New York colleges are under attack again
Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt and Rep. William Colton (D-Brooklyn) are urging parents to prepare to mobilize as the specialty high school admissions test comes under renewed attack.
In a recent editorial, Brooklyn Democratic Party leader Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn proposed removing the SHSAT as the sole admissions criterion for the city’s specialty high schools because she said standardized tests were racist.
Of course there are standardized tests not Racist. You will be evaluated objectively and anonymously.
And as far as content goes, most blacks can at least take them in their native language, while many Asians are recent learners of English and have no cultural knowledge of America—but they outperform whites and blacks in math And verbal sections.
Bichotte Hermelyn has little support for her claim: some personal anecdotes, some misrepresentation of history, but most importantly the fact that most post-pandemic colleges made standardized tests optional.
But smart families know that “optional” tests are only optional for Blacks and Hispanics; Whites and especially Asians should do better on these tests and get good results: that’s exactly because of the 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 farce; It just couldn’t keep up with the strict standards.
Meanwhile, to support positive action with life support, Harvard has developed extra-slow courses like Math MA (most students start with math). numbered courses) and Expository Studio 10 (most take Expos 20), and Princeton developed MAT 100, which surprisingly for a top-notch school starts with secondary school review.
Bichotte Hermelyn’s meager evidence is contrasted with a wealth of rigorous research in support of standardized tests.
To name just a few: The classic by the world-renowned cognitive scientist Steven Pinker Articles of the New Republic shows that the SAT not only “tests wealth,” as some claim, but predicts “a wide range of intellectual, practical, and artistic achievement.”
The University of California faculty Standardized Testing Task Force recommends that the school continue to use standardized tests for admissions after a year of sober study.
An article by Peter Arcidiacono shows that among black students who enrolled in engineering at Duke University, those with low SAT scores have disproportionately dropped out to pursue easier liberal arts majors, while the few with good SAT scores have graduated from engineering majors at a rate similar to that of whites and Asians with similar SAT scores.
My own study specifically on the SHSAT confirms the considerable academic superiority of students admitted with higher SHSATs compared to students admitted with lower SHSATs.
No wonder, then, that using the SHSAT to compose classes of applicants based only on meritocratic peerages with exceptional academic ability, a staggering 14 Nobel Prize winners in Science, recipients of the Fields Medal, Abel Prize, Turing Prize and other honors as well numerous awards from the National Academy of Sciences has produced members of the natural sciences.
The Department of Education has not been able to achieve such a distinction with any other admissions system in over 400 secondary schools and over 700 programs.
Bichotte Hermelyn says she can. She vaguely suggests using a “top percentage of all schools,” plus grades, essays, and other even more subjective criteria.
Something is immediately suspicious: she wants her high schools to remain closed next toBut substitutethe technical colleges.
The technical schools, which serve about 5% of the DOE’s senior high school students, are already enjoying worldwide admiration; If Bichotte Hermelyn’s proposal can create excellent schools for another 5%, why not keep both so that 10% of DOE students can get an excellent education – if she is indeed interested in excellent high schools for city kids?
Or does she know that her proposal is like that not better and must destroy the evidence?
Are their true goals excellent schools for city kids or just racial politics?
Bichotte Hermelyn’s use of grades, as well as “Best Percentage of Any School” based on grades, make her suggestion downright absurd because grades in DOE schools are not just grades incomparable and inflated but massively fraudulent.
Instead of scapegoating SHSAT for political arguments, how about the hard work of fixing the schools and getting grades honest again?
Bichotte Hermelyn also wants essays that received undue attention after Judge John Roberts mentioned them in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
Essays are even worse than grades; They are an open invitation to lie.
Will the DOE verify 28,000 tear ducts like “I wasn’t even born when my father died of heat in a people smuggling truck in Arizona.” My mother told me this when I was 8 years old after being taught white people again in school children was beaten. I became a different person that day.”
Then there’s the outright lie about race, which 34% of white college applicants are already doing!
A clear “no” to application essays.
We may Have a constructive discussion about excellent schools – but we have to be honest when it comes to standardized tests, which are valid benchmarks, as opposed to grades, essays and the “Best Percentage of Any School” which are not.
One hundred percent of students cannot be in the top 5 percent; Not all children want that.
There must be honorable ways for those who don’t, but for those who don’t, here’s an idea: study harder.
The Brookings Institution found out Asian students spend, on average, twice as much time on homework as white students and four times as long as black students.
Bichotte Hermelyn should consider that statement before complaining again that Stuyvesant has too many Asians and not enough blacks.
Wai Wah Chin is the Founding President of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Greater New York and an Associate Fellow of the Manhattan Institute.
