Testimony: Replace the SHSAT With a New Admissions Plan
Lazar Treschan
NYS Assembly Standing Committee on Education
Public Hearing on Specialized High Schools
Testimony by Lazar Treschan, CSS Director of Youth Policy
May 10, 2019
Issue: The admissions process and access to New York City’s Specialized High Schools
Recommendation: Replace the SHSAT with a percentage admissions plan for the top performers from every middle school
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Lazar Treschan, and I am the Director of Youth Policy at the Community Service Society of New York (CSS). CSS is a 175-year-old organization dedicated to improving the lives of low-income New Yorkers. We have published two major studies of the issue under consideration today, one a joint report with the NAACP LDF in 2013, the other, in 2015, a proposal and simulation of a new admissions policy for the top three percent of students from each middle school in the city.
As you know, New York City is not allowed to set the admissions policy for its Specialized High Schools, which are governed by a nearly 40-year-old law that requires rank order admission according to scores on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT).
I am here today to tell you that the SHSAT is a myth. It is a fantasy. At worst, it’s a lie. At it’s best, it’s a smokescreen.
Ostensibly, the SHSAT is a way to assess merit. It's an objective exam that anyone can take, and if you pass it, you’re in. It's fair, because anyone can take it and pass it.
None of that is true. It does not measure merit. There is no passing score. It isn’t fair.
First, what does the SHSAT measure? Nothing more than the ability to score high on the SHSAT. There is no evidence to show that it predicts student performance better than other measures. What we do know for sure is that the SHSAT measures your ability to prep for the SHSAT. The more you can get of the most rigorous test prep, the better you will do. And to get the most test prep, you need to be lucky enough to be born to families with enough resources, financial and otherwise. But is that why we have specialized high schools? To figure out which students can get the most extracurricular test prep?
Second, there is no passing the test, because there is no passing score. Admissions are made by rank order, meaning it does not matter how well you do according to some objective measure of proficiency or achievement--just how you compete against others. In fact, performance on the SHSAT has been rising for all students, of every racial, ethnic, and income group. But it doesn't matter. Because as long as we use rank order, it's just a competition, not a proficiency assessment. It’s a Hunger Games. It's saying that there can only be winners if there are losers. So, we invest more and more public and private dollars each year into test prep--time and resources that could go toward actual education and enrichment to improve the lives of young people, who take more than enough tests already--and the admissions disparities don’t change. Nor will they ever with more prep or more testing, a claim that gets trotted out each year. That’s a lie, and we have more than enough evidence to back it up.
Why isn't it fair? If we lived in a world with equal opportunity, then perhaps we could have an SHSAT. A test that might reflect your intelligence, and not your ability to do extracurricular prep. Some might argue that there would still be better methods than how someone performs on one day for three hours. But in the city in which we currently live, equal opportunity is a myth. And a singular, extracurricular test to assess merit across our city is also a fantasy. There are some families that have the resources, financial and otherwise, to put their kids in months and years of private test prep. Not only is that not fair, it’s ugly, and it’s not education. I feel for those kids, too--they could be pursuing real interests or community service, but no, we’ve locked them into a system that rewards... test prep.
So, if the SHSAT exists not to objectively or fairly assess merit, then it exists purely for the opposite reason: to demonstrate and replicate the unfairness and inequality that exists in our city. And to impose those hierarchies and systems of oppression that exist for adults onto our children. And anyone who says different has something to lose from toppling those systems.
And what's the purpose of the Specialized High Schools themselves? There can only be two: to create opportunities for high performers across the city to mix, learn from each other, and gain from that experience in a way that will reduce some of the injustices and inequities in our larger society; or to replicate the worst aspects of our society, reinforce racial and economic hierarchies, and ensure that our systems of public education are nothing more than tools to keep our society as divided as possible. Recent research from Brookings has shown that the students that are currently admitted would do just as well at other high schools. So, right now, all the SHS are accomplishing is the latter.
The racial disparities in admissions at the results are stark, and beyond statistical error. So, only one of these two things can be true: either intelligence is not distributed equally, and black and Latino children are intellectually inferior; or some students are more fortunate than others and enjoy more resources that allow them to perform better on the current assessment mechanism. The question is whether our schools, and the policies we use for their admissions, should be designed to perpetuate those differences in resources, the worst aspect of our broader society. Because there is another way.
That way is based on evidence that performance in context is most relevant, that the purpose of public education is to fight, not reinforce, inequality. That would mean rewarding performance compared to one’s peers, through a percentage plan, like the one proposed by the mayor. By bringing together students from across the city, from all different backgrounds, then perhaps these schools would actually serve a useful purpose, and they might even be able to push back against entrenched inequities.
But that's not where the big money is spending its dollars. The deep pocketed individuals, like the new Educational Equity Campaign, that are pouring money into lobbyists, advertising, and phony movements that might as well be called “All Schools Matter”, think they have something to lose, and are going to work to keep this rigged system. And other hardworking families, who are acting rationally in spending their time and money to get their kids the prep to get into these schools, are also resisting change, because they think the current system is working for them. But we know that these schools should be a part of a system that works for all New Yorkers, and that is simply not the case as long as we use the rank-order SHSAT.
It will be up to you to determine what's the right path for New York City. I urge you to resist the SHSAT fantasy, and create a new system based on reality--both the ugly realities of socioeconomic inequality, and the positive realities that we know are possible when we give every young person a chance to succeed.
I thank you for the opportunity to testify.