NEW YORK—Education reform advocates wrangled again Thursday with how best to patch up the public school system one step at a time. The Committee on Education reconvened to hold an oversight hearing in City Hall over three bills aimed at increasing diversity in schools, including one controversial bill that aroused a simultaneous protest on the steps.
If passed, the particular bill would open up admissions criteria to include middle school grade point averages, school attendance records, and state test scores. These new inclusions would be in addition to the current sole criterion—the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT).
Last year, a little over half of the eight specialized high schools’ student populations were Asian, according to the education committee’s findings. Blacks and Hispanics were offered only 12 percent of the seats at the schools.
Proponents of the bill say that the results of a single exam should not determine a student’s educational future, citing research done by the American Psychological Association and others.
But to open up the schools to students with great middle school grades and attendance, would be to introduce outside influences and ruin a perfectly objective and fair way of measurement, argued officials and alumni associations.
They gathered to tout the perks of the exam.
