> I worry that the proposed changes will simply create a new market for consultants to help affluent parents prepare their children to ace that competition, too. I wonder how well disadvantaged students and their parents would be able to navigate a complex and difficult maze of details, requirements and tasks.
It's interesting how standardized tests seem to birth eco-systems of 'test-prep' designed to circumvent to some degree what the test is designed to measure.
For example, how many of us simply memorized stacks of words to achieve higher scores on the SAT -- did that kind of memorization somehow quickly make us more 'prepared' for college? Of course not, it was just a way to game the metric. And many of us joined clubs in HS and attempted to become officers not because we really wanted to, but simply because it would look good on our college apps.
While one could make the argument that ability and motivation to jump through these exploitative 'hoops' is indicative of ability to achieve in college, it is far from the original motivation of the test, and distorts high school life in strange ways; i.e. makes participation in H.S. clubs and organizations disingenuous, and needlessly wastes hours upon hours on vocab flash cards.
More on topic: I'm not sure what distinguished the original test that the author took -- what made it less amenable to buying performance through specialized classes or courses -- but that perhaps is where the interesting research lies: In trying to create incorruptible tests, if that is even possible; for example, perhaps if the format and material changed wildly from year to year?
There was nothing fundamentally un-gamable about the tests they used in the early 80s, if anything on the contrary.
But it was a very different time and culture. The notion that spending tens of thousands of dollars in test prep for a gifted and talented program was something a reasonable person would ever consider doing hadn't taken hold yet. Certainly not in NYC, which at the time was experiencing the height of "white flight", had just gone through a major funding crisis, and was in the midst of a crime wave.
> For example, how many of us simply memorized stacks of words to achieve higher scores on the SAT -- did that kind of memorization somehow quickly make us more 'prepared' for college? Of course not, it was just a way to game the metric.
Personally, I studied vocabulary extensively for the SAT and GRE, and retained the majority of it; that preparation made a major difference in my baseline everyday vocabulary. Not all test preparation needs to go to waste immediately after the test.
It would be hard to change the material dramatically year-over-year. For example the literary section is predicated upon you having read a number of books from a certain selection, and along with other things essentially tests that you are well-read. But if the scope of books they might inquire about is too broad, many test-takers (very well-read individuals included) will fail.
It is amenable to test prep. Perhaps the one difference is that since it's on an off year (7th grade rather than 9th), is only for one school, and there aren't many spots, it isn't as widely prepped for as the 9th grade exam that covers the rest of the top schools.
>For example, how many of us simply memorized stacks of words to achieve higher scores on the SAT -- did that kind of memorization somehow quickly make us more 'prepared' for college?
> how many of us simply memorized stacks of words to achieve higher scores on the SAT
I didn't.
> And many of us joined clubs in HS and attempted to become officers not because we really wanted to, but simply because it would look good on our college apps.
I did related things. But is that really a negative? I do a lot of things that I don't particularly want to, but are necessary for my career. So does everyone else with a career. Even the best job in the world is going to have scut work that needs doing despite not wanting to.
Wouldn't you look negatively at a job applicant who eschewed doing things he didn't particularly want to do?
I went to Stuyvesant HS and I believe this is the classic quick fix that wont work. The nice thing about the test is that it is objective, simple to administer, and most of all ensures that all entering students have an educational baseline.
I agree that it's awful that there were very few minorities other than asians while I was there (2001-2005) but introducing a process that allows for favoritism and the introduction of underprepared hard cases will change the nature of the school. There is a certain esprit de corps amongst the students since you know that no matter how shitty someone is doing in a class or how weird they are, you both passed the same hard measuring stick which encourages a baseline respect for your peers. Introducing underprepared students means that teachers will need to expend disproportionate resources on them or they'll just not do well.
The real, and hard fix is that the schools around the city have to do better. That's a hard multilayered problem, but I don't think relaxing standards or replacing objective with subjective measures is the way to go.
For what it's worth, if you allow the school administration to o much leeway in deciding who gets in, bad things will happen. Specialized school administrations are just as shitty as others. It's the student body and teachers that make these places rock. Keeping the test objective will prevent the grubby hands of politically motivated ambitious administrators from screwing things up.
"Specialized school administrations are just as shitty as others. It's the student body and teachers that make these places rock."
This times 1000. The administration at Bronx Science was comically inept and somewhat corrupt, at least when I was there. A painted turtle would have gotten the same results, given the student filter they are gifted.
You can have an admissions test that is meritocratic or one that fits your preferred racial demographics, but not both. Because no two demographic groups are exactly equal.
Since many people reading this aren't familiar with the NYC public school system, I think it is important to emphasize NYC has many, many, opportunities for students to get specialized education at the high school level that is not dependent on standardized tests. When i was in High School there was The Urban Academy, the School for the Arts, City as School, and many high schools had "magnet" programs that students could apply to and if accepted, they would attend a school that was "better" than their local (zoned) school on a academic track with a particular emphasis (journalism, science, etc.) This system was byzantine, and made going to high school much like applying to college, but there was no lack of options. Since that time many more alternatives have been introduced, not only charter schools but many other schools based on particular theories and approaches to education. The only schools predicated on a single standardized test are the ones referenced in the article, and i think it is great there are schools with objective criteria for admission.
I attended Stuyvesant in the 90s, and the student body wasn't very diverse. However, changing from a single objective test to an array of subjective criteria does nothing to alleviate the root problem, that some kids are getting better primary education than others. All such an initiative can do is weaken those schools and make them more like every other school in the city.
>They want to introduce a broader range of criteria into the admission process, with the hope of addressing what is a current, and striking, lack of diversity at elite schools where the numbers of lower-income, Latino, and African-American students have sunk to disproportionally low levels. In addition to the current test, admissions officers would possibly consider things such as grade point averages, attendance, interviews, community service and extracurricular activities.
So.... I have one question, is the test racist, and if so how? If it's not racist, you might want to focus attention on improving performance of the primary schools that less represented minorities are enrolled in instead of just lowering the bar for them such that they fail when presented with challenging course work or hold other students back by slowing down the rest of the class because their previous schooling left them unprepared for that work.
Which is what a friend who is a govern of a school in the UK does that actually fund extra teachers to go into primary's to help kids prepare to move up to high school
Studies don't bear out the idea that one test for a G&T program defines someone's success. One study that compares folks on the margin (those who just got in versus those who just missed) suggests that the programs don't matter as much as we think.
That said, I'm a New Yorker who doesn't want to send my kids to the school down the street where 85% of the kids fail the state exams. (The DOE's response is "Perhaps the tests aren't capturing the learning that's happening there.")
I was a terrible student before college. But I developed a great love of learning through my journalist father and bilingual mother and a few anti establishment teachers. I'm not sure this would have worked today, as it seems students are even more considered fungible commodities than ever before. So perhaps the critical component missing is the behavior of his mentor, who recognized the boy in the first place as a human being worthy of enough encouragement. Because we exploit what we merely conclude to be of value. But we defend and nurture what we love. Policy alone cannot fix this.
Jean Kwok is the author of two novels, Girl in Translation, and Mambo in Chinatown, out June 24. She was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to Brooklyn as a young girl.
Once again we see how sad it is that things are so centralized. One test. An interview system. To get into a few good schools where there are great teachers and opportunities. Meanwhile, we could be flipping the classroom and delivering great lectures to everyone, keeping school for actual remedial tutoring and socializing. But that is too radical of a change because school is used as a daycare center while both parents work.
My high school held me to high standards and introduced me to broad influences - beyond technology - that help me see problems in a new light. Technically, I had access to a modern computer lab that let me try new things; when I found security holes, I didn't get kicked out but was tasked with fixing them.
In undergrad, I took a program that taught every new computer science class in a different language - without teaching you the language; assuming you'd have to pick it up in order to learn the underlying concepts. That kept me on my toes, helped remind me that I wasn't an expert in everything, and made me much more agile in keeping up with the languages and technology that have come out since undergrad. (I graduated in 2001... so almost none of the languages I do my daily work in existed then.)
In grad school, I expected to go in to study security but was exposed to infovis by joining a program known for it -- meaning I got to interact with people who knew the field forward and backward, giving me skills quickly, something to strive for, and a peek into the future of the field. This took my career in a different, and, I think, more exciting direction.
So what great schooling enough? Of course not. I worked my tail off, took a variety of good and less good jobs, and tended to relationships outside of school that helped me find other ways to learn and to do. And we'll never know the counterfactual. But I can point to a bunch of specific ways where good schooling put me on a successful path, and I'm honestly surprised that the sentiment here is so negative.
There's "great schooling" which is becoming educated and is obviously a "no".
Then there's "attended a great school", WRT you must attend Yale or Harvard to become president of the united states. Its an oligarchy thing, nothing to do with education at all. Or must go to Stanford if you want to do a (successful) startup.
[+] [-] jal278|11 years ago|reply
It's interesting how standardized tests seem to birth eco-systems of 'test-prep' designed to circumvent to some degree what the test is designed to measure.
For example, how many of us simply memorized stacks of words to achieve higher scores on the SAT -- did that kind of memorization somehow quickly make us more 'prepared' for college? Of course not, it was just a way to game the metric. And many of us joined clubs in HS and attempted to become officers not because we really wanted to, but simply because it would look good on our college apps.
While one could make the argument that ability and motivation to jump through these exploitative 'hoops' is indicative of ability to achieve in college, it is far from the original motivation of the test, and distorts high school life in strange ways; i.e. makes participation in H.S. clubs and organizations disingenuous, and needlessly wastes hours upon hours on vocab flash cards.
More on topic: I'm not sure what distinguished the original test that the author took -- what made it less amenable to buying performance through specialized classes or courses -- but that perhaps is where the interesting research lies: In trying to create incorruptible tests, if that is even possible; for example, perhaps if the format and material changed wildly from year to year?
[+] [-] yummyfajitas|11 years ago|reply
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/03/the...
If test prep did work, it would reduce racial gaps since blacks do more test prep than average.
[+] [-] bradleyjg|11 years ago|reply
But it was a very different time and culture. The notion that spending tens of thousands of dollars in test prep for a gifted and talented program was something a reasonable person would ever consider doing hadn't taken hold yet. Certainly not in NYC, which at the time was experiencing the height of "white flight", had just gone through a major funding crisis, and was in the midst of a crime wave.
[+] [-] JoshTriplett|11 years ago|reply
Personally, I studied vocabulary extensively for the SAT and GRE, and retained the majority of it; that preparation made a major difference in my baseline everyday vocabulary. Not all test preparation needs to go to waste immediately after the test.
[+] [-] sliverstorm|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathattack|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eli_gottlieb|11 years ago|reply
Dear God, no. I just had that large a vocabulary.
[+] [-] WalterBright|11 years ago|reply
I didn't.
> And many of us joined clubs in HS and attempted to become officers not because we really wanted to, but simply because it would look good on our college apps.
I did related things. But is that really a negative? I do a lot of things that I don't particularly want to, but are necessary for my career. So does everyone else with a career. Even the best job in the world is going to have scut work that needs doing despite not wanting to.
Wouldn't you look negatively at a job applicant who eschewed doing things he didn't particularly want to do?
[+] [-] lotsofmangos|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway452435|11 years ago|reply
I agree that it's awful that there were very few minorities other than asians while I was there (2001-2005) but introducing a process that allows for favoritism and the introduction of underprepared hard cases will change the nature of the school. There is a certain esprit de corps amongst the students since you know that no matter how shitty someone is doing in a class or how weird they are, you both passed the same hard measuring stick which encourages a baseline respect for your peers. Introducing underprepared students means that teachers will need to expend disproportionate resources on them or they'll just not do well.
The real, and hard fix is that the schools around the city have to do better. That's a hard multilayered problem, but I don't think relaxing standards or replacing objective with subjective measures is the way to go.
For what it's worth, if you allow the school administration to o much leeway in deciding who gets in, bad things will happen. Specialized school administrations are just as shitty as others. It's the student body and teachers that make these places rock. Keeping the test objective will prevent the grubby hands of politically motivated ambitious administrators from screwing things up.
[+] [-] cm2012|11 years ago|reply
This times 1000. The administration at Bronx Science was comically inept and somewhat corrupt, at least when I was there. A painted turtle would have gotten the same results, given the student filter they are gifted.
[+] [-] crassus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whiddershins|11 years ago|reply
I attended Stuyvesant in the 90s, and the student body wasn't very diverse. However, changing from a single objective test to an array of subjective criteria does nothing to alleviate the root problem, that some kids are getting better primary education than others. All such an initiative can do is weaken those schools and make them more like every other school in the city.
[+] [-] WalterBright|11 years ago|reply
So, ironically, I propose my own 'fixes'. Leave the admissions test as is, but reserve 10% of the student body to be admitted by random lottery.
[+] [-] wan23|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickbauman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] narrator|11 years ago|reply
So.... I have one question, is the test racist, and if so how? If it's not racist, you might want to focus attention on improving performance of the primary schools that less represented minorities are enrolled in instead of just lowering the bar for them such that they fail when presented with challenging course work or hold other students back by slowing down the rest of the class because their previous schooling left them unprepared for that work.
[+] [-] walshemj|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crassus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mathattack|11 years ago|reply
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/do-gift...
That said, I'm a New Yorker who doesn't want to send my kids to the school down the street where 85% of the kids fail the state exams. (The DOE's response is "Perhaps the tests aren't capturing the learning that's happening there.")
[+] [-] nickbauman|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MaysonL|11 years ago|reply
Jean Kwok is the author of two novels, Girl in Translation, and Mambo in Chinatown, out June 24. She was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to Brooklyn as a young girl.
[+] [-] EGreg|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ASneakyFox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ath0|11 years ago|reply
My high school held me to high standards and introduced me to broad influences - beyond technology - that help me see problems in a new light. Technically, I had access to a modern computer lab that let me try new things; when I found security holes, I didn't get kicked out but was tasked with fixing them.
In undergrad, I took a program that taught every new computer science class in a different language - without teaching you the language; assuming you'd have to pick it up in order to learn the underlying concepts. That kept me on my toes, helped remind me that I wasn't an expert in everything, and made me much more agile in keeping up with the languages and technology that have come out since undergrad. (I graduated in 2001... so almost none of the languages I do my daily work in existed then.)
In grad school, I expected to go in to study security but was exposed to infovis by joining a program known for it -- meaning I got to interact with people who knew the field forward and backward, giving me skills quickly, something to strive for, and a peek into the future of the field. This took my career in a different, and, I think, more exciting direction.
So what great schooling enough? Of course not. I worked my tail off, took a variety of good and less good jobs, and tended to relationships outside of school that helped me find other ways to learn and to do. And we'll never know the counterfactual. But I can point to a bunch of specific ways where good schooling put me on a successful path, and I'm honestly surprised that the sentiment here is so negative.
[+] [-] VLM|11 years ago|reply
Then there's "attended a great school", WRT you must attend Yale or Harvard to become president of the united states. Its an oligarchy thing, nothing to do with education at all. Or must go to Stanford if you want to do a (successful) startup.
[+] [-] cm2012|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] retroencabulato|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cm2012|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]