Local Schools Panel Rejects Push to Offer Elite Admissions Exam in Multiple Languages
The Community Education Council (CEC) for District 2 of the New York City public school system has voted to reject a proposal that would have called upon the City’s Department of Education (DOE) to offer the specialized high school admissions test (SHSAT) in languages other than English. This exam is the gateway to the City’s eight specialized high schools, the elite academic reputations of which launch large numbers of graduates to prestigious universities around the United States.
The CEC is a panel of 12 elected members who are responsible for advising and commenting on educational policies and providing input to the DOE on matters of concern to District 2, which includes Lower Manhattan as well as the East Side south of 97th Street (with the exception of the Lower East Side) and the West Side south of 59th Street. District 2 is the geographic home of one of the DOE’s eight specialized high schools, Stuyvesant High School, but also the home of many students from local, high-performing middle schools who are admitted to the specialized high schools.
The resolution considered by the District 2 CEC at its January 15 meeting called upon the DOE “to urgently examine the administration of the SHSAT to evaluate its bias against and lack of inclusion” of English Language Learners (ELLs), and “to offer the SHSAT in multiple languages.”
While ELL students make up 16.3 percent of all pupils throughout the City’s public school system (and 10.5 percent of students in District 2), they comprise a vanishingly thin minority in the enrollment of the eight specialized high schools. Among more than 15,000 students enrolled in those highly coveted schools, only four are classified as ELLs: one each at Stuyvesant High School and the Brooklyn Latin School, and two at Brooklyn Tech.
CEC members who supported the resolution noted the DOE already provides similar accommodations to ELL students seeking comparable opportunities, such as the Gifted and Talented Program, for which the entrance exam is currently offered in Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (both Cantonese and Mandarin), French, Haitian-Creole, Korean, Russian, Spanish, and Urdu.
Critics of the resolution argued that although the SHSAT is administered by the DOE, it is governed by State law – the Hecht Calandra Act of 1971 – which means that changes would have to be approved in Albany, rather than at the municipal level.
The CEC voted down the proposed resolution by a margin of five to three.
This is not the first time that statistics have been used to raise questions about fairness in admissions to the specialized high schools. For the freshman class now attending the eight schools, Black students represent 4.5 percent of all admissions (including ten Black candidates who were accepted at Stuyvesant High School, among an incoming class more than 700), while Black children comprise 23.7 percent of students throughout the DOE system. And Hispanic pupils made up 7.6 percent of those admitted, compared with their cohort of 41.1 percent of all New York student public school students.