Testimony of UFT Vice President for Academic High Schools Janella Hinds before the New York City Council Committee on Education

Good morning, Chairman Dromm and the members of this distinguished committee. My name is Janella Hinds, and I am the vice president for academic high schools for the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). On behalf of our union, I want to thank the Council for holding this hearing today and allowing us the opportunity to share our views.

New York has always been a gateway city for immigrants from across the globe and is widely considered a beacon of diversity like no other; yet studies have shown that our schools are considered among the most segregated in the state. The problem is especially prevalent in our specialized high schools, where an alarming racial disparity gap persists and where the student body is increasingly drawn from a small segment of middle schools. In the current school year, Stuyvesant HS admitted 963 students; of those just seven (.7 percent) were African American and 21 were Latino, in a school system that is 70 percent black and Latino.¹As concerning, in its November 2012 review of the city’s top middle schools, the New York Post detailed how fewer than two dozen middle schools account for the majority of students receiving offers to the specialized high schools; meanwhile, there are entire districts in the Bronx and Brooklyn where not a single middle school student was offered a seat.² The problem is crystal clear.

When it comes to possible solutions, all stakeholders have strong opinions. The real questions facing us when we read the reports and view the statistics are: Do we believe that both promoting diversity in our school system and affording greater access to schools with selective admissions are desirable? And would such efforts benefit our students and our city? Our answer is yes — and yes.

These are tough issues and they require thoughtful analysis and discussion. We cannot simply bury our heads in the sand and hope these problems go away.  As educators and child advocates, we have a responsibility to grapple with the policies and practices that we believe have the greatest impact on children. Our students are depending on us to find solutions, and we owe it to them to do just that.

Today, our union is once again taking a strong stand in the name of increasing diversity in our city schools — and that means ensuring that every child, regardless of background, race or economic status, has access to the best educational opportunities our public schools have to offer.

We commend the City Council and members of this committee for bringing us all together to begin that conversation and we thank Council Members Lander (proposed Int. No. 511-A-2014), Torres (Res 453-2014) and Barron (Res. 442-2014) for introducing these important pieces of legislation. Working together with the Council, we believe that we can help make important policy changes to fix what’s broken as well as to expand access and achieve greater equity for high-achieving, talented students in neighborhoods across the city.

Proposed Int. No. 511-A-2014 & Resolution 453-2014

Despite undergoing significant demographic shifts, including an influx of students from all over the world, New York City’s racial segregation in public schools has deepened in recent decades. Groundbreaking research being conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) under the auspices of its Civil Rights Project found that among the 32 Community School Districts in New York City, 19 districts had 10 percent or less white students in 2010. Researchers also found that black and Latino students "are still disproportionately underexposed to white students in New York, as the typical white student is disproportionately overexposed to other white students," while Asian students had the second-highest exposure to white students over time.³

That is why the UFT supports proposed Int. No. 511-A-2014 (Lander), requiring the Department of Education to report annually on the efforts it is making to increase diversity within schools and its progress. Likewise, the UFT also supports Resolution 453-2014 (Torres), calling on the DOE to officially recognize the importance and benefits of school diversity.

Together Int. No. 511-A-2014 and Res. 453-2014 vigorously promote the need to embrace the diverse backgrounds of our students as part of the academic and civic discourse that takes place inside our classrooms. Doing so will enhance our students’ educational experiences and better prepare them for the globalized world they will participate in. To successfully diversify our city’s schools requires collecting, reporting and analyzing the very data called for in proposed Int. No. 511-A-2014. With that information, we can better shape specific DOE policies, such as those relating to admissions, zoning and school construction, to achieve greater school diversity and ensure shared learning.

Resolution 442-2014

The UFT also strongly supports Resolution 442-2014, which urges state lawmakers to pass S.7738/A.9979. This state legislation, which is one of our top legislative priorities in Albany, enacts a series of changes to the admissions process for the city’s specialized high schools that will extend opportunities across the city to a larger pool of deserving students by removing their barriers to access.We want to thank Council Member Barron and the other supporters of this bill, including Council Members Dromm, Rodriguez, Levine and Maisel, all of whom are former public school teachers, for raising this important issue.

The schools in question are the Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Latin School, Brooklyn Technical High School, the High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College, the High School of American Studies at Lehman College, Queens High School for the Sciences at York College, Staten Island Technical High School and Stuyvesant High School. The teachers in these schools are top notch, as is the tradition of excellence that each of these schools offers to their students.  

Gaining entry to one of these prestigious schools is based on just one factor: scoring high enough on the SHSAT. No other aspects of a student’s academic record, including independent projects, leadership achievements or extraordinary academic success, are considered as part of the admissions process. (The LaGuardia High School of Music & Art, another specialized high school, does not use the SHSAT.)⁴

We as a profession have long fought the notion that a student’s abilities can be judged by a single test score, just as we have long maintained that the only way to properly evaluate a teacher is to incorporate multiple measures. The same principle applies here.

In 2012, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and a group of co-plaintiffs in a civil lawsuit determined that the single measure for admittance resulted in lack of access, amounting to a civil rights violation. The lawsuit argued that “relying on a single test for admission while excluding multiple measures of student knowledge and potential is a distortion and subversion of the meaning of merit.”⁵ Council Resolution 442-2014, if passed, effectively responds to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s request that the city ask the state Legislature to change the law on the SHSAT and, additionally, change the admissions policies at the five schools where the state law doesn’t apply. We await the final resolution of the complaint.

At the same time, the UFT took action, inviting educators from these eight schools to participate in a task force that would scrutinize the admission policies for their schools. The dedicated educators who answered the call were united in their goal: retain the rigorous admissions standards at these elite high schools while also expanding access to a more diverse body of scholars.

With the support of the union’s 3,400 member Delegate Assembly, the task force was empowered to seek out fair and equitable solutions to the issues at hand. The task force did not take its issue lightly and the conversations were not easy, but over the course of 18 months, the group developed a set of recommendations on how to move forward.

The task force’s recommendations include:

• Creating language to broaden the definition of what constitutes the highest-performing scholars. Specifically, that there be a “power score” pathway (using a combination of grades, state exam scores, attendance and some version of a revised SHSAT aligned to the curriculum) for entrance into a specialized high school;
• Expanding the applicant pool by better publicizing the specialized high schools admissions procedures;
• Leveling the playing field by providing free electronic preparation materials and other preparation methods for the entrance exam, as well as registering all students for the specialized high school admissions process, along with an easy opt-out; and
• Changing the Discovery program for applicants who narrowly miss the "admit score" to make it mandatory for all schools, resulting in an intensive summer program for scholars; and aligning each Discovery Program with the skills needed for incoming 9^th-graders specific to each school.

The bottom line is if we believe that underrepresented students deserve a fair and equitable opportunity to succeed at the highest levels, then it’s crucial that we support policies that expand access to talented middle school students across the city. As persuasively articulated by City & State publisher Tom Allon in his June op-ed in the New York Daily News, the Discovery Program successfully operated for nearly three decades, affording opportunities to mostly high-achieving black and Latino students by providing rigorous supplemental instruction that eased their transition to the specialized high schools.⁶ Since fewer schools are offering the Discovery Program, students who need a little extra support are not getting it and there isn’t an effective vehicle to level the playing field. The statistics concerning the few middle schools that send students to the specialized high schools speak volumes, and as educators, we’re not proud of the message this sends to our students and their parents in schools that aren’t in that mix.

Anecdotally, teachers who have taught advanced placement courses at non-selective high schools prior to their tenure at the specialized high schools felt strongly that many of their students who narrowly missed the cut score —a score that changes from year to year —would thrive at a specialized high school had they been given an opportunity like the Discovery Program. Notably, at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College, its first student to be admitted to Harvard University matriculated through the Discovery Program. This program should not only be restored, but it should also be mandated with schools having the flexibility to tailor the program to their specific offerings.

UFT members have met with the DOE to discuss the DREAM program that provides tutoring and enrichment opportunities for underrepresented students seeking to gain admittance to the specialized high schools. This program operates in just 21 districts in New York City and while we support its mission to expand access, we need to do more. 

Challenging the validity of the SHSAT

The UFT has testified previously about the overreliance on high stakes standardized tests and how that has damaged educators’ ability to deliver a high-quality and well-rounded education to our students. Our work on the Specialized High School Task Force cemented our views on testing.

What’s more, the Education Policy Research Institute at Arizona State University directly challenged the wisdom of a sole measure for admitting students in our specialized high schools. The report, “High Stakes, But Low Validity,”⁷ found that:

• Thousands of students had scores that were statistically “indistinguishable” from competing students whose scores gained admission;
• The likelihood of admission increased or decreased, depending on which version of the test a student was administered; and
• The SHSAT has never been validated to determine whether it excluded “prediction bias across gender and ethnic groups.”

The DOE recently issued a Request for Proposals for a Common Core-aligned SHSAT that may include an essay and will be translated into several languages. That’s a step in the right direction. It is our hope that the DOE will also take the opportunity to explore test validation as it reviews submissions. Given the legitimate issues raised by the research cited above, the DOE should also investigate the SHSAT’s limitations, and also the potential bias it contains.

Looking beyond the SHSAT

While some people tout the SHSAT as an objective measure unyielding to political pressure or questionable subjective will in admissions offices, research and trends at elite colleges and universities paint a different picture of entrance exams as a single measure. In qualitative research conducted for the American Educational Research Association in 2012, Rachel Rubin, PhD, found that the most competitive elite institutions determine academic merit using formulas comprised of multiple academic measures, among which the most highly valued variable is exceptional talent.⁸

It’s also worth noting that a recent University of Chicago study, “Middle Grade Readiness in Chicago Public Schools,” found that “attendance and overall grade point average in middle school were the strongest predictors of actual school performance in ninth grade and 11th grade, both of which strongly predict high-school graduation rates and college success.”⁹

Similarly, a study called “Defining Promise: Optional Standardized Testing Policies in American College and University Admissions,” released in February 2014, further confirmed that “despite lots of discussions about high school grading we find high school GPA to be a broadly reliable predictor of college performance, and standardized testing to be very far from ‘standardized’ in its predictive value.”¹⁰

Yet as documented in research from the Thomas Fordham Foundation, New York City’s specialized high schools are the only ones among 165 elite schools around the country that used a single test for admissions. Merit and talent simply cannot be reduced to just one number.¹¹

Closing thoughts

Every New Yorker is familiar with the patterns of racial segregation in the city’s housing market. This naturally contributes to the lack of diversity in the schools, but it is not an excuse to perpetuate it. Especially after more choice was introduced into the school system, diversity must become deliberate, recognized as an educational good in and of itself and an issue of fundamental fairness and equity in the schools.

Likewise, tradition cannot be the sole measure of merit. If it did, we would never have gotten beyond the historical legacy when separate was once declared equal and when women were excluded from prestigious educational institutions. Stuyvesant High School was first formed in 1904 as a “manual training school for boys,” as was Brooklyn Technical High School in 1922 and the Bronx High School of Science in 1938. It took decades for these three schools to become coeducational, but those who fought for the change knew it was the right thing to do. Also, remember that five of the eight specialized high schools we’re discussing today were not included in this elite group prior to 2002.

It was prescient that the NAACP brought greater attention to the debates and discussions that educators in the specialized high schools around the city were already quietly engaged in. In the face of an increasingly diverse public school population and as educators and trade unionists, we will no longer stand by without raising our voices for equitable access to our best public schools. Expanding educational opportunity benefits every constituency.

We also must aggressively address the issues regarding how to prepare talented students early and better position them for success in the specialized high schools and other selective academic secondary schools.

This is admittedly hard work. But we believe we have a moral imperative to change course on policy and redefine who merits an opportunity to experience the best we have to offer.

Thank you.

Endnotes

¹ “Status Quo at Elite New York Schools: Few Blacks and Hispanics,” Al Baker, New York Times, March 11, 2014

² “Best of middles lead to top HS’s,” New York Post, November 29, 2012.

³ “New York State’s Extreme Segregation,” John Kucsera with Gary Orfield, The Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), March 2014

⁴ “The Meaning of Merit: Alternatives for Determining Admission to New York City’s Specialized High Schools,” the Community Service Society and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, October 2013

⁵ NAACP Legal Defense Fund: http://www.naacpldf.org/case-issue/new-york-city-specialized-high-school-complaint

⁶ “A Better Way to Diversify Stuyvesant,” Tom Allon, op-ed New York Daily News, June 12, 2014

⁷ “High Stakes, but Low Validity: A Case Study of Standardized Tests and Admissions into New York City Specialized High Schools,” Joshua Feinman, Ph.D., Education Policy Research Institute, Arizona State University

⁸ Inside Higher Ed: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/09/new-research-how-elite-colleges-make-admissions-decisions

⁹ “Middle Grade Readiness in Chicago Public Schools,” University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago Public Schools, Elaine M. Allensworth, Julia A. Gwynne, Paul Moore, and Marisa de la Torre, November 2014

¹⁰ “Defining Promise: Optional Standardized Testing Policies in American College and University Admissions,” William C. Hiss and Valerie W. Franks, February 5, 2014

¹¹ “Exam Schools: Inside America's Most Selective Public High Schools,” Chester E. Finn, Jr. & Jessica A. Hockett, Thomas Fordham Foundation, Princeton University Press, 2012