Great News: City Council is Looking at Legislation That Will Provide City-wide Tutoring For the Specialized High Schools Test (SHSAT)

Richard Parsons

 Great news for New York public school students interested in getting into a Specialized High School -Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, and five other excellent educational institutions: a group of City Council members, Justin Brannan, Keith Powers and Oswald Feliz, have submitted legislation that offers educational opportunities such a test prep to more than 90% of NYC middle schools that do not currently have access to publicly funded test prep.

Ronald S. Lauder

We agree with Mr. Lauder and Mr. Parsons that "By making tutoring more widely accessible, this package has the potential to revolutionize the education public students receive."

We also firmly support giving all students access to excellence rather than lowering educational standards to fit everyone. Kids of all ages need challenges and higher-level problems that require creativity and ingenuity. 

Let's hope that the City Council passes this legislation quickly so that all those interested can apply in the fall.

But I think we should all stop worshipping the Specialized High Schools and instead seek to raise the level of ALL schools in NYC. Two of my daughters got into Stuyvesant, and it is a terrific place for many reasons, but certainly not the right place for many students who could not, or didn't want to, handle the intense workload and competition.

One of my other daughters got a spot in La Guardia High School for the Performing Arts. That was the right place for her, an artist and opera singer.

Parents, don't fit your child into a school. Find a school that fits your child's individual skills and needs.

 Betsy Combier

betsy.combier@gmail.com

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How to build educational equity and excellence

By Ronald S. Lauder and Richard Parsons

New York Daily News

•

Jul 13, 2022 at 5:00 am

As New York City strives to build a more equitable public education system, beginning at our most vaunted educational institutions, one universal truth that educators, parents and students alike all know is that the key to ensuring that every New York student has access to the city’s specialized high schools is preparation.

Now, to our elation, it appears a group of City Council members understand this truth, too. A legislative package introduced in the Council last month marks a major step forward toward making education more accessible and equitable by improving preparation for and access to the SHSAT — the admissions test for Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and five other less famous but also outstanding public schools — for students across the five boroughs.

Councilmen Justin Brannan, Keith Powers and Oswald Feliz, who introduced the legislation, are working to ensure that every New York student receives a first-rate public education. We congratulate them on this critical step, stand with them in their campaign for improved education equity, and encourage the full Council to pass the package and Mayor Adams to sign it into law.

We have long fought to ensure that all students, especially students of color, have access to opportunities that will help them achieve their full potential.

Recent SHSAT data underscore the need for improved equity. In the past school year, Black and Latino students made up 21% and 26% of students who took the SHSAT, respectively, but received only 3% and 6% of offers to enroll in specialized high schools for this fall. In the same cycle, Asian-American students were 31% of test-takers and 53% of offers, while white students were 17% of test-takers and 28% of offers.

We know that test prep is one of the most effective ways to address the disparity. The Education Equity Campaign, which we co-founded, spent more than $1.2 million on free test prep for underserved communities in the academic year that just ended. Of 204 total students from underserved communities who received free tutoring from EEC in this past year, 54 of them, or 26.5%, were offered admission to one of the specialized high schools.

Since 2019, EEC has funded $4 million for free test preparation for the SHSAT, resulting in tutored students being four times more likely to gain admission than their peers.

This legislative package expands on EEC’s success by providing long-awaited resources for test-takers attending the more than 90% of New York City middle schools that do not currently have access to publicly funded test prep. By making tutoring more widely accessible, this package has the potential to revolutionize the education public-school students receive.

But the proposed legislation doesn’t stop at test prep. It will also broaden the pool of SHSAT takers. Black and Latino students currently make up almost 70% of all New York City public school children but only a third of all specialized high school applicants. By moving the test to a school day, we will have immediate and lasting effects on equity in the city’s schools.

In total, this legislative package is a historic step toward ensuring the historically disparate SHSAT outcomes are improved. Moreover, these bills build on the progress already underway in this new administration led by Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks.

Earlier this year, the pair announced a long-overdue expansion of the gifted and talented programs throughout the city, a move essential to addressing the inequalities afflicting the public schools. The disparities between the privileged districts, mainly in Manhattan, and communities of color in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are blaring, and this expansion addressed just that. We are incredibly thankful that Adams and now the Council continue to answer our call to take action against this injustice, but we must now turn our focus to the future, and where our most gifted students arrive in secondary education.

While some believe that the SHSAT should be eliminated or that the city should move toward a system that includes other admissions criteria, those critics overlook the true problem of education inequity, doing nothing to improve the education system or help prepare students for secondary education. Through the Council’s education package, students who have been neglected by the public school system because of their background or race will be afforded educational opportunities to achieve their true potential.

We know the future of public education in New York is brighter because of this legislation, and we look forward to its speedy enactment. And we hope this effort will serve as a model for continued partnership between city government and civic organizations in our fight toward advancing equity in education. By working together, we can make the New York public education system accessible, equitable, and the best in the country.

Lauder is a philanthropist, business leader and graduate of Bronx Science. Parsons is the former CEO of Time Warner and a graduate of John Adams High in Queens.

High School Junior at Stuyvesant High School Quits and Starts Homeschooling Himself

 Stuyvesant is a fantastic school...for many students. For others, not so great.

Two of my daughters were accepted to Stuyvesant, and the school was right for one of them.

But I am a firm believer in school choice and suggest that if any parent reads about or is told to go to public school and nowhere else, ignore this. Every child is unique and has unique goals, abilities and favorite futures. No school is right for everyone. Homeschooling is right for some families, but for others, not appropriate. (see here as well) There are many resources available for anyone interested. Then there are charter and religious schools. Parents may request an Impartial Hearing to receive public funds for a private school, summer programs, and educational resources, if their child(ren) has any special needs or is Twice-Exceptional (2e). In my opinion the NYC Department of Education has no interest in setting up programs for 2e kids. I started providing representation for parents at the Impartial Hearing Office in 2001. See the Advocate Guide on the Parents Unite site and FIRE’s Chicago Statement Resources.

Those rising 8th and 9th graders who feel that a Gifted and Talented high school curriculum is what they want and is right for them should have a chance to test into the specialized high schools in New York City. (SHSAT)

Any young person from second grade and up can also take a test for the Johns Hopkins Center For Talented Youth, or the Talent Search Program they prefer. 

See here:

Talent Search Opportunities for Gifted Students

My girls did the CTY Program, and it is amazing, with career workshops, summer activities in special areas such as marine biology, archeology, etc., and a full-time mentor to answer questions. Scholarships are available.

My recommendation for all parents: look for alternatives to public school for your child. I support the opinions of Kerry McDonald:

Hi Betsy,
Two decades ago, when I was a graduate student in education policy at Harvard, I remember someone asking me what I thought of my professors and classmates. I quipped: “They respect diverse opinions; they just don’t have any.” In my experience, it was a monolith of thought regarding education policy and practice.

Sadly, education has become even more monolithic since the turn of the millennium, with diversity of thought and dissent seemingly less tolerated than before. This has been particularly problematic in higher education, and it’s been trickling down to K-12 curriculum, theory, and policy.

But there are some hopeful signs that, maybe, we can all at least get back to tolerating diverse opinions in education even if debate about these opinions may be limited.

Today I am presenting at the aptly named, Diversity of Thought in K-12 Education Conference, at the Westin Copley here in Boston. It was organized by the upstart group, Parents Unite, a Boston-based collection of parents dismayed at the emphasis on critical race theory in classrooms, and the overall climate of conformity in education. In a July article about the group, The Boston Globe noted that these parents have “mobilized to fight for ‘true diversity of thought’ in classrooms, an effort resembling those launched elsewhere in the country in the spring by conservative groups and families against what they describe as the ‘indoctrination of students with ‘woke’ ideas about race and social issues.”

Diversity of thought and tolerance for dissent are classically liberal ideas on which our nation was founded. It’s a shame that challenging current education orthodoxy is somehow painted as an attack on education by “conservative groups.”

This weekend’s conference brings together a broad cross-section of educators, activists, and parents who are pushing back against divisive, illiberal educational philosophies and policies. I am particularly excited to meet some of the people I have written about over the past year, including Paul Rossi, a math teacher at an elite Manhattan private school who came out against the school’s focus on “woke” curriculum, and Andrew Gutmann, a parent of a child in a different, but similarly swanky, New York City private school that was following the same critical race theory path.

Other speakers include Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), an organization that has done heroic work in protecting free speech on college campuses, and Ian Rowe of 1776 Unites, a project created by civil rights activist Robert Woodson in response to The New York Times’s 1619 Project.

It is refreshing to see a grassroots movement of parents, educators, and thought leaders coming together to champion diverse opinions in education and to promote tolerance for dissent. Encouraging various viewpoints, recognizing conflicting perspectives, and debating assorted curriculum approaches and school policies can help ensure that American education is as pluralistic as America itself.

Until next week,

Kerry McDonald
Senior Education Fellow
Foundation for Economic Education

Betsy Combier

betsy.combier@gmail.com
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New York City Student Quit Stuyvesant to School Himself. Here’s How He Did It.

Lee Hawkins | Wall Street Journal Opinion | July 7, 2021

During the pandemic, Gregory Wickham’s parents let him leave the prestigious institution to complete high school on his own

When most of the 582,000 New York Public School students who opted to take classes remotely this past academic year are required to return to school buildings in September, Gregory Wickham will be taking classes from home.

The pandemic’s disruption helped the 17-year-old high school junior persuade his parents last year to allow him to drop out of Stuyvesant High School, one of the city’s most competitive schools, and home-school himself. He will continue homeschooling his senior year.

“I knew I could learn more, and more efficiently, on my own,” Gregory said.

Gregory is one of about 43,000 students who pulled out of the city’s schools to home-school or enroll in a school elsewhere. During the 2020-21 school year, the number of students enrolled in the country’s largest school system from prekindergarten to grade 12 dropped to approximately 960,000, down about 4%, from the previous year, according to preliminary enrollment data from the city’s Department of Education.

In October, total homeschooling enrollment in New York City was 10,667, an increase of 31% over October 2019, the department said.

“My husband and I are supporting him, but I would not say that we are 100% confident that he has made the right decision,” said Gregory’s mother, Alina Adams. “At a school like Stuyvesant, the biggest value-add is from the other kids, not from the teachers or the building. The fact is, we don’t know how this is going to turn out.”

Stuyvesant didn’t respond to requests seeking comment.

Homeschooling represented 3% of students nationally in 2016, the latest figures available, compared with 88% for public and charter schools and 9% for private schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. After the coronavirus pandemic closed schools across the country last year, data from several states show that more parents decided to take control of their children’s curriculum and schedule.

According to a 2016 study by the National Home Education Research Institute, which conducts and collects research about homeschooling, home-schooled students scored 15 to 30 percentage points higher on standardized academic achievement tests than students in traditional schools.

Home school wasn’t a new idea for Gregory. He started lobbying his parents as a fourth-grader. He told them that he wanted to skip high school after middle school and start college at 14. Ultimately, he gained admission into Stuyvesant, which his older brother and his father had attended. He said that he maintained A grades while there. He also excelled in dance outside of school. After several months of remote instruction at his home in Manhattan following school closures in March 2020, he asked his parents if he could quit.

Ms. Adams required her son to write down the names of all of his selected textbooks and the classes he planned to take, and then present a formal “pitch” to the couple. Then, she drew up a contract of expectations which all three of them signed. High on their list of concerns was how colleges would view their son’s plan.

Ms. Adams, who is white, and her husband, who is Black, debated the idea vigorously. Gregory is among only a handful of Black students admitted each year to Stuyvesant. They worried that colleges wouldn’t take him seriously, especially as a minority student quitting his school.

“A Black man has to have twice as many degrees as a white one to even be considered for the same job,” Ms. Adams posted in a blog about her son’s homeschooling, recalling what her husband, Scott Wickham, said. “A Stuyvesant diploma will get you into any college you want. Homeschooling might make it so that you don’t get in anywhere. And then what will you have? You’ll have nothing!”

Mr. Wickham gave in, but told Gregory that he had to craft a rigorous curriculum for himself during his junior year of homeschooling to be allowed to continue it into his senior year.

Gregory found all his courses through online instruction resources such as Khan Academy, which provides courses through a portal of thousands of videos, articles, and practice problems. According to the Department of Education, state regulations require parents or guardians of home-schooled students to submit several items, including a letter of intent, an individualized home instruction plan and quarterly reports.

Leigh Bortins, of Classical Conversations, a company that offers K-12 homeschooling support to over 50,000 families, estimated that about 15% of home-schooled students asked their parents for permission to be home-schooled, as opposed to parents driving the decision.

Ms. Bortins, who said she has been in the business for 35 years, said students like Gregory are rare, “but not unheard of.” She said that many universities across the U.S. offer scholarships to home-schooled students, hoping to tap into the self-starters within the generation.

Had Gregory stayed at Stuyvesant, his course work would have included pre-calculus and algebra-based physics, he said. At home, Gregory has replaced those classes with online courses in calculus-based physics and the highest level of Advanced Placement calculus. Gregory says the homeschooling curriculum is free and he expects to pay a total of about $570 in AP exam test costs.

To round things out, he added macroeconomics and U.S. government and politics, and he is also writing for the New York School Talk education blog.

His father said that seeing how messy things were between politicians and school and union officials during the summer of 2020 made it easier for him to grant his blessing.

“There was no better time to take the risk of homeschooling and see if my son was serious about his own education,” Mr. Wickham said.

Write to Lee Hawkins at lee.hawkins@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications

An earlier version of this article misspelled Stuyvesant High School as Stuveysant in one instance.

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Appeared in the July 8, 2021, print edition as 'Teen Quit Stuyvesant to School Himself.'