The Flaws of the New York City High School Admissions System
What’s so wrong about the Specialized High Schools Admission Test? Canal Street News student journalist Claire Shin reports on inequality in the New York City school system.
Some critics of the SHSAT say the DOE should level the playing field for all groups by increasing the availability of free prep resources and tutoring for Black and brown neighborhoods. Photo by Alexandria Misch
For the past seven years of my life, I have never known anything besides a highly competitive school environment.
I come from a middle-class Korean family that has always placed education on a high pedestal; my elementary school years, which most Americans view as stress-free because they constitute “childhood,” were marred by days starting prep for the Specialized High Schools Admission Test (SHSAT), which come eighth grade would determine my entrance into the best public high schools in New York City. My middle school reinforced the powerful notion that my admission into these schools would shape my future; the SHSAT and high school were the chief anxieties of many kids in my grade. Now, I attend Stuyvesant High School, which, with all its prestige, is notorious for housing some of the most driven, competitive kids in New York City.
At the end of May, I attended an hour-long discussion held by the new Department of Education (DOE) Student Voice manager, Amallia Orman, to consult us high schoolers on what we thought post-COVID-19 high school admissions should look like. As I talked more with fellow teenagers whose backgrounds were astronomically different from my own, I realized that I am incredibly privileged to be surrounded by people who placed so much emphasis on the SHSAT and high schools––that there are some people who didn’t even know of the test’s existence until long after the deadline. There are some people who are more than intelligent enough to thrive at Stuyvesant but simply did not have access to the resources that enabled me to perfect answering SHSAT-specific questions and acing the test.
As I became more and more educated in others’ circumstances, I noticed that the discussion quickly evolved into something much more urgent: specialized high school admissions in general.
It’s no secret that there is a scary lack of racial diversity in specialized high schools: Only four percent of Stuyvesant high schoolers, nine percent of Bronx Science high schoolers and 13 percent of Brooklyn Tech high schoolers identify as Black or Latinx; the overwhelming majority (73 percent in Stuyvesant, 65 percent in Bronx Science and 60 percent in Brooklyn Tech) identify as Asian. By contrast, around 40 percent of New York City public school students are Hispanic, and over 25.5% are Black. But economically disadvantaged (meaning they qualify for free or reduced lunch) represent 46 percent of Stuyvesant’s population, 46 percent of Bronx Science’s population, and 62 percent of Brooklyn Tech’s student population. are considered economically disadvantaged (meaning they qualify for free or reduced lunch.) It appears as though many of the Asian students in these accelerated schools get in despite their economic status—not because of it.
People from within and outside Stuyvesant (where I attend high school) have different opinions as to what causes such racial disparities. The point of contention here has to do with whether the SHSAT itself leads to the lack of racial diversity at specialized high schools, or whether there are greater factors at play—like class. It makes sense that students who have the resources to pay for prep classes and private tutors are getting into better schools, But there are clear communal barriers preventing a large number of (disproportionately Black and brown) NYC high schoolers from being able to gain entrance into specialized high schools. Only during Amallia Orman’s panel did I discover that there are some people who never learned what the SHSAT was, which was shocking to me, considering it was such a big part of my middle school life and my parents committed so much money to prepping for it. Chloe Lopez-Lee, a student at Weill-Cornell Medical School who did not go to a specialized high school, confirmed.“No one is born with the knowledge that they should take the SHSAT. And at 13 years old, without an external influence encouraging them to do well on the SHSAT, it is unlikely that the child will take the exam, let alone ace it.”
Even so, economically disadvantaged (meaning they qualify for free or reduced lunch) represent 46 percent of Stuyvesant, 46 percent of Bronx Science’s population, and 62 percent of Brooklyn Tech’s student population.It appears as though many of the Asian students in these accelerated schools get in despite their economic status—not because of it.
According to a rising sophomore from Stuyvesant who identifies as Chinese and wished to remain anonymous, the answer may lie in differences in cultural values. He stated that despite his low-income status, his parents were willing to pay thousands of dollars in prep and pressured him into studying for hours every night in the months leading up to the SHSAT.
“There was a popular phrase in my [majority-Asian] middle school,” he told me. “‘Stuy or die.’ Of course, no parents were going to murder their kids for not gaining entrance into Stuyvesant, but there was a lot of pressure to get in,” he said.“My parents paid so much for prep and pushed me so hard because they thought that it would end up being good for me in the long run, and I ended up getting into Stuyvesant.”
As a Korean, I remember being exposed to this same stress as a seventh-grader. My parents took money out of their retirement savings because they believed it would be worth it for me. East Asian culture has an emphasis on delayed gratification: sacrificing today for a better tomorrow. That’s why Asian children tend to spend their childhoods in summer prep academies instead of going on vacation or attending summer getaways to the Caribbean. Asian parents believe that their kids embody their “tomorrow”—and they’re willing to go to extreme lengths for academic success.
I have also witnessed firsthand the sheer communal differences between my sheltered Asian middle school and that of other places in the city. But some people need to spend those thousands of dollars on food and basic necessities, not testing prep. And Asian-American parents shouldn’t have to sacrifice so much for the betterment of their children’s futures. Black and Latino families (which are disproportionately poor shouldn’t have to feel that burden, either. How, then, can we fix the SHSAT––or the entire system––to ensure that we’re able to unlock the intellectual capacity of underrepresented minority groups who are unable to make specialized high schools just because they can’t afford to practice scrambled paragraphs with an experienced tutor?
Maria-Sarai Pridgen, an African-American and a rising senior at Stuyvesant High School who was featured in the New York Times for an article addressing the lack of BIPOC at Stuyvesant, said the DOE should level the playing field for all groups by increasing the availability of free prep resources and tutoring for Black and brown neighborhoods. This way, we overcome the communal barriers that prevent many BIPOC from gaining knowledge about the exam and succeeding in it, Pridgen told me in an interview. She also credits integration as an important way to prevent the toxic separation of school cultures. However, because the test itself isn’t inherently racially discriminatory because it does not ask for race and grades solely by numbers (Pridgen says that it’s even “dangerous” to assume that the test is prejudiced, because it “purports the logic that somehow Black and Latinx students aren't able to excel on the standardized test… which is not the case”), she believes that it should be kept as the only measure for admission into specialized high schools.
Lopez-Lee, on the other hand, calls for a more radical approach: to take into account attendance, grades, a less weighted entry exam and “potentially a short interview” because, though they would require more time and effort, such measures will “humanize” the high school admissions process.
It’s undeniable that something needs to be done about the severe lack of diversity in specialized high schools, and that large-scale change must be enacted by the DOE. While the process will require many more resources and a greater concentration of effort into the education sector, it’s necessary to ensure that we are able to cultivate the talents of all high schoolers in New York City, regardless of race or class.
