Dora Galacatos, executive director of the Feerick Center for Social Justice, and Laura Petty, the Amanda Rose Laura Foundation Education Law Fellow at the center, co-wrote an op-ed for New York Daily News that examines how New York City public schools can reinvent their admissions processes now that the pandemic has impacted the usual criteria.
New York City has some of the most renowned public high schools in the nation. Its schools are also among the country’s most segregated—due in part because of the city’s extensive use of academic “screens.” Nearly one in three high school programs rank and admit students using criteria such as test scores, grades, attendance and punctuality. Some go further and require interviews, essays or portfolios of work. The unsurprising consequence is a system that is highly segregated by race and income.
COVID-19 may turn this long-standing system on its head. Because of the crisis, the metrics most commonly used for screening high school applicants — attendance and punctuality, final grades, and New York State English Language Arts and math tests — will be unavailable for consideration next year.
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Reforming and eventually eliminating screened school admissions would do more than fix a deeply inequitable process. It would also improve student and school performance. While the evidence on peer effects and tracking is mixed, research generally finds that middle- and low-performing students benefit from learning with higher-achieving students. Siphoning the highest-achieving students into selective programs limits these interactions and draws resources — high-quality teachers and honors courses, for example — away from regular schools. What is more, as some evidence has shown, racially and economically diverse classroom settings benefit all students and reflect our country’s democratic values.