No one is more acutely aware of the need to modify the admissions process to the city’s eight specialized high schools than the educators who work in them. That’s why a group of them met over a period of 18 months to draft a series of recommendations that now form the backbone of the reform legislation being pushed by the UFT and a group of lawmakers in Albany.

Under current state law, gaining entry into Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech is based on just one factor: scoring high enough on the Specialized High School Admissions Test. Five other elite high schools have adopted the same admissions policy. The bill now under consideration thanks to the UFT’s advocacy would allow the schools to use multiple measures to decide whom to admit. [See story above.]

While the educators on the UFT Specialized High School Task Force cited a host of different reasons why change is necessary, they all agreed that a single test on a single day cannot provide the full picture of a student and his or her abilities. They believe that a more holistic review of student profiles would strengthen rather than weaken the class of incoming 9th-graders.

“In every school I’ve been in there are bright, hardworking, motivated students and they might flourish here, but if they don’t score high enough on the test, their grade-point average and other qualities can’t help them get in,” said Brooklyn Technical HS social studies teacher Beth Johnson.

Johnson, her school’s chapter leader, said she worries that the emphasis on the test is sending kids the wrong message.

“One test given one day to a 13-year-old — that puts a lot of stress and pressure on a young person,” she said. “It gives them the idea that their worth is based on this number instead of seeing their worth as based on the many qualities they have — their hard work, their determination, their creativity, their honesty and their ethics.”

Part of the problem, said HS of American Studies at Lehman College math teacher Jonathan Halabi, is that not all students and their parents know about the test, and some of those who do don’t think they will score well on it.

“Some kids who should be taking the test aren’t because ‘in this neighborhood we just don’t go,’” said Halabi, his school’s chapter leader.

The proposed legislation would require that all 8th-graders are notified of the exam.

Spanish teacher Rosanmi Campbell, also from the HS of American Studies, pointed a finger at unequal access to test prep. “We feel that right now the students who get into specialized high schools are the students who have access to prep for the specialized high schools test,” she said.

Black and Latino students in particular may not have the money for prep courses, Campbell said, which could, in part, explain the dearth of students of those ethnicities at the specialized high schools.

Brooklyn Latin English teacher Chanika Perry, also her school’s chapter leader, said the lack of diversity at the schools does not reflect the talent that educators know exists among black and Latino students across the city. Diversity, she said, “increases the wealth of experiences our students have, makes them more global-minded and fosters cultural appreciation.”

“There are so many students who could excel at our schools if they could just walk in the doors,” Perry said.