How it feels to be an Asian at an elite NYC public school.

[Tomconroy]

Tausifa looks at the multihued sea of students pouring through the doors of Brooklyn Tech. She expressed puzzlement that a school where three-quarters of the students are nonwhite could be described as segregated. “I have classes with students of all demographics and skin colors, and friends who speak different languages,” she said. “To call this segregation does not make sense.”


The debate over an entrance exam

Critics of specialized high schools argue these institutions are out of step with the zeitgeist and educational practice. Better to cast aside standardized tests and seek heterogenous classes in neighborhood high schools, they argue, than to cloister top students. Some studies, they say, show struggling students gain from the presence of talented outliers. And the entrance exam has fueled the growth of a private and inequitable tutoring industry.

Those who champion specialized high schools point to alumni who became top scientists. With few exceptions, these were the children of working-class and immigrant families. The best students, they argue, should press as far ahead as brains and curiosity might take them.

The mayor and school officials preside over a system of 1.1 million schoolchildren, they add, in which only half are proficient in math and 24% of Black students fail to graduate. As Americans struggle to stay competitive with other nations in science, technology and mathematics, why obsess about the anti-egalitarian sins of a handful of high-performing schools that hold 6% of high school students?

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/how-it-feels-to-be-an-asian-student-in-an-elite-public-school/

Interesting read about the entrance exam to a few eite NYC high schools that have been a traditional way for minorities to prosper. These days asian students are in the majority of those who attend these schools.

[Jim__]

1. Specialized high schools benefit everyone.

Many of the students who get into these schools are not going to be challenged following a normal high school curriculum. There may not be enough advanced students in any given high school to justify they type of advanced classes that would challenge them. Different people have different talents and abilities. We should try to give everyone the chance to develop the talents that they have. Rather than eliminate these specialized schools, we should insure that all advanced students get a sufficient education in their elementary schools so that they have a competitive chance at getting into the school of their choice.

If Black and Latino students are under-represented in these schools, we should try to find out why. If the elementary schools that they attend are below standard, that problem that should be addressed directly not by eliminating specialized schools. Apparently this under-representation is somewhat of a recent phenomena:

That said, the dwindling number of Black and Latino students at these high schools is a great concern and a mystery. Bill de Blasio, when he was mayor of New York, suggested the heart of the problem lay with a biased entrance exam.

That does not reckon with history. Decades ago, when crime and socioeconomic conditions were far graver than they are today, Black and Latino teenagers passed the examination in great numbers. In 1981, nearly two-thirds of Brooklyn Tech’s students were Black and Latino, and that percentage hovered at 50% for another decade.

Black and Latino students account for 10% of the students at Bronx High School of Science; that percentage was more than twice as high in the 1970s and ’80s.

To understand this decline involves a trek back through decades of policy choices, as city officials, pushed by an anti-tracking movement, rolled back accelerated and honors programs and tried to reform gifted programs, particularly in nonwhite districts.

I'd be interested in learning of de Blasio's evidence that the heart of the problem is biased entrance exams. School should offer all students a chance to develop their talents. It should not be a tool to turn every student into a standardized mediocrity.