(photo: Kevin Caraballo for the DOE)
Every October, roughly one-third of the eligible eighth-graders in New York City -- between 25,000 and 30,000 students -- take the Standardized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) for a chance to attend one of the city’s eight specialized high schools. Admission to these schools is highly competitive, and spots are coveted. While less than 20% of students who take the test receive an offer, 72% of those who are accepted choose to attend. Yet, despite being in New York City, where the overall student body is 72% black and Hispanic, students of color make up only 12% of specialized high school students, a number that is declining.
This is due to a flawed and exclusionary education system that negatively affects low-income students and students of color from their first day in the system. In New York City, the clear majority of students are assigned elementary schools that are within their zip codes. For many students of color, this means that they attend schools that face a myriad of problems, including: less funding and resources, less experienced and effective teachers and overcrowded classrooms. This, in addition to the various socio-economic problems that students from these backgrounds already face in their daily lives. Ultimately this results in students from these backgrounds having lower attendance rate, lower grades in key subject areas and lower standardized scores.
Next, because entry to middle school is based on those aforementioned metrics, low-income students and students of color are substantially less likely to attend honors or screened programs. Instead, these students attend schools within their zip codes, which face the same issues that elementary schools face. And, analysis shows that between 2005 and 2013, 88 middle schools, 76 of which were honors or screened, were home to 85% of total student offers to SHSAT schools. Demographic data further revealed that students from these schools came from wealthier, and largely white or Asian households.
In addition to the socio-economic advantages that students who enroll into these strong middle schools typically have, they also benefit from attending the schools themselves. Not only are these schools better funded, they also offer more comprehensive and rigorous curricula. Importantly, these schools also dedicate resources to informing students and parents about the SHSAT, and the high-school admissions process in general.
A natural consequence of attending one of these schools is that students and parents are both more likely to have heard of the SHSAT and students are more likely to be prepared to take the exam. It is here that the inequities in the system become reinforced, adversely impacting students in two key ways: first in deciding to take the SHSAT and subsequently, in earning the requisite admission score.
Yet, it would be a mistake to assume that the SHSAT itself is color- or income-blind. Analysis reveals a flawed exam. Like all standardized tests, critics argue that the SHSAT does not test for ability and potential.
Rather, the test is basically an indicator of income and narrow readiness more than anything. Parents who can afford to invest in expensive preparatory courses and high quality private tutors to give their children an advantage -- often added upon prior advantages. Test-prep companies and private tutors are keenly aware of how the test works and impart significant help. Two notable examples of this include:
1. The SHSAT’s decision to favor higher overall scores, rather than balanced ones. This means that a student with a score of 500 (with a score breakdown of 250/250) is viewed less positively than a student who scores a 501 (with a score breakdown of 399/102) – where the lowest score a student can get on a section is a 100, and the highest a 400.
2. In addition, students who prep generally take several simulated SHSATs under test conditions. Since the SHSAT is administered only once per year, students who receive this preparation are much more prepared, psychologically and otherwise, than those who are taking the exam without having practiced a simulation.
Criticisms of the SHSAT are not solely socio-economic. Two reports that examined the SHSAT found that “Students who receive certain versions of the test may be more likely to gain admission than students who receive other versions” and that “the SHSAT ignores widely accepted psychometric standards and practices.” Psychometric standards are evaluations that test for reliability and validity.
In addition, because the cut-off scores for admissions differ slightly from year to year, being accepted on the margins is largely a matter of luck. And finally, the SHSAT only tests for ability in math and reading, other key subjects, such as science and social studies, are not included.
Ultimately, the SHSAT, and the educational system that it sits within, is deeply flawed. Policy changes must be considered to make the system more equitable.
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Bernard Agrest is a recent graduate of the University of Edinburgh's MPP with a focus on education policy analysis.
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Gov. Cuomo on a prison tour (photo via Governor's Office on flickr)
According to The Sentencing Project, New York State has led the nation by reducing its prison population by 26 percent between 1999 and 2012, while the nationwide state prison population increased by 10 percent. During these years of decarceration, violent crime rates fell at a greater rate in New York than national averages.
Yet, despite New York’s lead in simultaneously decarcerating its prison system and reducing crime, racial disparities throughout New York’s criminal justice system remain unchanged.
Recent investigative reports by The New York Times show how racial bias is infecting New York State prisons. The paper’s investigation found that black people in prison are punished at significantly higher rates than whites, sent to solitary confinement more often, and detained longer.
In response, Governor Andrew Cuomo directed the state inspector general to investigate these “allegations” and recommend appropriate reforms for immediate implementation.
This is not enough.
Governor Cuomo must use his executive power to create a diverse, non-partisan Blue Ribbon Commission to investigate the widespread racial bias throughout New York State’s criminal justice system.
The commission’s independent investigation should go well beyond rooting out structurally racist practices in our prison and parole systems. It should undertake a comprehensive review of the state’s entire criminal justice system, from arrest to reentry, within a definitive timeline.
JustLeadershipUSA believes that those closest to the problem are also closest to the solution, but furthest from the resources and power. To that end, the governor must ensure that the commission includes formerly incarcerated leaders. The commission also should represent the interests of the gamut of other people and groups that interact with the criminal justice system— prosecutors, judges, police and correction officers, people in prison, defense attorneys, advocacy groups, think tanks, victims’ rights organizations, and academics.
After convening, reviewing practices and policies, listening to stakeholders, hearing from experts, and problem-solving for 12 months, this commission should then make recommendations for criminal justice reform to the governor and state Legislature, and disseminate its findings to the public.
In addition to appointing a Blue Ribbon Commission, the governor should use his executive power immediately to address the issues of parole and solitary confinement. With regard to parole, Governor Cuomo should:
To truly address the issue of solitary confinement, Governor Cuomo should create a timeline for discontinuing the use of all solitary confinement and punitive segregation throughout the state prison system. He should also direct the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (NYSDOCCS) to immediately ensure that far fewer people are placed in solitary confinement.
And if people are sent to solitary, at the very least conditions and health care should be improved, time spent in solitary should be reduced, and detainees should receive a clear path, based on achievable goals, to earn their way out of solitary.
We will not dismantle hundreds of years of racial bias and discrimination in our criminal justice system in a vacuum. Instead, we must collaborate and engage with impacted people from varying walks of life.
If Governor Cuomo is truly committed to creating systemic change, the creation of a nonpartisan Blue Ribbon Commission is critical to uncovering the disparities in our prisons and our broader criminal justice system and identifying and implementing solutions. Together, we can work toward restoring a historically broken and racially inequitable system.
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Glenn E. Martin is the founder and president of JustLeadershipUSA (JLUSA), a national organization dedicated to cutting the U.S. correctional population in half by 2030. JLUSA empowers people most affected by incarceration to drive policy reform. Martin is a national leader and criminal justice reform advocate who spent six years in New York prisons. He is the recipient of the 2016 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. On Twitter @GlennEMartin.
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photo: Make The Road New York
The symbolism of Donald Trump’s nomination of fast-food CEO Andy Puzder for U.S. Secretary of Labor could not be clearer: at a time when fast food workers are leading the fight for fair pay and dignified working conditions in this country, President-elect Trump has decided to declare war on the Fight for $15 movement. And here in New York, workers like me are ready to fight back.
Puzder has fought attempts to raise the minimum wage, argued against expanding eligibility for overtime pay, and supports repealing the Affordable Care Act. At a time when corporations have been working hard to fight minimum wage increases and roll back workers’ rights through forced arbitration of employee grievances, misclassifying workers, and automation, they could find no better ally in harming workers than Puzder.
Like President-elect Trump, Puzder peddles his preferred policies as trickle-down-economics: more money for CEOs equals more jobs for working people. But these ideas have been discredited for decades -- they’re the reason that wages for workers like me have stagnated for so long. And, they’re rooted in the offensive assumption that some people -- service workers, immigrants, and people of color -- deserve to live in poverty no matter how hard they work, while corporate CEOs deserve to get rich off their labor.
A Puzder appointment is bad news for all working people, but the situation is even more precarious for immigrant workers, who already experience on-the-job exploitation like wage theft at triple the rate of the rest of the workforce. A CEO-led Department of Labor, coupled with the nativist agenda of Donald Trump, sends a clear message to employers to ramp up a strategy they have long-used to try to subjugate immigrant workers: weaponizing immigration status to retaliate and intimidate.
Immigrant workers in New York have been leading the labor movement for decades, most recently winning historic increases in the state minimum wage, some of the strongest legal protections against wage theft in the country, and collective bargaining rights in industries, like carwashes, considered “unorganizable.” We remain ready ready to fight, but we will need energetic allies in our city and state governments and creative new strategies to ensure that we protect against the worst of what comes out of Washington, D.C. and continue to win victories closer to home.
First on the agenda will be making sure that the state’s $15 minimum wage victory becomes a reality for all New Yorkers, especially those who will be most vulnerable during a Trump presidency. This means shortening the timetable for reaching $15 upstate, raising tipped workers to the full minimum wage, and implementing new strategies for combating wage theft and employee misclassification. Workers, especially low-wage workers, also need fair scheduling rights in order to better plan their lives and support their families; legislation has been introduced at the City level and should be explored throughout the state.
There’s an old labor movement saying that sometimes management is the best organizer, meaning a bad boss can be the best incentive to organize. While working people in New York, and throughout the country, certainly have our work cut out for us under a Trump administration, Andrew Puzder’s offensive agenda could make him our best organizer yet. We will fight, and we will win.
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Daniel Cortéz is a member of Make the Road New York (MRNY), which, with New York Communities for Change, is hosting a workers’ forum with leading government officials on Wednesday, December 14 at 7pm at New York Law School to discuss how to defend economic security for immigrant workers under the Trump administration.
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