Mayor's Plan For Elite Schools Hinders Park Slope Kids: Parents

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — How will the mayor's plan to use state test scores and GPAs instead of an entrance exam to specialized high schools work in areas, like Park Slope, where many kids aren't even taking standardized tests?

According to District 15 parents, it won't.

At a meeting in Park Slope on Wednesday, nearly two dozen parents told Department of Education officials that they had a problem with the mayor's plan to diversify the city's specialized high schools. Many echoed similar outcry that the plan has received from parents across the city, but even those who supported parts of the plan told officials it still wouldn't work for their neighborhoods.

In the new model, students who choose to opt out of state tests — who do so at a significantly higher percent in certain Brooklyn neighborhoods than the rest of the city — would be put at a disadvantage, they said.

"A major concern is that by using state ELA and math tests as a swap out for the SHSAT (entrance exam), the significant improvements in equity for the kids who may attend the schools may come at the cost of ramping up already aggressive test culture," one parent said. "In District 15 we’re known as the hot bed of opt out…using state tests as a swap out for screenings is not the answer."

The plan, first proposed by Mayor Bill De Blasio last year, would phase out the entrance exam for eight of the city's specialized high schools and instead use GPA and state test results to offer spots to the top 7 percent of students. It would also expand the Discovery program, which offers help to disadvantaged students with the admissions process.

Officials contend that the plan removes a barrier for many black, Latino and low-income students to the specialized high schools and will make it so their demographics more closely resemble the city's student population.

But some District 15 council members and parents Wednesday were unsatisfied that the new plan didn't seem to account for students who don't take the state tests. About 35 percent of students from one Park Slope school opted out of state tests last year, compared to only 3 percent city-wide, the New York Times found.

"I simply want a valid method used and I feel state exams are extremely flawed both in the way they’re administered and evaluated," said Letitia Doggett, a founding member of the NYC OPT OUT organization.

Students who opt out of state exams would be entered into a lottery system for entrance into the schools, DOE officials said at the meeting.

Another group of parents who spoke out at the meeting contended, as protesters and organizations have over the past few months, that the new plan lifts up certain minorities at the cost of decreasing the population of another. Asian-American students, who take up about half of seats at the schools now, would see their numbers fall from 50 percent to 30 percent of the population in the new model.

"I don’t know how we can sit here and watch Asian-American, after Asian-American, after Asian American come up here and not think that there is a problem," one parent said Wednesday. "How are we addressing a racial injustice by saying another ethnic minority— immigrants in this city —are going to pay? Progressives in Park Slope can’t say there’s something wrong with that?"

Other parents who opposed the new plan said the money should be spent helping middle schoolers so that they have better chances at getting in, that there were flaws in the GPA-comparison approach or that the DOE should focus on all high schools, not just the specialized schools.

In Brooklyn, the plan would apply to Brooklyn Latin School in Williamsburg and Brooklyn Technical School in Fort Greene. Schools in the Bronx, Staten Island, Queens and three in Manhattan are also included.

Photos by Anna Quinn/Patch.