An education panel on Wednesday evening approved a contract for a digital entrance exam for the city’s specialized secondary schools, after sparking an equality debate over the use of a single test to admit students.
Progressive members of the Panel on Education Policy have been reluctant to greenlight the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) after years of persistently low enrollment rates of black and Hispanic students. The city twice delayed a final decision and held a town hall on the contract as it tried to secure the votes.
Under state law, the SHSAT is the sole means of admission to eight high schools, including Stuyvesant High School, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School. Fourteen panelists voted to approve the contract for a supplier; two rejected it. Four members abstained from voting.
“I’ve heard the comment that if we were to break this contract, we would really cripple the incoming freshman class, and that’s not a position I would be comfortable with,” said Gregory Faulkner, chairman of the Sunset Park High School panel in Brooklyn. “However, I think it’s important that we don’t let this be the end of this conversation.”
“It’s clear there are problems. When you look at the percentages of black and Latino students coming into the school, it is problematic,” Faulkner said.
The contract with testing giant Pearson is worth $17 million over five years, with options to extend the agreement for up to two years. In the next enrollment cycle, Pearson will create and administer a digital version of the SHSAT, although paper exams will still be available for students with disabilities who require accommodations. During the contract period, the test is expected to become adaptive, with students being asked questions based on how they have performed on the exam so far.
The SHSAT is the latest in a series of pre-computing tests. The SAT, Advanced Placement and New York State tests have all moved online in recent years, or are in the process of doing so.
“We as a panel have not yet seen a model of this test,” said Jessamyn Lee, who represents Brooklyn parents on the panel. “We are being asked to revolutionize the way your students take this test and the testing experience of future students – unseen, simply by faith.”
Nearly 100 parents and children expressed support for the contract at the meeting, amid concerns that failure to approve the seller could leave elite high schools without freshman classes for years to come. Families defended the test-only admissions process as a merit-based way to select students — and blamed the school system’s ability to prepare students, rather than the test itself, for disparate outcomes.
“Anyone can excel on this test,” said Lisa Marks, parent of three public school students and co-chair of the group Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum Education, which launched a petition with about 5,000 signatures. “And to think otherwise is to demonstrate the intolerance of low expectations.”
A handful of speakers who opposed the contract were met with boos and hecklers shouting “wrong!” shouted. “wrong information!” and “liar!” During the meeting, which lasted about five hours, the panel chair had to ask parents to respect each other and follow the example of the children in the room.
Of the 25,700 eighth-graders who took the SHSAT last year, just over 4,000 students received offers, admissions data show. Less than 5% and 8% of specialized high school offers went to black and Hispanic students this fall, compared with more than a quarter and a half of white and Asian students, respectively.
Every year, several hundred students are admitted to specialized secondary schools through a program for candidates who have just missed the cut-off marks.
“I’ve heard people say the problem isn’t the test; the problem is the system,” said Tom Sheppard, a Bronx parent representative on the panel and a Brooklyn Tech alum. “Guess what? It is possible for more than one thing to be true.”
“There is a problem with the way K to 8 runs, but you can’t convince me that a test is fair if it produces these results,” Sheppard added, pointing to the low number of offers in the Bronx. “The test works exactly as intended.”
