New York City politicians—including Mayor Bill de
Blasio—want to change the admissions system for the city’s nine
highly-selective premiere public high schools, including
nationally-renowned Stuyvesant High School. The schools currently
use a single exam, the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, to
determine admittance. Less than three percent of applicants are
admitted to Stuyvesant.
The problem, in the eyes of some, is that black and Latino
students are increasingly underrepresented at the elite schools. So
are white students. When a test score is the only criteria, it
seems that Asian Americans are more likely than other racial groups
to gain admission to Stuyvesant.
Is that a problem? A coalition that includes de Blasio and
teachers unions says that it is, according to
Bloomberg:
“I do not believe a single test should be determinative,
particularly for something that is as life-changing for so many
young people,” de Blasio, who would need to persuade the state
Legislature to amend the law, said last week. “We have to determine
what combination of measures will be fair.”
The mayor would like the schools to consider other factors—such
as grades and extracurricular activities—that would theoretically
give non-Asians a better chance.
Writing for
The New York Post, Dennis Saffran—an attorney and former
GOP city council candidate—explains why that’s not such a great
idea. It’s very difficult for low-income 13-year-olds to cobble
together appealing resumes, he writes. In fact, moving away from an
objective test might further decrease the enrollment of poor black
and Latino students, while also hurting Asian enrollment, since
kids with wealthy parents are the ones best equipped to build
portfolios of volunteer work and extracurricular activities:
A Chinese student like Ting Shi who has to help out in his
parents’ laundromat is not going on “service” trips to Nicaragua
with the children in de Blasio’s affluent Park Slope neighborhood.
The LDF’s suggested admissions criteria — student portfolios,
leadership skills and community service — are all subject to
privileged parents’ ability to buy their children the indicia of
impressiveness.
Ironically, eliminating the SHSAT would magnify the role of what
progressives call “unconscious bias” — the idea that we have a
preference for those who look like us and share our backgrounds.
Subjective evaluation measures like interviews and portfolio
reviews are much more susceptible to such bias than is an objective
examination.
Sure, the decision makers will do their best to admit a few more
black and Latino kids (especially those from the same
upper-middle-class backgrounds), but the primary beneficiaries will
be affluent white students who didn’t study hard enough to perform
really well on the test but seem more “well-rounded” than those who
did. As always, the losers in this top-bottom squeeze will be the
lower middle and working classes. Among the applicant pool for the
specialized high schools, that means Asians.
As Saffran’s critique makes clear, attempting to engineer
admissions to produce some politically desirable racial mixture is
both dubious and difficult. On the latter point, whose to say that
a reformed admissions system won’t cause further problems? It could
exacerbate the very discrepancies it’s attempting to resolve. It
could also incidentally result in the admission of unqualified
students—something administrators expect to happen if the test is
no longer the focus—harming the rigor of the schools.
While I can understand the desire to assist groups that aren’t
making the cut for selective public schools, it doesn’t seem
fair—or morally justifiable—to stack the game against Asians
seeking admittance merely because other Asians have fared well.
Of course, this is exactly what universities practicing
affirmative action have done for years, using ethnicity-based
admission systems that grade Asian applicants on a much higher
curve. Should students be judged on their own merits or against the
expected accomplishments of other people who happen to look like
them?
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