Diversity in the City’s Top Schools: Many Parents Like the Goal, But Not the Plan
The Mayor wants to replace the big test, SHSAT, with top grades from each school, and some communities are up in arms
By Yuan Yuan
Local parents and volunteers in front of a public library in Dyker Heights, helping register Chinese American to vote. Photo by Yuan Yuan
Leo Ni, just as he and his family expected, has been enjoying himself, making new friends and taking his favorite science classes in his new school, I.S. 187, a highly selective middle school. He got into it this fall with an outstanding fourth grade report card and a 99 percent on the state test.
What’s unexpected? He has started to go to multiple protests against Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal to phase out the current admission test, known as the SHSAT, for eight of the city’s nine specialized high schools. Instead, seats at those high schools would be reserved for the top five to seven percent of eighth graders in each middle school.
Leo is against the change. He wants to go to one of the specialized high schools, he said, “but even if I do go to a specialized high school, if they change the SHSAT, then it’s not really gonna be specialized anymore. Because the top percent of the kids in some schools aren’t the same as the top percent of the kids in other schools.”
Leo is hardly alone. Many Asians in the city, who have fared well in admissions to the specialized schools, are up in arms about any effort to do away with the entrance exam. But they are not alone, and opinions on this complex issue are nuanced and varied and all over the map. The Mayor has his hands full.
The Background
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The nine specialized public high schools are one way that New York City supports the educational needs of students who excel academically and artistically, according to the NYC Department of Education website. Except for LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, which uses auditions as an admissions screen, the other eight take students based on the results of the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT), a three-hour long test in English and mathematics.
The test goes way back, and for three of the schools is enshrined in state law. In 1934, Stuyvesant High School implemented a system of entrance examinations, and the idea was later expanded to include the newly founded Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School — known as the Big Three. The rest came later.
For the Big Three, the SHSAT is enshrined in a New York State law, known as the Hecht-Calandra Act, but not for the other five: Brooklyn Latin School, High School of American Studies at Lehman College, High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College, Queens High School for the Sciences at York College, and Staten Island Technical High School. De Blasio could drop the test requirement at those schools without a change in the law, but he has instead aimed to try to drop it via legislation for the eight specialized schools — a heavier lift.
The problem that the city wants to solve: a severe racial imbalance at the specialized schools. Black and Hispanic students currently constitute about 66.5 percent of the whole student body in the city, but about 9 percent of the students in the specialized high schools. The mayor’s plan would aim to bring that up to 45 percent.
Why Some Asians Are Upset
Leo’s ’s school, I.S. 187, or The Christa McAuliffe School, is predominantly Asian, and is known as the top-sending middle school to the city’s specialized high schools. Last year, out of 251 students from I.S. 187 who took the test, 205 received specialized high school offers, meaning 75 percent of all its eighth graders got at least one such offer, according to the New York Times.
Under the Mayor’s plan, I.S. 187, would be a target, said Ni Xuhui, Leo’s father and a first-generation immigrant from Fuzhou, China. He came to the United States in 2001 with an economics degree from Fuzhou University and currently runs his own computer shop with his wife in Dyker Heights.
“Last year, over 200 students in I.S.187 got into specialized high schools,” he said. “If they change the admission process, no more than 20 students could go, which is ridiculous. It’s just ridiculous to simply even up an elite middle school like 187 and other average or below average middle schools.”
He spoke at a booth in front of the public library in Dyker Heights put up by a group of local parents in District 20 to help register Chinese American voters. They are backing Senator Martin J. Golden, a Republican who is a firm supporter of keeping the test. Also there was Chen Yifang, mother of a five-year old and a two-year-old. Chen immigrated to Dyker Heights at 16 and attended “a pretty bad public high school” in Bensonhurst, she said. She barely knew any English, but she said she spared no efforts in working her way up, and finally got a PhD from Stanford. She thinks the implication of eliminating the SHSAT is more than just muddling the specialized high schools: “It’s leaning towards an education system in the city that will eventually prevent talented people from excelling.”
“Essentially what the Mayor is doing is that he is trying to prevent lower-income families, Chinese-speaking parents, a lot of them from poverty-stricken neighborhoods, from fulfilling their American dreams,” Chen said. She looked to be at the edge of tear.
Chen managed to attract the curious passersby, many of whom were Mandarin or Fuzhou dialect speakers, with a few opening questions, “Are you a citizen? Have you voted before. Did you hear the Mayor’s plan to keep our children out of the good schools?”
In June, Leo’s father, Ni Xuhui, and other Chinese American parents from Brooklyn and Queens, formed the Residence Alliances groups on WeChat, the most popular Chinese multi-purpose messaging, social media, and mobile payment app, to organize Chinese-American citizens, many of whom never voted before. The idea is to register them and to make their voices heard. And specifically, to oppose the change in the test for the specialized high schools.
A Test of Test Preparation?
But some parents disagree. Jim Devor, a Stuyvesant graduate from 1967, sees the tests as a “terrible form of screening.” His main argument is that the SHSAT no longer measures aptitude as it once did. “When I took the exam in 1963 or ’64, there was no test prep, none, I mean, it didn’t exist. But it stopped being that sometime around 1978,” he said. “It became then who is best prepared for the test.”
A former president of the Community Education Council District 15, a local body responsible for ensuring that parents and the public have input in educational decision-making at the school district level, Devor is not against all testing. “I’m for targeted admission, and I’m for screening,” he said. “But if you are really testing one’s accomplishment as measured by a so-called objective test, why not use the seventh grade ELA and math scores?”
His daughter went to Bard High School, a Lower East Side public school that is a partnership with Bard College, which allows students to begin their college studies after completing their high school studies in the ninth and tenth grades and graduate with a Bard College Associate in Arts degree in addition to their high school diploma.
Bard High School gave its own test as a screening mechanism, and then interviewed the students, Devor said. “It turned out to have about a third Black and Hispanic and two thirds White and Asian, which isn’t perfect but it’s not bad and it’s certainly a lot better than the SHSAT schools, which are almost uniformly bad,” or getting worse, meaning more segregated, he said.
Devor’s other reason for being dubious about the tests is that students who do very well on one subject, say math, but not good on another, say English, have a better chance of acceptance than students who do moderately well on both, due to curving the scores.
The Symptoms vs. The Disease
But for Serena Teng from Fresh Meadows, Queens, mother of a son who’s a graduate of Bronx Science and a daughter who’s at Stuyvesant, the SHSAT makes scientific sense because the scores are curved. “Currently, the test is the only color-blind, fair and objective way of measuring whether a student is a good fit for the specialized high schools,” she said. “Even kids who tend to go overboard on one subject can still have a chance to be accepted if they are good enough in that subject.”
Teng is also an active member of the WeChat Group, Residence Alliances in Queens. She criticized the Mayor’s plan for attempting to “destroy” what she calls New York City’s signature product — the specialized high schools, which over the years provided ladders for the city’s large number of immigrants to succeed.
She argues that the main problem with the current education system is not the testing but the overall poor education quality of the elementary and middle schools. “Many K-8 schools don’t really teach much, that’s probably why a lot of people need extra tutoring,” she said. “But there’s no point to suddenly lower the threshold at a particular point simply because you don’t do the job well before that point.”
Maliyka A. Muhammad, a mother of a two-year-old son in Bedford-Stuyvesant, has a similar point of view. She does not think the test is the issue. For black and brown students, she says, “we don’t need an easy way out, we need preparation to be able to take the test. And preparations for those tests don’t just start in eighth grade. It’s a pipeline.
“I totally understand what the Mayor is trying to do — I’m all for desegregating. I just personally don’t feel ending this test is really addressing the root of the problem.”
Muhammad herself only went to public school for first grade, but after that she was either in a Muslim private school or homeschooled, because her mother didn’t have faith in the public school system.
Her mother felt that way then and Muhammad says she still feels that way now, at nearly 40, especially in her neighborhood, despite the efforts by the local superintendent. “And it’s unfortunate because I totally believe that quality education is a human right, and is a basic need,” she said.
After years of requests from parents and community leaders, District 16, where she lives, got its first gifted and talented program two years ago. For Muhammad, the future she plans for her son will be either in that one gifted and talented school, or in a private school. If necessary, she is prepared to move from her home, where she has lived for the past eight years, to wherever it takes for her son’s education.
“I want my child to go to a school that’s possible for him to succeed in this world, in society. I just don’t feel that a general based public school, the way things are now, is how he’s going to do it,” she added. “And I do believe that regardless of where he goes, I do have to supplement him.”
Some months ago, Muhammad joined Parenting While Black, a Central Brooklyn-based group that calls itself an independent and nonpartisan community of parents. Its formation was triggered by the Mayor’s plan. The group submitted a letter responding to Mayor de Blasio’s proposal, in which they wrote, “we stand in solidarity with Latinx parents who are deeply dissatisfied with the announced overhaul to the admissions policies of the Specialized High Schools. Our concern is the framing of the proposal which unnecessarily stokes animosity between communities of color, while at the same time failing to address the heart of the issues underlying our concerns with the City’s approach to education policy for Black children.”
There are similar calls from the Chinese community. “If the Mayor truly wants to tackle the diversity issue, the first thing he needs to do is trying to understand the needs of different communities,” said Ni Xuhui, Leo’s father, “to find out how Asian communities managed to achieve their educational goals, and to learn about the struggles of other communities, instead of just pointing at the numbers and coming to the conclusion that this is discrimination.
“We as Chinese Americans traditionally prioritize education and pour our family’s very limited resources into this priority. You can hardly expect a kid to do really well in school without a supporting family behind.”
In addition to family support, Teng argued that test prep is not the whole story behind the high percentage of Asians in the specialized high schools. “Stereotypically, the reason a lot of Asian students get into the specialized high schools is because we are crazy about tutoring and test prep, which isn’t always true,” she said. “My daughter never went to tutoring, yet she’s thriving in Stuyvesant. And like her, students there are highly motivated and scholastically strong.”
A Test that Decides the Future?
James Sosa is preparing to retake the SHSAT next month, in hopes of switching to a specialized high school for the 10th grade next year. He didn’t get a high enough score on the SHSAT the first time, but he gained entry into a high school honors program this year.
He is the first-born son of Jovita Vergara-Sosa, a second-generation immigrant who was born and raised in Sunset Park and a stay-at-home mom with four kids. She started a volunteer-led community group, whose focus is to keep Sunset Park children reading and learning throughout the summer as well as to expose them to activities such as chess, a running club, and an SHSAT prep club that’s not offered at their local schools in Sunset Park, District 15. She is also active in the Madres y Padres de Sunset Park (Sunset Park Parents) Facebook group.
Currently, she says, her neighborhood’s schools are “severely overcrowded, thereby impacting quality of learning and the extracurriculars they offer — the science and art rooms have been eliminated to make space for additional classrooms,” Vergara-Sosa wrote in an email to The Brooklyn Ink. “My boys’ school has no gym, no auditorium and a minuscule PTA fund.”
Meanwhile, she points out that the SHSAT is a difficult test, not only because of its advanced course content but also because the student must master the test-maker’s language. It takes lots of practice and requires year-long preparation, she said.
“We continue to prepare on our own since paying for a prep program is beyond our means,” Vergara-Sosa wrote. Her reading and learning group started its first SHSAT prep club last summer. Five students, including her son James, participated.
“I don’t know how it’ll go in November, but simply studying for the SHSAT has helped him improve his grammar, math, and expand his vocabulary,” she wrote. “It’s been a long two-year journey, but my intention is to teach my child by way of life lesson: Never to give up, even if the odds are against him.”
She agrees with Chancellor Richard A. Carranza that a single test cannot measure a student’s intelligence, but believes that exams set standards to meet. “But if these standards are more accessible to acquire by those who able to pay for training,” she asked, “is it truly a fair process?”
To her, the test should remain only if prep programs are established as of sixth grade in neighborhoods with underrepresented youth, such as Sunset Park, which gives students there two summers to prepare.
Marie Bathelmy, of Bushwick, remembers how nerve-racking it was when she took the SHSAT test in the 90s, thinking that her “whole future” would depend on that one score. But now, as the director of scholarship operations at the nonprofit Children’s Scholarship Fund, and after working in multiple educational nonprofits and private schools, she doesn’t think the test is the best measure of how well the students potentially will do in the specialized schools.
Born in Haiti, Bathelmy came to the U.S. with her parents right before her third birthday. Now the mother of a fourth grader, she sent her son to a private Catholic school. Her son is still in elementary school, but she is aware of the ticking clock, that high school is approaching. And since his school also encourages students to take the SHSAT, he will need to prepare for it as well as for tests for different to high schools depending, on where he decides he wants to go.
A Zero-Sum Game or Not?
The idea of eliminating entrance exams is already getting a trial run — in one New York City school district, for middle schools. On Sept. 20, Mayor de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carranza approved a Diversity Plan to increase middle school diversity in Brooklyn’s District 15, after a year-long community-driven process and proposal. The diversity plan will remove testing screens from all 11 middle schools in the district and will prioritize 52 percent of the seats for students from low-income families, English Language Learners, and students in temporary housing. The point is to match District 15’s demographics, according to a press release from the Mayer’s Office.
Mark Bisard, a father of two in Windsor Terrace and a current member of Community Education Council District 15, attended a meeting about the plan on October 9, joined by hundreds of district parents who flooded into the auditorium at the I.S. 136 Charles O. Dewey School in Sunset Park. The meeting helped introduce the plan, which as a city pilot program will completely eliminate the tests for the district’s middle school entry, starting this fall.
Bisard is in favor of it. “There are folks who think if I don’t go into this one school, it’s game over, but that’s just not the reality in New York City that has amazing schools. District 15 has a lot of amazing schools,” he said. He sent his two sons, in sixth and eighth grade respectively, to M.S. 839, a new middle school that opened in 2015 near Prospect Park, because it’s geared towards diverse populations.
But he recognizes the two sides of the high school entrance story. “There is the population who work their whole life to take the test, and there’s population who only barely know the test exists,” Bisard said. So, the Mayor has to find something that serves both groups.
“Right now, the solution that’s been offered is a zero-sum game — it hurts one population or the other,” he continued, “I don’t think it’s zero-sum game, there’s a balance. But it shouldn’t be just one test.”
Among the parents who attended the meeting was Raul Chiodo, a first-generation immigrant from Colombia and father of a fifth grader in Carroll Gardens. He also thinks that the standardized test should only be part of the admission process, but that it shouldn’t be completely eliminated.
“I can see both sides of the argument,” Chiodo said. “There are people who can’t afford to get tutors. There are people coming from another country to have a better life and are willing to work harder to give money to tutors to help their children. And there are parents well-off and comfortable who may think, why can’t I take advantage of the resources I have? Why should I be penalized for that?”
But Li Heiyu, who used to live in District 15, feared the Diversity Plan so much that she moved, earlier this year, into District 20. She thought the District 15 plan would lower her child’s chance of getting into one of the specialized high schools. Li is a friend of Ni Xuhui, Leo’s father, who echoes her feelings. “Our main concern is that if you mix all the students of different levels of academic performance, those who find it hard to catch up will take away most of the attention from the teachers,” Ni said. “At the end of the day, what we really care about is how much the kids actually learned from schools.”
Ni says he is not necessarily against change. “If there’s a better solution than the SHSAT, we’ll embrace it,” he said. “But simply replacing it with the percentage plan is just like stealing the fruit we’ve got after all these years’ hard work. How is that fair?”
To Ni, “The Mayor really needs to focus on providing more preparation programs, more gifted programs, more seats and more specialized schools, rather than pitting one racial minority against another.”
Yet segregation is a big problem, notes Bisard, a former teacher himself.
He says he is also well aware of the overcrowding problems in every level and agrees that the root problem remains a lack of great schools for all potential students. “For me, they have to figure out how to reach to these communities where there are students just waiting to be the next rocket scientists,” he said. “But they don’t have a pathway to get there”