Big Changes to NYC Middle School Admissions

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and the New York City Department of Education is changing the way middle schools and high schools will select students who want to go there next year. The DOE is removing all selective screens for middle schools, a temporary change, for now, pandemic related. They'll also scrap district priority as it's known for high schools completely and that looks to be a permanent change priority for people living close by, which is seen as a backdoor segregation policy.

With the window to apply to middle and high schools coming right up the week of January 11th for middle schools, the week of January 18th, for high schools, there are strong feelings on various sides of this and some confusion among parents about what they can do and what they can't. We thought we would ask Sophia Chang, who reports on schools for Gothamist and the WNYC Newsroom to come on and clarify what these changes mean for various parents, students, and the city's efforts to desegregate its schools. Hi, Sophia welcome back to the show.

Sophia Chang: Hi, Brian.

Brian: Listeners, we're going to open up the phones on this right away because Sophia can answer some of your questions. We hope if you have a child applying to public middle school or high school in New York City, you can express an opinion. First of all, does this change serve you? Is it an adequate step toward desegregation? Do you have a question for how it will work in you and your child's case? Do you have concerns about what this change will mean? Principals, teachers, help us report this story too. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280.

Sophia, I actually want to get into this through the lens of some national news. As you know, president-elect Biden announced another cabinet pick yesterday, Connecticut education commissioner, Miguel Cardona, to be the next secretary of education. I know your beat is New York and not Connecticut and not Washington, but the kinds of things that Cardona started talking about right out of the gate yesterday when Biden introduced him, I think they really relate to these changes at the local level that we'll talk about in the city. Here's Cardona speaking yesterday, acknowledging the unique challenges of the pandemic, but also seeing them in the context of ongoing disparities.

Miguel Cardona: We also know that this crisis is ongoing, that we will carry its impact for years to come, and that the problems and inequities that have plagued our educational system since long before COVID will still be with us even after the virus is gone. It's our responsibility, it's our privilege to take this moment and to do the most American thing imaginable, to forge opportunity out of crisis, to draw on our resolve, our ingenuity, and our tireless optimism as a people and build something better than we've ever had before.

Brian: About himself, Cardona said.

Miguel: I being bilingual and bicultural am as American as apple pie and rice and beans. For me, education was the great equalizer, but for too many students, your zip code and your skin color remained the best predictor of the opportunities you'll have in your lifetime.

Brian: Sophia, let's use that as a way into the New York City policy changes. These two changes have to do with the pandemic, but how also the pandemic shining a light on problems that pre-existed it, right?

Sophia: Yes, absolutely. I think what Cardona is saying is very much going to indicate his priorities as the education secretary. He himself is a former public school teacher, and also talked about his experience growing up as an English language learner. He has direct experience with those factors that will make a difference in hopefully how he sees policy, taking his personal experience, and applying it. President Biden has vowed to reopen the majority of schools in the first 100 days of his administration. The pressure will really be on Cardona to help deliver on that promise.

Brian: With that as prelude, let's get into the screens and for anyone listening, who maybe hasn't had a child applying to public middle schools and high schools in the five boroughs who might be listening, what are these academic screens intended to do for middle school in particular?

Sophia: The city traditionally had selective screening for many middle schools in the city. There has been test scores, attendance, grades, these are all metrics that were typically used to screen applicants to some of the more competitive middle schools in the city. The mayor announced that they would no longer do this for the next school year because of the pandemic’s fallout.

Brian: What will those changes look like in practice, the halt on academic screens?

Sophia: It seems to indicate the application will just be very much straightforward based on some of the available metrics of the student’s grades from previous years, but just not the ones that are the most immediate ones because those are the ones that were most disrupted by the pandemic.

Brian: What would happen? I'm thinking of one school in particular, I'm not going to name it, where there's a middle school gifted and talented program and regular, if that's the right word, middle school under the same roof. You walk into that school, you could see that the populations are ethnically very different. Does that separation just go away with a snap of a finger and it's just kids from that geographical neighborhood, or what happens in all these cases?

Sophia: I think we're still just talking about admissions and that's separate from gifted and talented, which is a different issue altogether. Admissions being opened up this way means that students in that district will be able to apply to those middle schools without worrying about their attendance and test grades and state's test scores being weighed in the same way they used to be. It doesn't change the gifted and talented program. The de Blasio administration actually hasn't announced any updates on that so far in terms of the testing, that's also-

Brian: When we say they're doing away with all academic screens for middle schools, gifted and talented is not done away with, that's considered some separate kind of academic screen?

Sophia: That's a whole different program, that's different from just regular admission to middle schools. Again, we have selective high school admissions, which is a whole different issue as well and that's where you get into the specialized high school admissions test.

Brian: If the academic screens are being dropped for middle schools in the way you're describing, how will the middle schools decide who gets to go there if they have more applications than seats?

Sophia: Well, they're still going to have priority for students who live in the area, in the district in the zone because we're still talking about 10-year-olds and 11-year-olds. A lot of families want their kids that age to be nearby as opposed to going to a school halfway across the city.

Brian: Let's take a phone call, here's teacher and parent Ashley in Brooklyn. Ashley, you're on WNYC, hello.

Ashley: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I'm thrilled with the president's nomination as a fellow fourth-grade teacher, and I'm also thrilled hearing the news with what the city wants to do for middle and high school. My concern is how is this going to affect the administration in the individual schools? I've witnessed my own child's school really struggle with the requirements that the city has placed on them through no fault of their own.

We hear certain things in the media coming from our city leadership and then when we look at our individual schools, we see that sometimes they're really struggling to fulfill what the city says they're doing and while I think the ideas are great ones, I'm worried for what this means at a teacher level and at an administration level with the individual schools. The end result, hopefully, will be great, but I'm concerned about the messiness getting there.

Brian: Sophia, want to talk to Ashley, have you heard this addressed?

Sophia: Hi, Ashley. I think that's definitely a valid concern and there has been long-standing concerns from parents and educators like, what does this mean on the reality? If you look at some of the examples that have already implemented something similar, district 15 in Brooklyn, moved away from screening to a lottery system a couple of years ago, and it has led to more diversity in some of the most popular middle schools there. It has taken some time, but there are examples that we can look at of how it's been carried out.

Brian: Ashley, thank you. It looks like we have a middle school principal calling in. We're going to take Michael in Manhattan. Michael, you're on WNYC. Thank you so much for calling.

Michael: Hi, I've been waiting for this issue to come up for so many years. I was a principal at an elementary school in East Harlem, and I was shocked when I met with-- I was in elementary school and I would meet with the middle school principals that our fifth and sixth graders were applying to. They actually showed me the admissions process, which they never made transparent. You would never find it on a website or they would never talk about it publicly.

They literally would take each child's folder and sift through the folders that they wanted, which students they were going to take, and then they would ship off the folders of the kids they didn't want to the second-choice schools and then the third-choice schools. By the time you got to the third choice schools, those schools were called dumping grounds, and they were middle schools that were full of students who were largely from low socioeconomic families who were very low performing and there was no rhyme or reason to it other than the higher-level middle schools, the ones with the better reputations were just cherry-picking and handpicking the students they wanted.

When I challenged the administrators on this, they just shrugged it off like, of course, this is the way we do it every year. There was even a middle school in district three, where under the same roof, there was a selective program, it wasn't a gifted and talented, it was a selective program and "regular kids." They were under the same roof and under the same school, but different programs. The kids were treated totally separately. They had totally separate teachers and because the kids in the regular program were mostly titled, what was the title one, kids where they should've gotten extra funding.

They didn't because the other kids were counted in their population because it was viewed as one school, even though there was totally separate programs. To me, this has been like-- You know that insider, the movie, the Insider with Russell Crowe and they find out what's going on in the tobacco industry?

Brian: Yes.

Michael: To me, this is what's been going on in middle school admissions and especially in district two and district three for years, is that they literally, middle schools, just cherry-pick the kids they want, they send the kids they don't want to the second round, those schools send them to the third round by the time you get to the third round middle schools.

I was a principal in an elementary school where we shared a building with one of the "dumping ground" middle schools, and it was a disaster. They had the most inexperienced teachers working with the most challenging students and everyone just accepted. I'll tell you right now, Joel Klein at the time, this is a long time ago. Joel Klein at the time, when he was the commissioner, yes, he tried to get some of the district to middle schools to expand their programs. He didn't even say to them, you can't take the kids you want to take. He said, just take an extra 40 kids who are, "the more typical in New York City kids."

The parents went crazy and they flooded his inbox and they flooded his phones and it just-- That was the end of it. My prediction is I think mayor de Blasio was spoken about this very frankly. He said, if people really want to get serious about it, they've got to be prepared for their schools to be more integrated, the parents in district two and district three will lose their minds and this will all just go away and it'll go back to business as usual. I hate to be so cynical about it.

Brian: I want to ask Sophia as a reporter in a minute if the parents in district two and district three and [unintelligible 00:13:51] are losing their minds in the way the caller says, but Michael, for you as a former elementary school principal, what if they did when you were there scramble the system and instead of this kind of tracking where kids who were had better attendance and better grades in the earlier grades and things like that were all mixed in with the kids who didn't, how would that have affected teaching and learning for all the groups?

Michael: Well, Brian, I just want to say something very clearly, the thing to me that's different about New York City schools versus let's say suburban schools is when you go to a suburban school district on Long Island or New Jersey, you go to an elementary school building and then you go to a middle school building and a high school building, but you're still in the same district. That kid goes to a district from kindergarten through 12th grade and the people know you.

In New York City, a kid goes to an elementary school, then they go to a totally different middle school that has no connection, then a totally different- When I say district, I'm not talking about something as big as district three, I'm talking about a school district like Minneola or Rosalyn. A small school district with maybe 2,000 kids, kindergarten through 12th grade where they know you all the way through.

In New York City, what we should be doing is we should be running schools that go K through 12 because that level of anonymity that a child faces when they're in sixth grade and all the teachers are new and most of their classmates are new, and then it happens again in ninth grade, they go to another high school where all the teachers are new. Yes, we have some K through eight programs now, and we have some six through 12. We should have a K through 12 programs where a student goes through and the middle school principal can talk to the elementary school principal and say, "Hey, do you remember when Ricardo was in third grade and he had that reading issue?"

At every division, kids are constantly faced with anonymity, nobody knows them-

Brian: Michael, I'm going to leave it there for time, but you raised a lot of really interesting points and I really appreciate your calling on all of those things. Sophia Chang, reporter on education for Gothamist and WNYC News, are the parents in district two and district three losing their minds as Michael predicts? Which is to say, are mostly white and Asian parents in the wealthier parts of Manhattan, freaking out over this removal of screens, academic screens for middle school?

Sophia: [laughs] That's a good question. I have talked to some community education advocates in district two who have actually welcomed this because they've been advocating for the removal of geographic priority especially for their high schools, which are very sought after, but they also warned that there would be a lot of parents who would be upset that this is no longer going to be in place to help their kids get into Baruch or Eleanor Roosevelt. It's going to be tough for fa-- It's already been a very tough year for any family that's in a public school in New York City.

This is going to be yet another change, but what, was it Michael? He brought us some really good ideas about or some good points about the continuity of education, but I wanted to just mention that part of the reason why New York City's schools are set-up the way they are was that there was a move to allow the family to have a chance to go to schools that aren't in their neighborhoods if that is not what they wanted, if there were schools that they prefer in other areas or that they just simply didn't think the schools in their own particular neighborhood were good enough or just problematic for whatever reason. It's complicated in New York City. It always is-

Brian: Is that to say it was intended to be pro-integration.

Sophia: He brought up Joel Klein and Joel Klein's move was to allow students to apply to 12 high schools to get out of a neighborhood school if they didn't want to go to that neighborhood school. I think there was a move to both allow families to have more choices, but a lot of times that has led to, as Michael pointed out, some siloing of students.

Brian: This has WNYC FM HDN AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcom, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey public radio with a few more minutes with our Sophia Chang, from the WNYC newsroom and Gothamist, discussing and hearing from you on the phones about the city's plan to end academic screening for middle school admissions for the next school year and neighborhood or district priority given to families who live near particular high schools. Barbara in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC, Barbara. Thanks so much for calling in, hi.

Barbara: Thank you, Brian. I'm a new listener and a first-time caller, I'm so excited to be on. I am a mother of a student who's going to be graduating going into middle school. My daughter has been in the gifted and talented since forever. My concern is that between her home district and her school district, there aren't really quality middle schools for her to go to.

I'm looking at all these schools and I looked at the city-wide middle schools but there are a lot of schools in district two where I work that I would like my daughter to get into, but because of all of the politics, I'm literally going to have to end up going to their district office and pleading my case for my gifted child to get into a school that is going to match her abilities because where you go to middle school really-- It sets up its trajectory of where you go to high school. I earn decent money but I live in a predominantly African-American neighborhood in Brooklyn. I'm not going to change my address in order to get my child to school. I can't really afford that.

I think while the intentions are good, I think the academic screenings should stay and I think somehow, and I don't know how that's going to happen, but somehow, school districts need to look across the board at the quality of education that children are getting because her school right now, she has music, she has arts, but all of the middle schools that are available to her are strictly academic that are really within our district. That's my comment. Thank you.

Brian: Barbara, thank you so much, and don't make this your last call. I'm glad you chimed in on this and we'll have time for one more. Tanya in Brooklyn you're on WNYC. Hi, Tanya.

Tanya: Hi, Brian. This is also my first time, so excited to be on just like Barbara. I also live in Brooklyn and I actually live in District 15. My son is about to go to middle school next year and I'm calling with similar concerns as Barbara, that unfortunately the DOE and the mayor has only recognized one form of diversity, which is color.

They haven't taken into account that there are children of all colors who may be differently talented and may need a different track in the interest of excelling. That said, I 100% also agree with Barbara that the fact that the mayor felt it important to remove the screening is an admission on his part that the rest of the school system has not been brought up to par. They haven't really focused on improving all the schools that are available to kids.

Lastly, I would say that the proximity rules for admission, I was just amazed to see that it could get such prominence because I thought the whole point of desegregation was to make sure that just like in elementary school, in District 15, you have very rich people buying brownstones and paying millions of dollars to live in District 15 so that their kids can go to that zone school and now you're doing that for middle schools and you will eventually do that for high schools. It looks like I don't understand that, how that drives desegregation and opportunities and choice for all kids.

Brian: Well, Sophia, what would they say about how it drives desegregation?

Sophia: That's a great point, and thank you, Tanya, for raising it. With District 15, it was very much specifically a move because what she mentioned, it is a very stratified neighborhood where it covers both the wealthy parts of Brooklyn, like Park Slope and Cobble Hill, but also has some areas where there's a lower income. In that district, they did switch to a lottery system, but it also looked at priority seats who are disadvantaged students who come from lower-income families.

There are multiple prongs that you can take to this and I think that's been what advocates are pushing for, is to remove the screens, but also take into account that you need to prioritize admissions for students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds. Advocates are saying there should be more than just one step to this for true diversity.

Brian: Well, this is the beginning of a conversation. I shouldn't say it's the beginning of a conversation, but it's the next step in a forever conversation, and a conversation about a topic, segregation, on which New York City has been stuck for so long and very much in the de Blasio administration. For the first large number of years in his two terms, he didn't even want to say the word segregation.

Now, some things are happening, maybe shaken loose by the pandemic and maybe for some other reasons as well, legacy, we don't know, but things are going to start happening with this in the next school year. A lot of questions for parents as individuals and a lot of questions for the city as a whole and the fabric of society. Sophia Chang reports on education for WNYC and Gothamist. Sophia, thanks for helping us understand this.

Sophia: Thank you, Brian.

 

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