NYC’s New High School Application Process Lowers Importance of Good Grades in the Name of ‘Equity’
“It’s now essentially a lottery system masquerading as a selective process”
Under this new system, students who work hard and are high achievers are punished, but it’s all in the name of equity.
The New York Post reports:
Good grades barely matter in NYC’s new high school application process
The city’s high school application process is now a crapshoot — and top grades barely matter.
One month before the application deadline, the Department of Education unveiled its long-awaited new admission system, lowering the bar for entry into many competitive high schools — and tossing kids with a range of academic achievement into a random hopper.
“It’s now essentially a lottery system masquerading as a selective process,” said Effie Zakry, a vice-president of the Citywide Council on High Schools, a DOE parental advisory body.
Eighth graders have until March 1 to submit an application listing up to 12 high schools or special programs of their choice in order of preference.
When Principal Nancy Harris at Manhattan’s Spruce Street School explained the new selection system to eighth-graders last week, “The auditorium went nuts,” said Liv Olsen, 13. “A lot of kids were really angry: ‘What about kids who have better grades? What about everyone in this room? What the hell?’”
Amy Nicolas, a straight-A Catholic school eighth-grader, is aiming for Townsend Harris HS in Queens or another top-ranked public school.
“I’m definitely worried about my chances. It’s pretty much a lottery,” she said. “My friends are very smart – their grades are 90 and above – but they’re actually pretty scared of being rejected.”
The DOE’s bewildering new system, an effort to boost equity in nearly 400 high schools, is based on a complex mathematical formula.
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Comments
Let’s decode the complexity then: non-white and non-Asian: +100. White or Asian: -100.
More accommodation for the lower-intelligence populace.
/Note I didn’t bring up race…
This makes sense when you presuppose ‘poor kids are just as bright as white kids’ and remove all (racist) testing to substantiate said claims.
For the top high schools, they used to use an exam. All that mattered was the exam, it didn’t matter if your teachers had hated you and given you bad grades.
Not sure if they still give the SHSAT exam; I think I recall it was going to be given but have diminished importance, at least for a while longer.