SchoolBook
A Summer of Test Prep Means More Asians in the City's Elite Schools
Thirteen year-old Ibnul Islam isn't spending his summer camp or playing video games. Three days a week, he's sitting in a small class at Khan's Tutorial in Jackson Heights going over algebra equations and logic questions. Once he's home, he said, "three to four hours consists of doing SHSAT prep."
SHSAT is an important acronym for strivers like him and his classmates. It stands for the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test. It's given to eighth graders in October and determines who will get into the city's eight most competitive schools, which include Stuyvesant and Bronx High School of Science.
Almost all the kids at Khan's are Bangladeshi. Like other Asian immigrants, they know tutoring makes a huge difference in passing the test. This helps explain why Asians now make up more than half of the students admitted to specialized high schools this year, even though they account for just 15 percent of the city's public school students.
Ivan Khan, whose father started Khan's Tutorial 21 years ago while working as a high school teacher, said Bangladeshis are one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the city and their "very robust and dynamic media and press" helped spread the word about the importance of tutoring for the SHSAT. His company places full-page ads in Bangladeshi newspapers with the smiling faces of students accepted to the schools.
Khan's now has 10 tutoring centers in South Asian neighborhoods throughout the city. Bangladeshis are following the same path laid by Chinese and Korean immigrants, who have opened their own tutoring companies throughout Brooklyn and Queens. Lulu Zhou, whose family started the A+ Academy more than 20 years ago, said demand is high in these communities because of a long tradition of tutoring.
"They come from a culture where this is the norm," she explained. "They come from a culture where this is something that everybody goes to."
Schools in China, Korea and Japan are so competitive that Asia represents the fastest-growing market in the world for private tutoring, according to a 2014 industry analysis.
But while Asians make up the majority of kids in these elite high schools, blacks and Latinos are barely visible: just 12 percent of those admitted this year, even though they make up 68 percent of public school students. That skewed figure has led to a big debate about whether the city should continue relying on a single test to determine admissions, with Mayor Bill de Blasio proposing other factors including grades and attendance.
Those involved in the tutoring business believe the deck is stacked because too many smart kids don't even know about the importance of test prep.
While certain Asian immigrants have created a pipeline of tutoring centers, educators say black and Latino students often don’t have the same networks in their communities. According to the city's department of Small Business Services, there are more than 240 private tutoring companies in Brooklyn and Queens combined, where so many Asian communities are based, but just 12 in the Bronx.
Instead of turning to extra tutors, many black and Latino families believe "that the school system will provide everything that the kids need to be successful," said Sam Adewumi, a graduate of Brooklyn Tech who is also a math teacher at the elite school. Adewumi, 49, was born in Nigeria but grew up in the Bronx when test prep wasn't the norm.
"I think our kids walk in there and get destroyed by that test," he said.
Adewumi believes the city should expand its own free tutoring program, DREAM. He started his own business a couple of years ago in Bedford Stuyvesant to prepare underrepresented minority students for the SHSAT. It expanded this summer to include 25 rising eighth-graders, all black and Latino, taking weekday classes in a church basement.
One of the students, Andrew Hall, said he was surprised by algebra and logic questions he’d never seen before.
"Based on what I learned in school during the school year I thought I could use that to take the test," he said. "But from going here I know it’s not just that."