working, you are immediately called a racist.
The solution is to abolish the specialized schools. In a public school system, access to “special” programs must be extremely restricted. They are a form of tracking of students of all races who are not gifted. These kids can return to their neighborhood schools and accelerate with summer courses, weekend courses and be allowed to skip courses after a “challenge” exam shows they already know the material. This can be made available at all high schools.
Doug Little,
There are no “neighborhood public schools” for high school in NYC anymore. (A very few areas have default zoned high schools) So your suggestion doesn’t make sense unless it begins with “shut down the 400 high schools in NYC and re-configure them all so that each one serves students from a certain area. But it would be enormously complicated since some of those are over 4,000 students and some are 400 students.
Actual NYC residents who support some changes to SHSAT-only admissions are not demanding to completely upend a system and cause chaos. There is some understanding that there are economies of scale with having large high schools that offer a variety of courses with enough students who would want it. In fact, there are a few specialized high schools that are quite small and don’t offer as many choices and many students don’t choose them for that reason.
I have pretty much zero tolerance for educational advantages within a public school system. It is undemocratic.
When Bloomberg became mayor, there were about 110 high schools, most of which were zoned high schools. All wiped out. Now there are more than 400 high schools, some with only 200 students. Some open, some close. Some great comprehensive high schools were closed and replaced with six mini-schools and six separate administrations. No more zoned schools. Twelve kids living in the same building might attend 12 different high schools.
That shift from larger high schools to small ones in NYC must have happened during Bill Gates FAILED small-schools experiment. I’m not sure how much money he threw at that failure since he has been behind so many failures to improve public education in the U.S.
“Bill Gates Education Experiment Fails Again, Taxpayers Foot $300 Million Bill”
“Before discussing in detail the various aspects of the failures of yet another Gates disaster covered in both pieces, it is important to discuss the horrific waste of taxpayer funds that this program generated. As mentioned above, only $212 million of the $575 million spent came from the Gates Foundation. The other $363 million came from local, state, and federal taxpayers. In the case of Hillsborough County, Fla., the Gates Foundation gave $100 million for this misguided experiment, with the county required to bring in additional $100 million. However, the county’s cost eventually rose to $124 million, and now the program is being dismantled after largely failing, leaving the taxpayers out $124 million with nothing to show for that cost — funds that could have been spent on teaching real academics for poor children.”
https://thenationalpulse.com/commentary/bill-gates-education-experiment-fails-again-taxpayers-foot-300-million-bill/
The NYC high schools were broken into small schools largely with Gates funding. The new small schools were allowed to exclude students with disabilities and ELLS for two years to get established. Some closed and were replace by another. The city ran out of names. We even have a High School for the Violin.
I will likely take wrath for what I am about to post, but I live in a school district in MD that serves one of the largest Korean populations on the coast and the next county over has a very large Chinese population. Where our counties meet, there is a blending. The nature of their culture is competition and their children are “trophies”. The asians tend to live grouped into certain areas (we have “asian” schools….) and do not want their children to associate with the majority of the evil and lazy American children. After school everyday, these asian children go off to tutoring, private music lessons or private pay to play sports. Team work/team sport is NOT in their nature. The parents come to this country because we offer free public education, but the parents soon realize that everything here is based off a stupid standardized test and then they can’t help themselves but to send their children off for test prep on top of test prep. There is nothing in the drinking water that makes asian kids any smarter than any other kid. The asian families will forgo food and decent housing so that they can provide test prep for their children. After all, asian children are responsible for taking care of the parents later in life. Ask me how I know this?…..my hair dresser is Chinese (but grew up in Viet Nam) and while I get my hair done we talk….and then my Chinese dentist (who has lived here since the age of 4) comes in for his hair cut. I ask and they tell me how it is.
I don’t think you’ll take much wrath for this, because I don’t think your view of things is out of the norm.
Lisa,
Everything you said rakes shocking bias against Asians. Maybe people like you is the reason why Asian families “tend to live grouped into certain areas”. Yes, Asian culture prioritizes education and values family unity. I think it’s a beautiful thing but somehow you only see evil. What’s so evil about taking music lessons? What’s so evil about playing individual sports? What’s so evil about children taking care of their parents later in life? What’s so evil about parents sacrificing short-time pleasure so their children to take test prep? Does test prep help? Sure, but the children have to also study hard at schools to begin with. Test prep is simply reenforcing what they have learned at school. Those children have to be very committed and disciplined – key elements to success in adult life. “The parents come to this country because we offer free public education…”, I’m sorry, I don’t even know how to respond other than laughing about it. Lisa, my only advice to you is to learn to be more open minded about other culture in this multi-cultural society.
“I will likely take wrath for what I am about to post, but…” is the equivalent of “I am not a racist, but….”.
I’ve got to admit that this thread and some of the comments below make me very uncomfortable. I’ll leave it at that.
@Mia….All I will say is that competition is about “me” but democracy is about “we”. It is not bias against Asians when the truth is being stated. There is nothing wrong with music lessons, but it’s the competition for that 1st chair that’s not good. There is nothing wrong with individual sports, until it becomes a competition of what parent can/will spend more money. There is nothing wrong with children taking care of their elders. What IS wrong is test prep disguised as education. SAT, ACT, AP scores show nothing about the intellect of a child….it just shows how well that child takes a test. I just wish that the asian communities would see high stakes testing (and its evil twin common core) as the scam that it is….because your community is being financially manipulated by these testing companies and their test prep factories. So call me a racist if you’d like…..
“It is not bias against Asians when the truth is being stated.”
Best example of the aphorism, “If you find yourself in a hole, quit digging” that I have read in quite some time.
“I often wonder if we educators are doing a disservice — and perpetuating the lie of meritocracy — by continuing to tell kids that if they work hard and excel then they can get what they want in life.”
What’s to wonder about?
Belief in AMeritocracy is like belief in the tooth fairy, without the money under the pillow.
All standardized tests reflect the socioeconomic rank of students’ families. As such, schools are more likely to select middle class white students, if test scores are the only measure used. A better idea would be to use multiple measures for choosing students. Interviews, projects, grades, teacher recommendations can all play a part in order for the process to be fairer to poor students.
Retired Teacher,
43% of students at Stuyvesant are economically disadvantaged, 74% are asian.
If you look at the white student population in the 2017-18 9th grade class at Stuy, only 20 of the 174 white students in 9th grade (11%) were economically disadvantaged. While at Brooklyn Tech, which admits students with much lower SHSAT scores, 25% of the white students in 9th grade were economically disadvantaged in 2017-18. That does suggest (although is not proof) that disadvantaged students are more likely to have lower SHSAT scores. The same disparity is true when you just look at the percentage of low-income Asian students in each school’s 9th grade class that year — a much greater percentage of the Asian students in 9th grade at Tech are economically disadvantaged when compared with the Asian students at the 9th grade at Stuy. (Note: most Asian students at Stuy are still economically disadvantaged, but at Tech a significantly higher percentage of them are.)
Brooklyn Tech is a specialized high school whose diversity does not almost completely exclude African-American and Latinx students. Those students are still severely underrepresented at Tech, but not in the way that they are at Stuy. And unfortunately this becomes self-fulfilling since some (not all) high scoring African-American and Latinx students who could have chosen Stuy do not because of such an extreme lack of diversity.
Overall, over 63% of the students at Tech were economically disadvantaged in 2017-18. At Stuy, only 46% were. So the percentage of economically disadvantaged students of any race is 37% higher at Tech than at Stuy. Stuy requires the highest SHSAT score, and Tech one of the lowest. So it seems a good question to ask how much the SHSAT score correlates with family income.
When people say the specialized schools are too large, I ask for clarification, as the four of the five newest are not large at all. They have around 125 +/- per grade with Staten Island twice (?) that size. While it is true that Brooklyn Tech is huge, you cannot use that label for all the specialized schools.
How large are Stuyvesant and Bronx Science?
Stuyvesant just admitted nearly 900 to the freshman class.
I thank Mr. Vilson for his analysis and wish him the best.
I also wish him the best.
He’s gonna get raked over the elephant poop for pointing out the elephant in the room.
Boy, he sure is, SomeDAM. I worked at the High School of Economics & Finance in Lower Manhattan for ten years (I just left there on November 1, in fact). I saw many of the disappointed students he describes show up there, hoping for the best. They were, alas, always disappointed to learn that this relatively well-rated school (in the NYCDOE ratings cosmology, and published in the high school guide) was in fact dismal, overseen by an administration (all but one of them, really) of comprised primarily of imbeciles, bullies and moral cretins.
I always felt sorry for those kids….
‘The Test is the Best, the Test is the Best’ apologies to Mr. Mojorisin, and of course it’s not. Once again, hypercompetitivity gone off the rails.
I question the need for elite specialized high schools in the first place. This is z form of what we Canadians call streaming or Americans usually call tracking. It is just a plane bad idea. If very superior students exist, and they are rare, k much prefer accelerated learning, moving through regular high school much faster with out of school time enrichment.
This kills the acceptance, test wars.
I have always wondered why our fellow Americans to the north make so much more sense than those of us to the south.
Is it something about the long winters up there in Canada that give you more time to think?
Or maybe more time to drink?
In a strange way Canada was a colony almost 100 years longer than USA and maintained a strong link to the UK much longer. The flip side was many British workers with powerful links to the Labour Party (yes we spell it that way) came to Canada and pushed ideas like National Health Plans, what you call Medicare for All.
In most cities the public schools are under funded. Some schools are still unsafe and violent. This was true even many years ago. I attended a selective school because my zoned school was a disaster, and the selective school offered more opportunity. I am sure I would have been fine in a good comprehensive public high school, if that had been an option at the time. It is our inequity of resources that fueled so-called reform in the first place. Instead of addressing poverty, inequity and segregation, we scapegoated teachers for all the problems in urban schools.
I took a look at my high school year book. My selective high school was about 18% black in the graduating class. I am sure the numbers were even higher before the end of the freshman year attrition. Some students decided to return to their zoned schools because they found the academics overwhelming. The entrance criteria were more flexible, I believe, than the schools in NYC.
We don’t have specialized public schools here- it’s not a large enough system and I suspect people here would object- there’s a lot of “class conflict” just with regular public schools.
BUT, we do sort kids. We absolutely have a higher and lower track. Sometimes it’s overt with testing and qualifying for advanced math in 8th grade, and sometimes it’s more subtle with nudging certain kids to the vocational school (which is good, BTW, it’s a solid high school regardless of “vocational” status).
So we’re all doing this to a greater or lesser degree. Cities just have the sheer numbers to set up whole high schools. We just use advanced classes. Our “college bound” kids and our “vocational” kids barely see one another by junior year and that sorting starts in 7th grade.
Diane,
You’re right in that Stuy can be, but isn’t necessarily an academic pressure cooker but you’re wrong about other schools having a more balanced curriculum. By virtue of being a large school Stuy has a super robust set of electives and selectives and over the years it could be argued that its humanities at times outpaces the sciences. It also has a large thriving music program.
Regardless about how one feels on the test everyone is ignoring the fact that these schools are set up for students with a certain level of academic preparation.
Like it or not, if you take kids that aren’t prepared for Stuy’s math sequence one of two things will happen:
The kids will fail and setting them up for failure in this way is just cruel
or
The school will have to lower its standards which is a disservice for those currently thriving in their environment.
This of course means that the politician, educators, and communities have to engage in a much harder conversation than just yelling “TEST GOOD” or “TEST BAD.”
I just want to point out that it is entirely possible for a student to graduate from Stuy having taken pre-calc as their highest level math class. I definitely think there is a higher concentration of truly brilliant math students at Stuy than at any other public high school, but that doesn’t mean that all students have to be super strong at math — they can be strong writers or historians.
I think that it is not a good idea to use phrases like “setting up for failure” or “lower its standards which is a disservice for those currently thriving in their environment.” The Big 3 specialized high schools are so large that all of them should be able to accommodate smart and motivated students who might not want to have extreme acceleration in every subject even if the majority do. There is nothing inherently wrong with a student who chooses the Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2/Trig, Pre-calc sequence. Having a class for students who want that less accelerated sequence should not have any effect on those who do since classes for them would also be available.
And maybe those non-accelerated math students’ presence in a humanities class — where they shine and other students may not — does a service to the other students and not a disservice.
Diane,
You’re right in that Stuy can be, but isn’t necessarily an academic pressure cooker but you’re wrong about other schools having a more balanced curriculum. By virtue of being a large school Stuy has a super robust set of electives and selectives and over the years it could be argued that its humanities at times outpaces the sciences. It also has a large thriving music program.
Regardless about how one feels on the test everyone is ignoring the fact that these schools are set up for students with a certain level of academic preparation.
Like it or not, if you take kids that aren’t prepared for Stuy’s math sequence one of two things will happen:
The kids will fail and setting them up for failure in this way is just cruel
or
The school will have to lower its standards which is a disservice for those currently thriving in their environment.
This of course means that the politician, educators, and communities have to engage in a much harder conversation than just yelling “TEST GOOD” or “TEST BAD.”
And the kids know the difference here. They know when they’re in 8th grade that if they’re not in the advanced math class they’re not getting the 9th grade advanced math class, barring some miracle. Ohio has College Credit Plus, where they have to take a placement test to take college courses in high school and they cry when they fail the test- it’s become one more ranking mechanism.
SO NYC has these big famous schools, but in a public system aren’t we all ranking them after the younger grades? We did in my public high school and we do the same in my son’s public high school. He basically “goes to school” with 75 other kids, not the 400 total in the school- the 75 who were ranked and sorted into the advanced group. It’s like a school within a school, really.
So, Diane, what if they got rid of the test and used wholly subjective measures and Black and Latino children were still excluded by subjective decisions and racial bias, which we know exists (or many of us know exists)?
Because we’ve seen that in disciplinary decisions, right? That Black and Latino children are punished more frequently and more harshly than white children? That’s a subjective decision.
What then? How do you fix that? Wouldn’t you then want a number? A (flawed) but at least facially objective measure?
It’s fine to say “numbers are too narrow” and they are, but the flip side of that is people are imperfect and they use skewed judgment. Sometimes. Randomly. In ways that are hard to measure.
There’s an equity argument for standardized tests. The argument is everyone gets the same one.
An all too common problem is not with the numbers from a single measure. Rather, the problem is not knowing when differences among the numbers and/or differences between the numbers very likely mean nothing or very likely mean something. This not knowing begs inequity; knowing begs equity. Numbers ranked will always fail to reveal knowing, so will always beg inequity.
I will not be surprised if these “academic pressure cookers” that rely too heavily on single test scores also come with higher suicide rates for students.
Life Rehearsal
College ready in kindergarten
Bachelor’s in first
PhD in second grade
Life that’s well rehearsed
Which highlights the need for specialized preschools, with entry based on a single test of course.
Graduation in third grade
Start working at age nine or ten
With no end in sight
If you can’t find a job
Homeless at nine and beyond
But there is one option if you are talented
Get out and go busking
and put out a bucket
And here is one nine-year-old doing just that:
Santa Monica, California
Do you think Karolina’s life will be defined by a test score?
Some of those buskers are not only very talented but actually make a lot of money.
I went to see a folk singer once years ago who told the audience he made over $100k per year playing guitar and singing on street corners.
And no, his name was not Bob Dylan.
In fact, I can’t even remember his name, just that he was not well known outside the folk crowd.
Lloyd,
You can tell that she just LOVES playing violin.
That’s what it should be all about.
When I was a junior at my selective high school, we all had to go outside and wait about two or three hours on one side of the building. A freshman had jumped out the window of the third floor and committed suicide.
As long as we are speculating, I would not be surprised if 1) the social isolation and 2) mind numbing triviality of the courses they are forced to take in their traditional zoned high school come with higher suicide rates for highly gifted students.
We could, of course, not speculate and look at the research. Here, perhaps, is a place to start: http://positivedisintegration.com/Delisle1986.pdf . It is one of the few articles that is not behind a pay wall that I could find in a quick search.
Very strange comment. I attended a traditional zoned high school and was neither isolated nor suicidal.
In British Columbia Canada the fight over streaming or tracking took place in the 1960s and tracking lost. All high school students take courses at the same level of difficulty. Success in these courses will gain you entry to very fine universities.
There are a very few schools that offer math courses at a lower level for those who find the regular course difficult but very few and no other subjects.
There is no particular advantage to switching schools because all the courses are the same and all lead to the same place.
Not strange.
The paper i cited talked about gifted students regarding themselves “as a minority of one” in their schools.
My middle child’s AP chemistry teacher set the curve on the final exam based on the highest score in the class. My middle son decided not to sandbag on the exam and scored 50% higher than the second highest score in the class. Do you think that increased his popularity among his classmates?
Luckily our family was in a position to pay tuition to the local university for our middle child to take courses as a special student. These did not count toward high school graduation, but served to keep his intellectual interests alive. He never took a high school math course after he turned 15, and never took a high school science course after he turned 16.
I wasn’t depressed at my high school, but I was stressed as it was very competitive. I had some friends, and I was a workaholic. I didn’t particularly enjoy the school, but I did learn discipline and time management. I was a survivor. Plus, I enjoy learning.
I don’t think teens commit suicide from boredom. Thanks to elective choices in HS, if any are left after this insanity with testing was forced, forced, forced on the country by the likes of deplorable Bill Gates, Bill Gates, Bill Gates, all a teen has to do is survive for about an hour and they are on their way to the next class and eventually to the electives they signed up for because that’s what they wanted.
When I was in high school, I don’t remember ever being bored enough to kill myself … because I had books to read. If I was interested in a class for any reason, I broke out the book I was reading. And since I hated testing, I never, never, never, let it get to me. Do it, Get it over and get out that book I was reading.
I probably read more than 1,000 books before I graduated from HS.
Lloyd,
I think it is beyond boredom. I suppose that you might characterize Sisyphus as being merely bored, but I certainly think there is a bit more to that.
Suppose that you were required to come into class and add one digit numbers for three hours, told that unless you do that you will not graduate from high school. The next day you were told that you had to add one digit numbers for three hours, told that unless you do that you will not graduate from high school. The next day you were told that you had to add one digit numbers for three hours, told that unless you do that you will not graduate from high school…….
Any thought on social isolation?
Are you talking about a classroom you have personally observed or are you just insulting math teachers in general?
As the parent, I’d tell them to F off if they wanted to sew on more digits to my child. Four fingers and a thumb for each hand is enough
No testing. No testing. No testing. No testing. No testing.
Boredom is in the eyes of the beholder and in most if not all classes there will be students that are not bored. Some students love learning. Some students hate to make the effort to learn so they become bored.
I too was a person who often performed at a level above my peers. Even when young, however, I realized that it was all about us, not me. Throughout my life, it has been all about us.
Special schools seem like a good idea when you look at it from the standpoint of one student, but why can there not be special programs for all who need them in all schools? Wait! I know why! It is because the funds to offer these programs are restricted to larger urban and suburban areas where a small number of politically active parents may be riven off the electorate using these schools to woo such people away from collective excellence.
Diane
I think what TE is describing is what it must be like for his own students to listen to him drone on about how smart his son is.
Dr. Ravitch,
I am talking about a classroom that my middle child attended as a 14 year old sophomore in high school. As a 16 year old senior in high school my middle child was taking an advanced graduate course in abstract algebra at the local research 1 university.
I don’t think its even close to insulting to say that courses mathematics taught in high school are far less challenging than graduate mathematics classes at PhD granting institutions. What IS insulting is to assume that student’s age determines their ability to understand mathematics.
Kansas is very different from any of the math classes I’ve seen around the country. Move.
Dr. Ravitch,
In your experience high school mathematics courses are roughly equivalent to PhD graduate courses in mathematics? New York Public must have a very different level of instruction than the rest of the county.
I have not seen high school classes that were the same as PhD graduate courses. That’s insane.
Dr. Ravitch,
I certainly agree that high school classes are not the same as advanced graduate school classes. But some high school students will thrive taking advanced graduate classes and be discouraged if forced to take the high school classes that they are offered. If your blog title about a “better education for all” is to have any credibility, you must count these students as part of “all”.
Clearly, your brilliant son needed to be in a PhD program while in high school.
It is not realistic to expect any high school to offer PhD programs.
I know you like to argue. Go argue with your wife, your brilliant son, or your students. Not me.
If TE is making an argument about the need for specialized high schools to prevent boredom (and suicide??) in the gifted, he is going about it in a very odd ( even counterproductive) way.
It’s hard to see how someone who was so advanced in math at an early age that he could take graduate level university math courses at 15 could ever NOT be bored in a high school math class even at the most advanced specialized high school in the country.
Directing students like his son to college courses is clearly the preferred route for everyone — better by far than creating specialized high schools (that teach graduate level math classes??) to handle the utterly miniscule fraction of the population with such advanced capabilities.
But I doubt TE even realizes what he is doing above (other than bragging about his son, that is).
If his son is bored and suicidal, he should seek help.
Diane,
I agree, but that whole conversation above was just bizarre.
We agree.
I think there is a logical fallacy referring to using one case as the basis for a general principle.
Diane said to The know you like to argue. Go argue with your wife, your brilliant son, or your students. Not me.”
I just had a funny though reasonable thought.
What TE revealed about his son above combined with the entirely plausible assumption that his son’s smart gene(s) came from the mother might explain why TE goes outside his immediate family (including here) to argue.
To be more accurate, I should have said
The smart alleles came from the mother.
And the mother’s smart allele is clearly dominant.in this case.
The test may be racist, but what’s most racist and elitist in my opinion was the slow elimination of after school, honors and gifted programs from NYC’s public schools over the past few decades. I grew up outside NYC and obviously didn’t qualify for the specialty schools, but my friends and cousins who lived in the city were being prepared by the very public schools they attended. Those programs are no longer there due to purposeful underfunding and overwhelming the curriculum with garbage mandates. Has anyone found a correlation between that and the decrease of African American and Latinos in the specialty schools?
Calling the SHSAT “racist” is an insult to any student who sat for the exam. Has anyone bothered to examine the items to see if they are biased in nature? I would suggest the test favors intelligence, hard work, and supportive parents regardless of race or ethnicity. A more holistic admissions policy enters the realm of the highly subjective and would fail to solve the problems faced by impoverished minority students.
See sample test items here:
https://www.schools.nyc.gov/docs/default-source/default-document-library/specialized-high-schools-student-handbook
It’s funny you linked to that sample test! Do you remember when Diane Ravitch posted the first question on the sample test (page 46 in your link)? It was a “revision” question that she and many other posters on here got wrong. The NY Times had re-printed it for their readers.
Choosing the “correct” answer was entirely dependent on whether a 12 or 13 year old decided that it was “correct” to make a sentence “more precise” by adding information that the student had no way of knowing whether or not was actually true!
The students most deserving of a seat in specialized high schools could be identified by their knowledge that the way to revise a sentence to make it “more precise” is to add details that could – for all they knew – be absolutely incorrect.
A 12 or 13 year old who decided it was wrong to revise a sentence by adding a detail to a sentence when the reader had no idea whether that detail was actually true, would be deemed to be less deserving of a seat than a 12 or 13 year old who chose to add a detail despite knowing that detail might very well be false.
I agree it is wrong to characterize that poorly written question as racist. But I might argue that the question was “biased” toward students who had good tutors or test prep that taught them how to approach such questions if they are bright students who do not naturally think like a standardized test maker.
I would never think that whether or not a student chose the answer that the test makers decided was “correct” somehow identified the most talented or strongest students.
It’s clear that the wealthy families see more value in their “ordinary” high school then getting into these selective schools. Presumably because the time spent on non-test prep activities are weighted higher on college applications. It’s only the kids who can’t afford the non-test prep activities that have to slog their guts out to get into the selective schools.
It would be interesting to know how many kids purposefully tank the exams or decline admittance because they don’t want to go to a school where they will be so culturally isolated.