New York City Department of Education Bronx High School for the Visual Arts
The city'due south high school application process is at present a crapshoot — and height grades barely matter.
One month before the application deadline, the Department of Education unveiled its long-awaited new admission organisation, lowering the bar for entry into many competitive high schools — and tossing kids with a range of academic accomplishment into a random hopper.
"It'due south now substantially a lottery system masquerading as a selective process," said Effie Zakry, a vice-president of the Citywide Council on High Schools, a DOE parental advisory body.
8th graders have until March 1 to submit an application listing upward to 12 high schools or special programs of their choice in order of preference.
When Primary Nancy Harris at Manhattan'southward Spruce Street School explained the new option organization to eighth-graders last week, "The auditorium went nuts," said Liv Olsen, thirteen. "A lot of kids were really angry: 'What about kids who have better grades? What about everyone in this room? What the hell?'"
Amy Nicolas, a straight-A Cosmic school eighth-grader, is aiming for Townsend Harris HS in Queens or another top-ranked public school.
"I'one thousand definitely worried well-nigh my chances. It's pretty much a lottery," she said. "My friends are very smart – their grades are 90 and to a higher place – but they're actually pretty scared of existence rejected."
The DOE's bewildering new system, an effort to boost equity in nearly 400 high schools, is based on a complex mathematical formula.
For each student, it volition take the single height marking in four cadre subjects – English, math, social studies and science – in seventh or eighth course. A bespeak value is assigned to each of those marks. The points are then averaged to decide which of four lottery groups the student falls into. Standardized test scores, used in prior years, and omnipresence, won't be factors.
Nether the formula, a student with grades as low as 65 to 75 in some classes can land in the highest lottery grouping with kids who earned 90s across the board.
All students in the top group will be eligible to attend the well-nigh academically rigorous schools. The luck of the describe volition decide the freshman class.
"If I'thou a student with ii 75s and 2 85s, I'm happy," said Maurice Frumkin, a one-time DOE enrollment official who runs the private NYC Admissions Solutions. "If I'm a pupil with all 95s, I'm not happy. They have an absolutely equal chance of getting into a given programme."
Alina Adams, author of "Getting into NYC Loftier Schoolhouse," tells parents: "Don't worry if your kids are smart. Worry that your kids are lucky."
Eight specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and Staten Island Tech, will continue to use an exam, the SHSAT, as their sole entry criterion. Twenty other high schools have gotten permission to use additional essays, interviews, or their own tests to screen candidates, and 25 arts schools will choose students based on auditions.
"I get what they're trying to do," Amy said. "They're trying to give more kids opportunities."
Merely it ways the nigh diligent students may go unrewarded, the two girls said.
"Kids feel like all the work they put in was kind of useless," said Liv, who will utilize to Eleanor Roosevelt and other popular schools. "A lot of kids are maxim it'due south really not fair – if they got 100, they're getting the aforementioned chance as someone who put in the bare minimum."
Some experts applaud the changes.
"Admissions shouldn't be similar 'Lord of the Flies' with 13-year-olds battling for supremacy," said David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn College and CUNY Grad Middle didactics professor. "In other districts, kids just go to school together."
The changes will have far-reaching effects on some of the city's most prestigious campuses, parent leaders warn.
"If you accept many students with an 80 average getting in, those schools no longer maintain their previous rigor," Zakry said. "The school has to lucifer the capabilities of the students. They're forcing the schools to modify. "
Zakry, speaking as an private, fears some schools volition end up slashing high-level courses.
"Instead of having 20 students for AP Physics, now maybe only five are qualified," he said. "Guess what the schoolhouse does? It has to shut down those advanced classes. Economically disadvantaged students who were able to accept these higher-credit classes can no longer do so. Is this called expanding opportunities?"
Zakry blasted the DOE for failing to consult with his panel of loftier-schoolhouse parent leaders about the planned changes – or fifty-fifty to give them a heads-upward.
"For months, we've been request questions. Parents are concerned. Nosotros got nothing simply a message that 'data is forthcoming and we accept to exist patient.' We plant out this week, the same as other parents."
"To not consult these parents is criminal," said Kaushik Das, a dad who serves on Manhattan's District ii Community Education Council. "We were told under this new administration there would exist parent engagement before announcements came out."
DOE spokeswoman Sarah Casasnovas dedicated the 11th-hour rollout.
"These updates were shared with families as quickly as possible without delaying the admissions procedure," she said.
"Mayor Adams and Chancellor Banks are committed to bolstering admission, and our admissions process for screened high schools volition expand opportunity, especially for black and Hispanic students."
But some parent leaders argue the changes will hurt all students, including kids of colour.
"It's the dumbing downwards of standards at all levels," Das said.
Source: https://nypost.com/2022/02/05/nycs-new-high-school-selection-setup-discounts-good-grades/
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