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Making the Case for Change

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Making the Case for Change Redefining High Performance for Entrance into Specialized High Schools MAKING THE CASE FOR CHANGE Policy Recommendations by the United Federation of Teachers Specialized High School Task Force March 2014 GL12043 Redefining High Performance for Entrance into Specialized High Schools: Making The Case For Change Policy Recommendations by the United Federation of Teachers Specialized High School Task Force March 2014 Inequality is rising in New York City, where the gap between the rich and poor has never been greater. Our best public schools represent unique opportunities to level the playing field. Yet, if we are not careful, these institutions can serve the opposite role, increasing the gaps between those with the best educational opportunities and those without. (i) Every child in every neighborhood and every borough deserves to go to a high-quality high school. Every student should have access to a high school that they feel good about. And the students performing at the highest levels naturally seek out and expect the most challenging academic experiences that will place them on the path to greater post-secondary achievement — most likely in a highly competitive environment. That is, certainly, the expectation of their parents. The United Federation of Teachers Specialized High School Task Force believes that every child in our school system — all 1.1 million New York City students — deserves the highest quality, most diverse, state-of-the-art education available. Even with the excellent high schools that we currently have throughout our system, many are not neighborhood schools and many students do not have the opportunity to gain access to these schools. Hopefully, in the future this will be less of an issue as the quality of neighborhood high schools improves. For children who are entering or currently attending middle school, however, we can’t afford to wait. Right now, for the coming school year, we believe the New York State Legislature, the New York City Department of Education and the existing group of Specialized High Schools can enact a series of changes to the admissions process that will extend opportunities across the city to a larger pool of deserving students, removing their barriers to access. The Current Specialized High School Landscape Each year, more than 75,000 8th-graders from across the five boroughs undertake a rite of passage by researching and selecting a high school to attend. There are almost 500 public high schools that students can choose from in the Department of Education’s “School Choice” system. Among those hundreds of high schools, a select group of nine makes up New York City’s Specialized High Schools, long considered by many to be the city’s elite public institutions. Those schools are the Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Latin School, Brooklyn Technical High School, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College, High School of American Studies at Lehman College, Queens High School for the Sciences at York College, Staten Island Technical High School and Stuyvesant High School. 1 Competition is steep for a coveted seat in one of the city’s Specialized High Schools, and with good reason — gaining admission to these highly regarded institutions can open doors of opportunity usually reserved for students in private schools. With an average of only 5,000 offers being given each year and a decreasing number of proven local options for excellence in all of New York City’s neighborhoods, demand is extremely high. Gaining entry to one of these prestigious schools is based on just one factor: scoring high enough on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT). (ii) No other aspects of a student’s academic record, including independent projects, leadership achievements or extraordinary academic success, are considered as part of the admissions process. The SHSAT has deep roots in New York City. It was first put into state law for three schools — Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech — in 1972 as part of the Hecht-Calendra Act. The other five schools use the exam as a matter of DOE policy established under the Bloomberg administration and are not bound by the law, based on an analysis conducted by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. (iii) The exam, which is typically administered in October, has two sections: verbal and math. Achieving a high score on the exam requires not only outstanding performance but an understanding of the mechanics and scoring of the test. Student scores are ranked from highest to lowest, and in descending order, students are offered seats in their preferred schools until each school has no more seats available. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) and its co-plaintiffs filed a federal civil rights complaint in September 2012 on the Specialized High School Admissions Test. (iv) A confluence of issues and emerging voices led to the LDF’s decision to challenge the civil rights impact of the single-test admissions policy of New York City’s Specialized High Schools. The widening gap between New York City’s wealthy and poor, with the middle class regulated to a dwindling statistic, raises the stakes on equitable access to quality education. The strikingly low percentage of black and Latino students admitted to the schools in relation to the number of students who took the test compelled the group to investigate further. Questions arose about the single high stakes test as the sole determinant of entry. Specifically, were predictive validity studies ever conducted to validate that the tests were able to predict student performance? An investigation of other elite and highly rated schools in New York and across the country revealed that the city’s Specialized High School peer group uses multiple pathways to define who merits a seat in the entering class. The overriding concern is whether barriers to entry that amount to exclusion have become the hallmark of the city’s highly prized public high schools. “There are so many students who could excel at our schools if they could just walk in the doors.” — Chanika Perry, English teacher, Brooklyn Latin School Teachers Taking Action Over the past 12 years, UFT educators, child advocates and elected officials have routinely confronted the negative impact that the city Department of Education’s policies and practices have had on children who are struggling academically. From the viewpoint of many academic high school teachers, high achievers and gifted learners deserve the same diligence and attention to deepen and broaden their education experience. These students, too, have needs. 2 Teachers at the Specialized High Schools around the city began speaking with their colleagues at their home schools as well as with UFT peers. In both formal and informal settings, these educators gradually recognized that they had similar concerns and had noted anecdotally what a review of the data would later validate. The Specialized High Schools’ decreasing racial and socioeconomic diversity, coupled with a rapidly expanding test-prep industry, seemed to grant greater access to students with greater economic advantages, while limiting access to those with the greatest need. In the wake of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s joint federal civil rights complaint against the use of the single admissions test for entrance into New York City Specialized High Schools in 2012, educators from eight of the city’s Specialized High Schools were invited to participate in a task force to scrutinize the admission policies for their schools. A resolution passed by the UFT Delegate Assembly — the union’s 3,400-member highest decision-making body — empowered the task force to offer solutions born from classroom experience to both lawmakers and the new administration as they grapple with issues of educational access and equity. At the heart of the task force’s work was to bring the educator’s voice to the discussion of the impact of relying on one high stakes test and more broadly to redefine what constitutes a high-performing student who merits entry into our elite public high schools. From the outset, there were strong concerns that the Specialized High School system cannot rely solely on a test score, but must also credit additional measures including a student’s dedication and commitment to academic achievement. After an extensive effort that included engagement over the course of the 2012-13 school year through the fall of the 2013 with school-based members, Damon Hewitt and Rachel Kleinman of the LDF and with one another, the members of this UFT Task Force believe that the city Department of Education must revisit its admission policies for Specialized High Schools and create a system that fairly and equitably measures students’ abilities and merit. “This committee, bringing together the perspectives and experiences of educators in these schools, collaborated to create a proposal that would allow greater access of all of New York City’s students to these schools. Achieving consensus after months of debate and conversation was challenging but was made possible by the investment of time and honest conversation each member of this committee made.” — Janella Hinds, UFT Vice President for Academic High Schools Access and Opportunity Limited Even a casual observer can see the profound inequity in the admissions demographics. The just- released data on the SHSAT results and admissions offers for the upcoming 2014-2015 school year showed that the number of the city’s black and Latino students admitted to the Specialized High Schools was once again far lower than their share of the student population. In fact, according to one news report, “More black and Hispanic students took the entrance exam to get into the city’s elite high schools this year, but their pass rates were as dismal as ever,” officials said.
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