Parents, beware: NYC specialized high schools are coming under attack againBy Wai Wah Chin
August 13, 2023
State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt and Assemblyman William Colton (D-Brooklyn) are calling on parents to prepare to mobilize as the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test is under attack yet again.
In a recent op-ed, Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, Brooklyn Democratic Party chair, proposed to eliminate the SHSAT as the sole admission criterion for the city’s specialized high schools because standardized tests are, she wrote, racist.
Of course, standardized tests are not racist. They are objective and anonymously scored.
And as for content, most blacks at least get to take them in their native language, whereas many Asians learned English just recently and lack cultural familiarity about America — yet outperform whites and blacks in math and verbal sections.
Bichotte Hermelyn gives scant support for her claim: some personal anecdotes, some fake history, but mainly that most colleges, post-pandemic, made standardized tests optional.
But savvy families know “optional” tests are optional only for blacks and Hispanics; whites and especially Asians better take those tests and score high: It is precisely because standardized tests work that top-tier colleges want them from Asians and whites and, for their now-illegal affirmative action, not from blacks and Hispanics.
MIT notably ended its test-optional charade; it just couldn’t maintain rigorous standards anymore.
To give affirmative action life-support, meanwhile, Harvard created extra-slow courses like Math MA (most students start math with numbered courses) and Expository Studio 10 (most take Expos 20), and Princeton devised MAT 100, which, amazingly for a top-tier school, starts with high-school review.
Against Bichotte Hermelyn’s slim evidence stands a wealth of rigorous research supporting standardized testing.
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Source:
https://nypost.com/2023/08/13/parents-beware-nyc-specialized-high-schools-are-coming-under-attack-again/
