The Other Side of High School Admissions

Mayor Bill de Blasio has recently set forth two proposals to combat a lack of racial diversity in specialized high schools. The first would expand the Discovery Program, which allows low-income students scoring just below the cutoff to attend summer classes and gain admission to specialized high schools. 20 percent of available seats will theoretically be reserved for this purpose. The second is to replace the SHSAT with a program that would allot spots in specialized high schools to the top seven percent of students in each middle school based on class rank and state test scores. These proposals are intended to increase the percentage of black and latinx students to a projected 45 percent of each graduating class.

Both proposals would inevitably take seats away from Asian American students and students attending middle schools that have historically sent large numbers of students to specialized high schools, often called “feeder” middle schools.

The Editorial Board has interviewed and documented the opinions of current Stuyvesant students, alumni of the school, teachers, and parents to gain a sense of how students who currently benefit from the admissions system are responding to these proposed changes. The following is an excerpt of what we found. A more comprehensive collection of interviews will be published in The Spectator Magazine, set to be published in November 2018.

Victor Greez

Brooklyn Technical High School (‘78). Taught previously at The Bronx High School of Science. History teacher at Stuyvesant High School.

Interviewed by Jeremy Rubin

Based on your experiences as a student at a specialized high school and as a teacher at Stuyvesant, do you believe the SHSAT is a fair indicator of students’ abilities?

Well, it’s as if you picked your college students just based on your SATs. I think it would be important to add your grade point average and your attendance and perhaps some other specialized tests, just in case you have more of a rubric. But there’s also a cost factor. I mean, you have 18,000 students. You’d love to interview some of them, you know you’d love for them to give you a writing sample, and you’d love for them to have a writing component to the test, but logistically, is that feasible? So I think under the circumstances, it’s pretty clear as to what’s going to be on those exams and what to do […] and I think that when you prep for it, you’re enriching your skills.

Do you believe there is a problem with diversity at Stuyvesant, and if you think so, how would you go about solving it?

There’s income diversity here. Close to 40 percent of students at this school qualify for free lunch, and when you look at this, when you look at Stuyvesant, I think that it’s important to note that even though there is a diversity here, this is not Birch Waltham. This is not Horace Mann. This is not a white, elite school. These are kids whose parents work in laundromats and work as waiters and work as cab drivers.

I also think that it’s really important to note that kids, underrepresented minorities, are recruited by private schools and boarding schools and Catholic schools and are given scholarships and all sorts of opportunities. But the poor Bangladeshi kid and the poor Chinese kid are not given those opportunities because there are wealthy Asians. Those schools aren’t underrepresented, so this is a path; this other path is not open to them, and now, you go [try] to close this path, and I think that’s really closed-minded.

As a parent with a son who’s obviously going to go through this whole process, would you consider sending him to a specialized high school through the SHSAT?

You have to be a certain type of kid to come to Stuyvesant. You have to be a kid who wants to travel. You have to be a kid who, in a sense, is ready for college because everyone is motivated. So [these kids are] not going to get pushed. They’re not going to get coddled, so, in some ways, at least from an education standpoint, it’s sort of an impersonal machine.

I think that the power of Stuyvesant is not necessarily in the academics and teaching. Because you have good and bad teachers at every school, the power of Stuyvesant is student autonomy. It’s the students who self-run The Spectator and self-fund The Spectator. It’s the Stuyvesant Theater Community without any adults for funds [that] produces shows. It’s the robotics team [that] stays here until 8:00 p.m. and […] feed off each other. That’s the beauty of it. And it’s that type of kid…If I felt he’d thrive in this environment, then yeah. We’ll see.

Frederic Minzberg

Stuyvesant High School, senior

Interviewed by Emily Xu

What was your family and elementary/middle school background like? Did your parents push you into going to a "feeder school" or send you to SHSAT prep?

I went to prep classes. My parents thought which high school you went to mattered, even though I very much regret [coming] to Stuy. I would have rather gone to my zone school and had a normal life as a teenager. I peaked in Mark Twain. I was the Vice President; I played the piano in front of the entire school and a famous movie director visiting the school. My principal even had a framed picture of us in her office, and she gave me an Outstanding Leadership Award. I feel like if I had gone to a high school like Goldstein, I could have continued on that path. But instead, I feel stuck at Stuy.

If you had gone to a school like Goldstein, the racial makeup of your high school would have been vastly different. Do you think that would have played any role in your satisfaction with the school and/or your high school experience?

Yes, I think I would be more satisfied. Goldstein has kids that represent a much wider array of thinking, in terms of career ambitions, hobbies, political views, and general outlooks on life, as opposed to the very linear and zombie-like ideology that I see in many kids at Stuy. At the same time, I don’t want to say that Stuyvesant is a complete mistake because it has exposed me to many opportunities that I never would have thought about. For example, I wrote my Common App essay about internships and programs that I discovered through Stuyvesant.

The Goldstein admissions process is quite different from that of Stuyvesant’s—it is solely based on middle school grades. You mentioned previously that Goldstein is able to attract a more diverse student body. Do you think that in order to combat a lack of diversity at Stuyvesant, there should be a more lenient admissions process?

No. I think the admissions process should be more rigorous in that there should be an interview portion. I don’t want zombie-like kids who are only booksmart and have no personality. Their grades are the only things they think about. They are not engaged in any way except academically. I have run into a bit of a paradox, but I don’t know how else to describe it. I think a combination of interviews and SHSAT scores should be necessary to get into Stuy because I don’t think all students at this school deserve the networking and character-building opportunities that are provided [for] them here.

Paulina Klubok

Stuyvesant High School, senior

Interviewed by Gabrielle Umanova

What was your middle school experience like, and how did you prepare for the test?

I attended a very selective middle school; it was called Mark Twain. I think I began preparing for the test in the middle of seventh grade, taking classes at a Russian prep school once a week.

Did you feel like your school was helpful in getting you ready for the the SHSAT?

No. There were a few after-school classes, but even the ones I attended were not very useful in adequately preparing students. We were already high-achieving students in a good school, so I think in another school where students are not as lucky and don’t have the home resources to prepare them, [they] might be at a real disadvantage for SHSAT prep.

What do you think about the proposed reform to replace the test with taking the top 7 percent of students from all NYC middle schools?

If that system had been implemented while I was in middle school, I wouldn’t be in Stuy. I think it puts a lot of pressure on younger kids and makes middle school unnecessarily competitive, which is already really hard without battling for your spot. I also think that policy might distort the way that teachers grade and won’t hold students from a variety of different schools to the same standard.

Scott Abramowitz

Stuyvesant High School, senior

Interviewed by Gabrielle Umanova

I remember a conversation in Mr. Sandler’s class last year about the three-fifths compromise, and people were justifying putting it into the Constitution because of the need to get all the states on board. And then Mr. Sandler asked us, “If there was an African American person in our class, would you be saying the same thing?” I think that hit a lot of people and it made sense, because our answers would be different, and people would consider it more and think about it from different perspectives. Diversity is definitely important to have, but getting rid of the test wouldn’t be the solution and wouldn’t be treating the heart of the problem.

RongJie Guo

Mother of seventh grader at Christa McAuliffe Intermediate School I.S. 187

Interviewed by Brian Zhang

What was the primary factor that urged you to push your children to attend one of these specialized high schools?

I want both of my children to attend specialized high schools because I want them to be better off financially. My generation had to work hard jobs in order to make money and support our families. I hope that a better education and a more competitive atmosphere will motivate my children to pursue better career choices in the future. We actually moved from Richmond, Virginia to New York City two summers ago just so that my son could have an opportunity to go to one of these schools.

What was your initial reaction to the mayor's top 7 percent proposal?

I was, and still am, upset because this will reduce the number of students who attend specialized high schools in feeder schools, and my son is one of those students. This is a form of discrimination against the Asian American community because many Asian American children study extremely hard for the SHSAT, and with the mayor's new proposal, these dedicated students will not be given the opportunity to further their studies. Many of my friends whose children are also in feeder schools are now worried because they realize that their children may rise above others in terms of academic performance in these competitive feeder schools…And for those children who undeservingly got accepted into these schools simply because they attended an easy, underperforming middle school, it will only be harder for them because the workload at many of these specialized high schools is huge…This is not an issue about racial diversity. The moral of the story is: no pain, no gain. You work hard, you get in. You slack off, you get rejected, and you go somewhere else.

Do you believe that family background plays a role when it comes to student admission into one of these schools?

Yes and no. Yes because family motivation and knowledge of these schools are important to a student's success. Many parents do not actually know of the SHSAT until the very last moment. Children are playful. Sometimes, it takes some pushing to get them to where they should be. And the answer to your question can be no also, because economics are not important. A large part of the Asian American community works for minimum wage, and many of us do not even speak English. Because we as parents know these struggles, we make sure to prepare our children from the very beginning. If you do not have the money to send your child to tutoring companies, you should buy cheaper workbooks for them. Both do the trick because they both involve doing more practice problems and becoming more familiar with the test questions…It's really the amount of dedication and hard work that matters.