Title: Segregation at NYC's Specialized High Schools

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We're going to talk to former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich later in the show. It should be really interesting. When he was labor secretary under President Clinton, he was a big opponent of NAFTA. Now that President Trump is in office and undoing all these trade deals, including NAFTA, even undid a lot of NAFTA in his first term, so much of the progressive critique seems to be that "Hey, what are you doing with all this tariff stuff?"

It's really going to be interesting to get Robert Reich's take on that later in the show. Have his politics changed? We'll remember the 1999 big anti-World Trade demonstrations in Seattle. Anybody remember those, right? Big iconic from the left protests. Well, what about now? Robert Reich on that. Also, on the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics chief after disappointing job numbers came out.

It's looking to the world like China, a lot of people are saying, where the politics drive the official data numbers rather than the other way around. I'd like to talk to Robert Reich, as he's got a new memoir that traces some of that history and his involvement in it coming up. We begin today with something that, maybe surprisingly, is not much of an issue in the New York City mayoral race.

It's the latest numbers from New York City's specialized public high schools, so-called specialized, and what they reveal about racial segregation in this, one of the nation's most-watched education systems. You know the schools, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, among the best public high schools in the country. As most of you know, admission is based almost entirely on one standardized test: the SHSAT.

Year after year, the demographics of the student body reflect not the City, but the test, and in many ways, the resources required to prep for it. Just 3%, these are the new numbers. Just 3% of offers to 8 of the City's elite specialized high schools this year went to Black students, 3%. Less than 7% went to Latino students. That's a drop from last year, even as those two groups make up nearly two-thirds of the City's public school students.

Now, politically, Mayor Eric Adams once called this a "Jim Crow school system." Since taking office, his administration has offered little in the way of reform, and none of the major mayoral candidates have proposed significant changes to the system, and hello, that includes Bronx Science alum, Zohran Mamdani. Let's talk about this with Alex Zimmerman from Chalkbeat. That's the education news site, Chalkbeat. Alex has been reporting on the admissions data, the delayed release of this year's stats, and what it all says about political will and public education in the City. Hey, Alex, welcome back to WNYC.

Alex Zimmerman: Thanks so much for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, you can help us report this story or react to it. Are you a student, parent, or educator who is currently in or has had experience with the specialized high schools? Good, bad, mixed? Do you think the SHSAT should be kept, changed, there should be additional criteria, scrapped altogether? All opinions welcome, and your personal experiences.

Love to hear from some teachers at those schools. 212-433-WNYC, parents and students like I say, alum everybody, but love to hear from some people in the system at the moment. 212-433-9692, call or text. Just go over some of the numbers first, Alex, okay? What's changed? What hasn't?

Alex Zimmerman: Yes, this year we saw offers to Black and Latino students drop a little bit. Like you said at the top, about 3% of offers at the City's 8 test-in specialized high schools went to Black students. That's down from about 4.5%. About 6.9% of offers went to Latino students. That's down from 7.6% a year ago. We saw the proportion of offers that went to Asian-American students was about 54%, which is a little bit higher than the previous year, and the proportion of offers that went to white students was about 26%, which is roughly the same as last year.

Brian Lehrer: One way just to take it out of the percentage category for a minute and talk about raw numbers, because it's really an eye-opener. At Stuyvesant, out of 781 seats, only 8 went to Black students. It's one thing to say just a few percent. It's another thing I think emotionally for people when they hear just 8 out of 781, just saying.

Alex Zimmerman: Right, yes. 8 out of 781, that is actually not so dissimilar from previous years. It's not the first time there's been a single-digit number of Black students who received offers to go to Stuyvesant. Just to fill out the other numbers, about 509 offers went to Asian students, 27 went to Latino students, and 142 went to white students.

Brian Lehrer: What does the SHSAT, the single gatekeeper test, measure? What are they looking for? Because there are certainly defenders of the system who say, "Look, these are called specialized high schools for a reason. They're looking for students who are going to thrive in these environments, whether it's very fast-paced learning or whatever it is, and maybe, for a lot of historic segregation and other socioeconomic reasons, it's coming out this skewed." What is the test looking for? What do these schools really want in their students?

Alex Zimmerman: Yes. Fundamentally, the tests are English and math standardized exams, but they are not directly aligned to middle-school curriculum, so they're not necessarily testing in the same way that the state standardized tests are, or even exams that students might take in their core classes. There is a lot of preparation that students do for the SHSAT, and there is some evidence that the SHSAT does predict success at the specialized high schools to some degree.

One purpose of the test is that those schools are really trying to select for students who are really academically motivated and are willing to spend some time preparing outside of the rest of the high school admissions process to get in, and by that measure, the test does produce that outcome, right? If you talk to students who attend these schools, they're extremely motivated.

One of the real benefits that students often cite, if you talk to them at the specialized high schools, is that they're full of students who are where it's cool to be the kid who's studying all the time. By that measure, the SHSAT does what it's supposed to. If you care about the schools being representative of the rest of New York City, critics of the test point out that it doesn't achieve that at all, and there is also research that suggests that other measures, like grades, are also predictive of student success in high school, so the SHSAT is not the only measure that could likely achieve that outcome.

Brian Lehrer: You talked about how much studying outside of the curriculum from the classroom it takes to do well on the SHSAT because it's often not curriculum-based, and I think Janet in Crown Heights is calling in with some experience along those lines. Janet, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling.

Janet: Thank you. I took the test when I was an eighth-grader 50 years ago and didn't get in. My daughter, she did a lot of prep. We even paid for the Princeton Review, and she got into Brooklyn Tech. She's a graduate now of Olin and Oberlin, and John Hopkins. I don't know what other people are doing. I know what I did, and also, I'm a high school teacher, and there was nothing, nothing in the New York City public school system teaches you how to take these tests or prepares you for the test.

Sometimes they had a special program which my daughter participated in, and that was run by the New York City Board of Education. I don't know what other people do, but you really have to be prepared, and I don't think most kids these days really want to put in the time to prepare for these tests, and then, and then it's very expensive to do it. Thank you. That's what I wanted to share.

Brian Lehrer: Well, let me ask you a question, Janet. With your experience as a student and a parent, and a high school teacher, why do you think the results come out as racially disparate as they do? Here's a text from another listener who writes, "Most of the Asian students accepted at these schools, and we know it's disproportionately Asian, come from low-income families, and many are first-generation." Do you have a theory as to why it comes out as racially different as it does?

Janet: Well, I think that when my daughter was doing it, her cousin says, "You're crazy, and you're going to become crazy because you study too much." I know that. I used to talk to my students. "Why do you think that Asian people do well?" They thought they were smarter. I feel that in China, I know about China. I know about Japan, really, that it's a history of taking that test.

It's a test in China that if you study for that test, you could be the poorest person in the world, but if you pass that imperial test, you could become a high public official. I feel that there's a culture. I'm a Black American. I don't feel that it's in our culture that studying is that important. We don't see it. We don't see it, and many people study hard in Black American culture. I know I did. I think for 5,000 years, they were taking that test, and it's just in their culture.

Brian Lehrer: Janet, thank you very much. Alex Emmerman from Chalkbeat, this is the hot button, right? The third rail is why it comes out as culturally different and disparate as it does, and Janet gave some of her takes on that. For you, as an education reporter, what do you hear from the experts?

Alex Zimmerman: Yes, I would say that there are a number of interlocking reasons. You just cited one big one, which is that there's been a really big increase in test prep over the last 15, 20 years. The caller mentioned that they tried to get into a specialized high school 50 years ago. 50 years ago, it was very common for people to just take the test cold and not do a lot of prep.

Now there are hundreds of test prep centers all over the place, and families do spend thousands of dollars to prepare for them, and so that does generate some differences in preparedness. I would also say that if you talk to students or others at predominantly Black or Latino schools, there just isn't the same nudge in a lot of cases where a guidance counselor is telling students about the specialized high schools and about preparing for them.

Even though this dominates the political conversation sometimes, when these results come out, there are a lot of communities and schools where the specialized high schools just aren't really considered, so I think there are just real gaps in knowledge among different student groups, too.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a dad, Chris, in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Chris. Thanks for calling.

Chris: Hi, Brian. Your guest just said exactly what I was going to say. My son. I worked with my son to get him into Brooklyn Tech. This was five years ago, and I've been trying to call on this issue every year since, by the way. He wanted to go to Brooklyn Tech, and so we put him with a tutor, and he wasn't scoring as I thought he should be scoring. When I started working with him, I realized it's because he had never seen the material before.

Because he's in seventh grade, it hadn't been taught to him as yet. You have to take this test as you enter eighth grade. He hadn't seen any of the material before, and had I not been able to work with him, he would not have been able to get in, and he was always very bright. That wasn't the thing. As parents, we didn't know. We didn't understand that the test was off of a curriculum that the kids hadn't been exposed to as yet, and it's completely unfair.

I think for a lot of Black families, I'm a Black father, for a lot of Black families, you just don't know. No one tells you that the kid has not seen the material; you need to do some other sort of curriculum with them. No one tells you, and so how is anyone supposed to do it, regardless of how smart the kid is or whatever?

Brian Lehrer: Do you think there's racism in the system that winds up with more Black students and Black families not knowing that than, say, Asian students, Asian American families?

Chris: I don't think it's necessarily outright racism. I think the Asian families, it's now in the culture, it's now in their network, so they know what they need to do beforehand, and so because of that, they come forearmed, right? I don't personally think that is directly racist, but I think it is inherently unfair because I believe that the other families, not just Black families, other families that just simply don't know that this test is on stuff that your kids have not seen.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you one more question. Just in your experience, this may only be relevant to you, but maybe it is an indication of what some other parents think. Why did you want your son or what did he want to go to Brooklyn Tech to go to a specialized high school? What were you looking for? What was he looking for in that type of high school education?

Chris: I would tell you, this was really his initiative. We had him in an Adventist school, and that's where we were fine keeping him. He wanted to go to learn to build robots. From a little boy, he was very tech-focused, and he wanted to go to learn to build robots, and that was the place that had the program, and that's what he wanted to do. That's why he wanted to go to Brooklyn Tech.

Brian Lehrer: Great story. Chris, thank you for calling. We really appreciate your input. Actually, Alex, that's a really good story that indicates why they're called specialized high schools, right? I don't know that they're all so specialized in the way that Brooklyn Tech might be. It's in the name, Brooklyn Tech, and here's a family whose kid wanted to grow up to build robots, so, yes, a technical high school. Is that what the specialized high schools are in most cases: specialized?

Alex Zimmerman: Yes, I think there's a really big range in programming. I would say, honestly, a lot of the reason people want to go is that sort of very rigorous academic environment, and that exists across a range of different kinds of programming at these schools. I don't think there's a single model across all of them. I think the thing that they share is that they're trying to be accelerated and trying to offer an analog to what private schools can do, but without the need to shell out tuition dollars or the need to wiggle your way in through an admissions process that might have criteria that are somewhat subjective. The case for the test is that it is just this one measure, and nothing else matters.

Brian Lehrer: Therefore, neutral merit-based. When you compare that to the vague and exclusionary admissions criteria at selective private schools, which might be looking at extracurricular involvement, letters of recommendation, so many other subjective data points, to its defenders, the SHSAT can seem more objective and more fair.

Alex Zimmerman: Right, yes.

Brian Lehrer: The reality is more complicated, right?

Alex Zimmerman: Right. Yes, it doesn't matter whether you're a legacy student. It doesn't matter whether you donated to the school, right? It is this one thing, and it is something that a lot of-- especially in lots of immigrant communities over the years, have seen as a ticket into the middle class, and I think that there is also research that--

Brian Lehrer: It's also a ticket to elite colleges and universities, which is, I think, for a lot of people, one of the main motivators, if not the main motivator, for getting your kid in.

Alex Zimmerman: Right. I think that's right. I think there is actually a body of pretty rigorous research that suggests that that narrative is not quite true in the sense that students with similar qualifications who attend schools elsewhere end up with similar SAT scores and end up with similar college admissions offers. The difference between going to a specialized high school and going to a different school does not seem to have an enormous impact on those two data points.

Now, they might matter for other reasons, right? They might matter in terms of the social networks you can build, and they might matter for other outcomes later in life that we just don't have as much rigorous research on. In terms of the question of like, "Are you going to get into a good college?" there does not seem to be a big measurable benefit from attending a specialized high school.

Brian Lehrer: I did not know that, and I find it very surprising. Has there been any analysis? I'm sure there has, over the years. Maybe a better question is, what's the latest analysis of racial or socioeconomic bias in the exam itself?

Alex Zimmerman: Yes, that's a great question. Aside from the outcomes that we see, I'm not sure there's been a super recent assessment of whether the test itself is biased in some fundamental way. It is interesting. Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, his position used to be that the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test should be abolished and has shifted his stance a little bit now that he's a mayoral candidate to basically arguing that there should be a more rigorous analysis of whether the test is biased, and so that's something that he's currently calling for.

Brian Lehrer: This is a good point at which to take a break that we have to take because I wanted to shift to the analysis of this issue in the context of the mayoral race and particularly Mamdani with his focus on equality and inequality, obviously in his campaign, no longer calling for abolition of the test, and we'll talk about Mayor Adams no longer calling this a "Jim Crow school system," or at least not as it relates to abolition of the SHSAT.

We'll take more of your calls and texts as we continue with Alex Zimmerman from the education news site Chalkbeat on the latest shocking, unless you know the history, because it's always this shocking, results of the racial breakdown of who got admitted to these specialized high schools based on this one test. Out of 781 seats at Stuyvesant, for example, only 8 offers went to Black students for the incoming school year. We'll continue in a minute.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Mahrer on WNYC as we talk about the results of the latest New York City specialized high school admission tests and the offers to the schools based solely on those tests. Because it is a single test criteria, just 3% of offers to 8 elite specialized high schools went to Black students. Less than 7% went to Latino students, and we're talking about why and what, if anything, should be done about it, with Alex Zimmerman covering the story for the education news website, Chalkbeat New York.

Before we get explicitly into the candidates, Alex, here's another text. It says, "The specialized high school setup is inherently racist, but I don't think the focus is on the specialized schools themselves, and as a teacher, I can see many exciting and attractive aspects to being a student or teacher in one of them. The focus of the racism," writes this teacher, "is the disinvestment across the rest of the public school system."

They write, "Whereas every school should be fundamentally solid and have options for all learners, they do not. The specialized system becomes an excuse for whiter, more privileged families to ignore the disinvestment in public education. The smaller New York State class size bill is one small and long-overdue step in a better direction." What were you thinking as you heard that text? Disinvestment, are the resources that go to schools in different neighborhoods that unequal at this point?

Alex Zimmerman: Yes, it's a really good point, and I think it's important to put the specialized high schools in context, right? They represent about 5% of high school enrollment in New York City. They're a fairly small slice, so they get all this outsized attention because they're widely considered to be some of the most prestigious public schools in the United States. There are all sorts of inequities across the system in terms of, in terms of race and class.

You can see that in PTA fundraising. You can see that in access to advanced coursework. I think if you look purely at the number of dollars that a school gets from the City, there is actually a somewhat progressive funding formula in place that sends more dollars to schools with more high-need kids. Interestingly, that same formula also sends a little bit of extra money to the specialized schools.

There have been some arguments over the years about whether that is fair, whether you want to spend somewhat more resources at schools that have kids who are generally less high-needs than the rest of the system. That has been an equity question that has surfaced over the years, too.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a historical take from William in Maplewood, who says he attended Brooklyn Tech in the '70s when the demographics were much different. William, you're on WNYC. Hello.

William: Hello, Brian. Yes, I attended Brooklyn Tech in the '70s when it was about 50% Black in the '70s and early '80s, and I think 13%, 14% Hispanic, and at that time, test prep, they used to say, "You can't study for standardized tests." The test prep was, "Get a good night's sleep, bring a couple of Number 2 pencils, and just take the test." I grew up in a housing project, low-income, and there were at least 15 students in the project who were attending Tech in various grades.

When we look back on it, I'm still friends with some of them. It was life-changing. We didn't even appreciate, at the time, how life-changing it was. We were just complaining how we were getting so much more homework than the kids attending other high schools and just working so much harder. My mother would not let me drop out. I was thinking, "I'm going to transfer. It's just so hard."

At the end of the day, I got into a great college, went to Columbia Business School. I'm running a $50-million organization now, and it's life-changing, and I think from what I understand, New York is the only, the only city that has a single test for its exam schools as the criteria for admission. I think one thing that other schools like Tech and other cities will go with the top 10% of the class, class ranks, at least one other criteria, because there's so much untapped talent that's not getting the opportunity to get this first-class education that Brooklyn Tech provides.

Brian Lehrer: Can I ask you, William, what you think of what former Mayor de Blasio wanted to do? It didn't go through, but he had proposed admitting the top students at every middle school, the top few percent of students from every middle school, so it would be based more on their overall academic records than a single test. Do you think that would be good?

William: I think that would be great. Because if they're the top students, and they're getting a crappy education, I attended one of the worst junior high schools. They were called intermediate schools in Brooklyn, and yet I still passed the test. If they're working hard, they're going to keep working hard. When they get to Bronx High School of Science or Stuyvesant or Tech, they're going to keep working hard.

They're doing the best they can in the system they're in. That's not going to change just because the bar is higher and the expectations are higher. I think that would be a great start. It's a disservice to a lot of young people. Talent is widely distributed. It's unevenly developed. Opportunities are just not widely distributed. This would be one way to even the playing field.

Brian Lehrer: With your 50 years of experience as an adult, I'll throw one more listener text at you and get your reaction. Then we'll talk to Alex about experts' take on this, and you know, William, and Alex, you know this is something that always comes up, very bluntly put by a listener who writes, "I believe it's primarily the fault of the students' parents, who either don't or can't orient their children in the right educational direction." William, I'm sure you've heard that.

William: Yes, of course, I've heard that. Do you want to hold the kid responsible for a parent's lack of knowledge, lack of understanding of how the system works? These cram schools in parts of Queens, they start cramming for the specialized test in third grade on Saturdays. You shouldn't hold the parents responsible for that element of a kid's development. You're already saying that school is mandatory, right? Regardless of whether the parents want their kids to school or not. This is just taking it--

Brian Lehrer: Yes, next step.

William: That's already the-- Yes, exactly.

Brian Lehrer: I appreciate your call. Thank you very much. Alex, how about you on that, and what experts say to that very simple critique, or simplistic as the case may be, that we always hear?

Alex Zimmerman: Yes, I think if you talk to experts and integration advocates, they will say, if you look at the demographics of these schools and look at the test, and you asked this question earlier about, like, "Is the test biased?" I think some people, like critics of it, argue that, of course, it is. Like, "How could you justify an outcome like that without thinking that bias is in play here?"

Especially because there are lots of Black and Latino students across the City who are quite academically capable, and you would almost have to believe that that wasn't the case to justify some of the outcomes, at least that is an argument that lots of integration advocates make in response to these kinds of numbers.

Brian Lehrer: How about that de Blasio proposal: admitting the top students at every middle school, rather than basing admission on the standardized test? Why didn't that go through, and how would that change the student body, not just demographically, but qualitatively, who those kids are educationally, if that's been studied at schools like Stuyvesant and Tech, and Bronx Science?

Alex Zimmerman: Yes, that's a great question. Under de Blasio's plan, they would have admitted the top-ranked students at every middle school, and because the City's middle schools are so racially segregated, that would have led to a much more representative incoming class of the specialized high schools. The City did some projections at the time about what the demographics would change to.

If I'm remembering correctly, about 10% of the offers are currently going to Black and Hispanic kids, and that would have increased to about 45%. Now, on the flip side of that, it would have roughly halved the number of offers that go to Asian American students, so when de Blasio proposed this, there was enormous outcry among Asian American families and leaders and among the alumni of a lot of the specialized high schools, who just saw that as a big threat to their access to the schools.

Because the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test is enshrined in state law, it would require action in Albany to change that, at least the three largest specialized schools, and there was just not very much appetite in the state legislature to change that.

Brian Lehrer: Other cities have tried race-neutral forms of trying to increase diversity, geographic quotas, holistic approaches to admissions. Is there any data from other cities that could inform the New York debate?

Alex Zimmerman: Yes. I think de Blasio's plan to integrate the specialized high schools was based on some research that found that it was the surest path to integrating those schools, and you had also asked a question earlier about, "What would the profile of those students be?" One critique of that plan was, "Well, there are lots of weak middle schools, and maybe being at the top of your class at a weak middle school would mean that you wouldn't be prepared for the academic rigor of a specialized high school."

The City released some statistics at the time that showed that students' grades and state test scores would not be dramatically different. The state test scores would be slightly lower, but the grade point averages would be about the same, so they were really making the argument that, if you did the top 10% plan that de Blasio proposed, you wouldn't see, at least on paper, very much difference in terms of the academic qualifications of the students who are arriving.

Brian Lehrer: On the politics of the mayoral race, this doesn't seem to be an issue. I mentioned Mayor Adams once calling this a "Jim Crow school system." Has his administration taken any concrete steps to change how admissions work to the specialized high schools? I think his comment was about New York City public schools generally. We could have, as we've done many times in the past, but maybe it's for a different conversation than this one, could have a broader conversation about segregation in the school system overall, not just at the specialized high schools. Do you know what Adams was referring to specifically when he said "Jim Crow school system"? Did that include, or was it pointed specifically at the specialized high schools? What's his record as mayor?

Alex Zimmerman: I would want to go back and double-check to be 100% sure, but my understanding is he was talking in the context of the specialized high schools and high school admissions more broadly, and the answer to your question about whether Adams has proposed any changes to the admissions at the specialized high schools is no, his administration has not sought any admissions changes at those schools and has not really advanced any integration efforts more broadly, which has frustrated a lot of advocates who felt like they were getting at least some traction under the de Blasio administration.

What the Adams administration has done is open new schools in neighborhoods that have historically lacked access to accelerated programming. In some neighborhoods, they've opened new screened high schools, so high schools that take students' grades into account when they admit them, and have argued that that is an effort to expand opportunity to students, and they've made the argument that we're focusing too much just on the specialized high schools; we need to expand opportunities in other ways, too.

There shouldn't be this scarcity about the specialized high schools. Now, there are other trade-offs of doing that, right? If you open new screen schools, then it's very likely that in other high schools nearby or across the City, you will have fewer students who are arriving on grade level, and so there's a real concern that you'll end up with more schools that are only educating students who are behind.

Brian Lehrer: Another candidate named Andrew Cuomo was governor when de Blasio was mayor, and you reminded everyone that this change cannot just be enacted at the City level. Any change to the specialized high school admission system has to be passed by the state. Had Cuomo explicitly, as governor, taken a position against reform?

Alex Zimmerman: That's a great question. His position during the campaign is basically that we should leave the SHSAT alone and that we should expand access to test prep and other ideas about spreading awareness, which are ideas, frankly, that have been tried over the years. The City does have some public test preparation efforts, and those have really just not moved the needle.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and what about Mamdani? You started to describe an evolution of his position before I mentioned he is a Bronx Science alum. What was his position? What is his position?

Alex Zimmerman: Yes, his position at least as recently as 2022 was that the SHSAT should be abolished, and his position running for mayor, he's been way less vocal. He's been way less vocal, frankly, about education in general. He doesn't have very many K-12 education policy proposals yet. In terms of the specialized high schools, he is basically arguing that the City should just study the exam and try to determine whether there is bias in play there.

Interestingly, he has mentioned school integration on his platform. He has expressed some concern about the degree of school segregation in New York and wants to advance some proposals from an advisory group that was convened a few years ago. He hasn't really said in detail what that means or what specific policies he would advance.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Well, that's interesting. The cynical political analysis take, this could apply to all of them, but in Mamdani's case, as well, he's building his electoral coalition on a group that very much includes a lot of Asian American voters, right? East Asian as well as South Asian helped him in the primary, and the SHSAT admission system is relatively popular in those communities.

Maybe he has a political motivation to be shy. I don't know if it's that cynical. He's going to be on on Thursday, as I mentioned. We'll ask him for his take. The other part of what you said is also very interesting that he's coming up, and we'll ask him about this, too, with ideas for a larger desegregation of the City schools system-wide, which these specialized schools serve only about 5% of high school students and yet they dominate so much of the education conversation, perhaps at the peril of the bigger issue, which is the other 95% of the kids. Why do they hold such outsized symbolic and political weight?

Alex Zimmerman: Yes, I think it is because these schools are just widely considered to be a ticket into, as you said, good colleges, and a path to the middle class, and also just this crown jewel of the school system that anyone can, in theory, access, right? Really, nothing else matters except for your score on this one test, and so these schools, I think, to a lot of people, feel like they hold all of this promise, and they graduate a lot of alums who go on to really prestigious careers, and a lot of them are in the state legislature. There's just a lot of prominent people who go to these schools, so they are just dominating the conversation in a lot of ways.

Brian Lehrer: Let me take one more call, and we're going to end on what is coming in as the most common solution to this that our listeners are suggesting, and I think Akisa in Manhattan might go there. Akisa, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Akisa: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I'm an alum of Bronx Science, and I graduated in 1989. Back then, they had a program, I think it was called Discovery, where if you missed the test by a few points, you would go to a pre-summer academic immersion, and consequently, when I graduated, I had about 40 African Americans in my class and not including Latinos, more diverse and for some reason they canceled it. I'm not too sure why, but I think that program should be revisited.

Brian Lehrer: How did that work? If you, if others, missed the cutoff on the SHSAT by just a few points, and you could take that program in the summer, they kept a few slots open that late, that close to the new school year?

Akisa: I am not too sure of the administrative side, but what would happen, they would tell us at the beginning of basically summer enrichment, pre-high school summer enrichment, "If you get good grades for this summer program, we will accept you into Bronx Science," for my case, "for Brooklyn Tech or Stuyvesant." If you didn't do well during the summer enrichment, you would go to the school you were accepted to.

They made it very close, so maybe administratively, they did keep some slots open for this program. I did that program, and a few of my friends did that program, lifelong friends now. This program existed in the '80s and into the '90s, and I remember it being discontinued, and I don't know why, but I think they should revisit it. Because if you've missed the point, I think I missed Bronx Science cutoff by 3 points. I was devastated. If you miss it, it doesn't mean you're not smart. You just maybe need, "Hey, just come and do some summer enrichment."

Brian Lehrer: Akisa, thank you very much. Let's see if Alex Zimmerman from Chalkbeat knows about the Discovery program, and this also, I think, leans into the larger suggestion that's coming in from so many listeners. Why don't the middle schools just institute universal SHSAT test prep, or at least universal SHSAT test prep availability to even things up?

Alex Zimmerman: Right. To the first point, the Discovery program actually does exist. The City does reserve a percentage of seats at specialized high schools for students who scored just below the cutoff, and the City has actually tried to use that program as a tool for integrating the schools, and there has actually been some litigation over that. The City has tried to expand the program.

One of the standards for qualifying for Discovery is, you have to attend a middle school where at least 60% or more of the students are from low-income households, so that is another effort to try to integrate a little bit more. If you look at the demographics of the students who get in through Discovery, they are not dramatically different from-- At times, there's been a more diverse group, but it's not enough to really shift the demographics more broadly.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and on the idea of universal test prep or test prep availability, we had the earlier caller who said in the old days, when he got in, there really was not widespread test prep. Therefore, the disparate reality of some families going to get it and others not, he said, the wisdom in those days was, "You can't study for a standardized test. Just get a good night's sleep and bring some Number 2 pencils." Now that test prep is common and unevenly distributed, have they talked at the Board of Ed at the Department of Education about just having universal test prep or universal test prep availability in the middle schools?

Alex Zimmerman: Yes, there have been conversations about expanding access to test prep. That is like a perennial conversation about this issue. I think one thing that is challenging about that is the way the test is structured is there isn't a passing score, right? It is a pure rank order test. Every year, the cutoff is slightly different, and they just admit students.

They pick a cutoff and admit everyone above the cutoff, and that changes year to year, and it's purely a rank order decision, and so even if you expanded test prep dramatically in a public context, you would still have the problem of the inequality of students who are paying more for more intensive prep outside of that, so you would need to find a way to overcome that if you were trying to fix this purely by test prep, and I think that would likely be just a really big lift and challenge to figure out how to do that.

Brian Lehrer: Alex Zimmerman, reporter at Chalkbeat New York. Thanks a lot for coming on.

Alex Zimmerman: Thanks so much for having me, Brian.

 

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