SEHS news and numbers from OAE

Here is the other news from OAE:

Application Stats

There were 17,496 kids who applied for SEHS
15.206 qualified for the SE test
14,393 took the test
4,340 (30%) got an SE offer.

Of those who got an offer:

41% got their 1st choice
19% got their 2nd choice
12% got their 3rd choice
11% got their 4th choice
8% got their 5th choice
8% got their 6th choice

There are not any second rounds planned for this year as CPS has gotten progressively better about estimating the response rate for the schools.  It’s not utterly impossible, but unlikely.

The scores this year “nudged down slightly” for the most part.  So for a change, no increases in the cutoffs, likely due to adding 300+ extra seats.  There are a few tiers within a few schools that went up but we likely won’t see the big leaps we saw the past 2 years.

Cutoffs will be posted on Monday 2/25.

The IB schools will continue to call down their own waitlist as spots are turned down there (which there likely will be due to kids getting multiple spots.)

February 22, 2013 at 6:09 pm 308 comments

NYTimes Article: For Asians, School Tests Are Vital Steppingstones

I can’t post every NYTimes education article because there are so many great ones, but this one today got my attention about high school admissions testing and the test prep culture in the Asian community.  Obviously this test prep/admissions stuff is an odd obsessions of mine, but I also always wonder if I should be channeling Tiger-Mom a bit more often.  The occasional instances where I “put my foot down” about homework or math practice (probably 1 percent of what Tiger Mom did) I feel somehow empowered knowing that another parent out there was strict about homework and the results were a daughter in Harvard.    The “meanness” that my 9 yo son accuses me of falls against deaf ears when I channel Tiger Mom (instead of usual Lax Permissive Hippy Mom.) 

I KNEW that the NYC selective enrollment high school admission process was strictly score-based (no tier, no race.) What I didn’t realize about the NYC high school admissions process is that ALL based on the 95-questions admission test.  No grades, no annual ISAT-like test, no reco letters.  Just that test.  Talk about high stakes.  

And the discussion about the test prep focus and the Asian culture is very interesting.  As we read last year, Asian students make up something like 75% of students at the city’s top HS, and there are something like 6 African American students out a few thousand.  So hard to believe that for all the moaning that goes on here about Tiers that NYC uses none of that.  Now there is a lawsuit being filed by the NAACP saying the process is unfair to black and hispanic students.   The comments are interesting, many people in support of using the test score as the sole admissions criteria, and supporting the idea of test prep as a way to show your dedication to passing this important test.

Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times

The afternoon his acceptance letter to Stuyvesant High School arrived in the mail, he and his parents gathered at the laundromat, the smell of detergent and the whirl of the washing machines filling the air. “Everyone was excited,” Ting recalled.

Ting’s father said he felt rejuvenated, and now dismissed the idea of returning: “I thought: the next generation will have a good future,” he said.

On Saturday, more than 15,000 students are expected to file into classrooms to take a grueling 95-question test for admission to New York City’s elite public high schools. (The exam on Sunday, for about 14,000 students, was postponed until Nov. 18 because of Hurricane Sandy.)

No one will be surprised if Asian students, who make up 14 percent of the city’s public school students, once again win most of the seats, and if black and Hispanic students win few. Last school year, of the 14,415 students enrolled in the eight specialized high schools that require a test for admissions, 8,549 were Asian.

Because of the disparity, some have begun calling for an end to the policy of using the test as the sole basis of admission to the schools, and last month, civil rights groups filed a complaint with the federal government, contending that the policy discriminated against students, many of whom are black or Hispanic, who cannot afford the score-raising tutoring that other students can. The Shis, like other Asian families who spoke about the exam in interviews in the past month, did not deny engaging in extensive test preparation. To the contrary, they seemed to discuss their efforts with pride.

They also said they were puzzled about having to defend a process they viewed as a vital steppingstone for immigrants. And more than a few saw the criticism of the test as an attack on their cultures, as troubling to them as grumblings about the growing Asian presence in these schools and the prestigious colleges they feed into. “You know: ‘You’re Asian, you must be smart,’ ” said Jan Michael Vicencio, an immigrant from Manila and a junior at Brooklyn Tech, one of the eight schools that use the test for admission. “And you’re not sure it’s a compliment or an insult. We get that a lot.”

Almost universally, the Asian students described themselves on one edge of a deep cultural chasm.

They cited their parents’ observance of ancient belief systems like Confucianism, a set of moral principles that emphasizes scholarship and reverence for elders, as well as their rejection of child-rearing philosophies more common in the United States that emphasize confidence and general well-being.

Several students said their parents did not shy away from corporal punishment as a means of motivating them. And they said that rigorous testing was generally an accepted practice in their home countries, with the tests viewed not so much as measures of intelligence, but of industriousness.

“Most of our parents don’t believe in ‘gifted,’ ” said Riyan Iqbal, 15, the son of Bangladeshi immigrants, as he and his friends — of Bengali, Korean and Indian descent — meandered toward the subway from the Bronx High School of Science one recent afternoon. “It’s all about hard work.”

No student, they said, was off the hook. Riyan, the son of a taxi driver and a Duane Reade cashier, and his schoolmates said their parents routinely plied them with motivational tales about the trials they endured back home, walking to school barefoot, struggling with hunger, being set back by floods and political unrest. “You try to make up for their hardships,” Riyan said.

The summer after sixth grade, Riyan spent most days at a small storefront “cram school,” memorizing surface area and volume formulas. In seventh grade, he was back there on Saturday and Sundays, unscrambling paragraphs and plowing through reading passages. The classes cost his parents $200 a month.

“I knew my parents would still love me if I didn’t get into Bronx Science,” he said. “But they would be very disappointed.”

Jerome Krase, a professor emeritus in sociology at Brooklyn College, and one of the editors of “Race and Ethnicity in New York City,”said that a growing number of Asian immigrants in recent years had experienced serious adversity in their home countries. “The children hold the honor of the family in their hands,” Professor Krase said. “If they succeed, the fComplaints about the test and its effect on the racial makeup of the top schools date back at least to the civil rights era. When school officials began openly discussing changing the admissions policy in the early 1970s, white parents persuaded the State Legislature to pass a law cementing the test as the only basis of admission to the specialized high schools. At the time, according to an article in The New York Times in 1971, Stuyvesant High School was mostly white, 10 percent black, 4 percent Puerto Rican or “other Spanish surnamed,” and 6 percent Asian.

This year at Stuyvesant, 72 percent are Asian and less than 4 percent are black or Hispanic.

Melissa Potter, a spokeswoman for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of the groups that filed the complaint with the United States Department of Education in September, said that though some of the city’s poorest Asian immigrants had found their way into these schools, many were still being left out, for the same reason that poor blacks and Hispanics were: they do not have access to the grueling, expensive and time-consuming test preparation for the exam. The complaint argued that other factors, like school grades, teacher recommendations and personal experience should also be taken into account.

City education officials, as well as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, have rejected the idea that the one-test entry system should be rethought. “You pass the test,” the mayor said last month, “you get the highest score, you get into the school — no matter what your ethnicity, no matter what your economic background is.”

The city began offering a free test-prep program several years ago for black and Hispanic students, but after a legal challenge, other ethnic groups were granted the same access to the course. Today, 43 percent of the students in the program are Asian. Three years ago, Ting Shi was one of them.

The filing of the complaint has led to some uncomfortable discussions about race, aided by the anonymity of the Internet. On the elite schools’ alumni Web sites, discussions can veer into “dangerous territory,” as one commenter from Brooklyn Tech recently noted during a heated exchange. The discussion included a post about how the N.A.A.C.P. ought to be pushing parents to get “more involved in their children’s education.”

Meanwhile, a parent on a popular education e-mail list referred to the “Asian-ification” of the elite schools, and a post on Urban Baby grumbled about “Asian kids taking all the spots because they prep excessively.”

Criticizing Asians’ success on the test is “like a defense mechanism,” said Faria Kabir, a sophomore at Brooklyn Tech, who emigrated from Bangladesh when she was 6. “It’s like someone is blaming you for something that isn’t actually your fault.”

Beyond issues of race, those who favor a broader admissions policy say the reliance on one test for admission, one that has spawned an industry of tutoring programs, has distorted what it means to be a top student.

Sharon Chambers, the owner of a karate studio in Queens, whose son, Kyle, was scheduled to take the test on Saturday, said students should be able to demonstrate their abilities in a more well-rounded way, one that might not cost so much. “A test like this is not a full indicator of a child’s potential,” Ms. Chambers, who is black, said.

Others take issue with the exam on philosophical grounds. “You shouldn’t have to prep Sunday to Sunday, to get into a good high school,” said Melissa Santana, a legal secretary whose daughter Dejanellie Falette has been prepping this fall for the exam. “That’s extreme.”

But a Bensonhurst resident, Emmie Cheng, who is of Chinese descent but emigrated here as a child from Cambodia, was not sure she agreed.

This fall, her daughter Kassidi has spent every Tuesday afternoon and all of Saturday at the Horizon Program, a tutoring program near her house, reviewing work she has done over the past three years. Kassidi also takes a prep class on Sundays.

Still, Ms. Cheng, a director at a shoe importing company, said guiding her daughter through this process — which cost her about $2,000 this year alone — paled in comparison to what she had experienced earlier in her life. Her father and four brothers died of starvation during Cambodia’s civil war. And once here, she said, she watched her mother struggle in a garment factory.

“This is the easy part,” Ms. Cheng said.

October 27, 2012 at 6:10 pm 199 comments

South Loop community interested in using Jones building for a new High School (guest post)

Here’s a guest post from HSObsessed, who btw, has a child in 8th grade this year, and if we butter her up, will hopefully keep us posted of their search process.

I learned on Alderman Bob Fioretti’s Twitter feed that there’s a new group in the south Loop working to try to establish a new neighborhood high school for kids living in and near the south Loop, to be housed in the current Jones College Prep building. JCP is getting a new facility nearby, which will be completed and ready for that school’s selectively enrolled freshmen in fall 2013.

The “Reuse Jones” group seems to have Ald. Fioretti’s support and they print his letter to Mayor Emanuel on their website www.reusejones.org

The website contains a few links to articles but doesn’t have a good statement of purpose of exactly what they want and why. From what I can surmise, they believe that there are enough families in the south and west Loop who would like to send their kids to CPS high schools, but they’re not thrilled with the current options of Phillips and Crane.

Here’s a link to the maps showing the boundaries of the neighborhood high schools that serve the Loop area currently, one for Streeterville. (Red schools are neighborhood schools; all the blue schools are high schools that have enrollment by application, lottery, etc.)

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B1EhAcy8TtneNUt5ZEtHSE9iWDA

It looks like like Phillips is the neighborhood high school for nearly all the Loop south and east of the Chicago River, with a huge boundary, some of which goes all the way down to 59th Street. Phillips can hold up to 2100 students but only has 663 enrolled, with 91% low income. The average ACT score is 13.4. Only 2.5% of graduates are considered eligible to enroll in selective colleges. (This is determined by a metric using each student’s GPA combined with their ACT. If a student has a 3.0 GPA and scores 18 or higher on the ACT, they are considered eligible to enroll in a selective college, so in my opinion, the bar is set pretty low.)

Crane is the neighborhood high school for those in the west loop, west of the Chicago River, between 1800 south and Kinzie on the north. Crane was going to be shut down by CPS earlier this year but community members rallied to keep it open, and it will now be a health sciences high school. It has space for up to 2300 students with 2000 ideal, but currently enrolls 638 students, 94% low income. They post a 14.0 average ACT score, and 3.7% of graduates are considered eligible for selective colleges.

Since we’re looking at the Loop area, Wells is the high school for the “new East Side”, which is northeast of Michigan and Randolph, as well as for kids in Streeterville and RIver North. Wells ideally enrolls 1400 but has 630 students, 94% low income, posting average ACTs of 14.9, and 7.2% are eligible for selective colleges.

So what do you think about the group’s argument that a new neighborhood high school is needed in the Loop? None of the existing nabe high schools is doing spectacular in terms of test scores, but they’re likely enrolling kids from lower performing K-8 schools. Those “college eligible” scores are pretty dismal. (To give you a comparison, 36.6% of Lake View High School’s graduates are considered to be college eligible.) None of the existing high schools are very close to the Loop itself, with Phillips in particular at 3900 south, meaning a potential commute of more than five miles for a kid to get to his “neighborhood” high school.

However, I’m wondering whether there truly enough kids currently in 7th/6th grade who not only live in the theoretical boundaries of this new school, but who would in 2-3 years actually attend it. It’s one thing to “think” your kid will go to a certain school, but then another reality to turn down an offer from a more-established school and commit to the new school. Given the very, very low usage rates of the current high schools, I’m sure CPS is loathe to pay for yet another set of salaries for a principal, AVP, teachers, etc. in addition to the various operational costs of the facility. I think the SaveJones group will have to come up with hard demographic data about where current high schoolers within the boundary attend to convince CPS.

July 27, 2012 at 9:33 am 79 comments

Interview on SE High Schools with OAE and SE Scores This Year vs Last Year 2012

Ok, here is my write-up of the interview.  Some of the comments are paraphrased, based on my recollection and messy notes.

Feel free to comment or share your conspiracy theories.

The chart above (thanks to the Sun Times!) shows the change in scores versus last year.  I highlighted differences of 20+ points in the Min and Mean scores.  I don’t know how to un-fuzzy it.  The actual scores are listed here: http://cpsmagnet.org/apps/news/show_news.jsp?REC_ID=235713&id=0

Interview with Katie Ellis

Director of the Office of Access and Enrollment

How would you explain the goal of the Tier system?

The goal is to promote socio-economic diversity in the schools.  There are certain neighborhoods “in isolation” within the city, both poor and wealthy.  The goal is to promote diversity, to bridge the gap, and bring students together.

The factors that go into the Tier definitions correlate with educational achievement.

Starting 29 years ago CPS used race to support diversity.  We build great, racially diverse schools.  Then the consent decree reversed that policy.  So the question was, should turn back on the success of these schools that were created for diversity?

The city of Chicago says “no,” that diversity is still important to use.  We’ve looked at what would happen without the impact of the tiers and it looks a lot like NYC does.

We understand that kids are disappointed when they don’t get their first choice but the goal of diversity is something that CPS really believes in.  We’re trying to strike a balance between social diversity AND giving the top kids a seat.  We’re striving to successfully balance that.

What was the reaction to the higher cutoff scores this year within the OAE office?

We immediately noticed that the scores when up across the Tiers. That was very apparent.

Why do you think that happened? I first thought it was the Tier 4 cutoffs, but when all the cutoffs were posted I saw that it was across Tiers.

There were more applications this year.  Around 14,000.  More competition.

FYI, there are around 30-35K kids per class.  Around 9-12% of the applications are from private school students.

There were also fewer seats this year.  This was based on the numbers to replace the current graduating class.

What is the story with 2^nd round offers?

The goal is not to make second round offers.  We make more offers than there are seats, so we try to anticipate how many kids will turn down offers.

The SE test seems to allow for a lot of kids to get 300 points which ends up with a lot of kids having very high scores (which leads to frustration.)  Can’t we have a test that discriminates better?

**REVISED:  To clarify, CPS gives points based on the percentile. The percentile tells a prospective student where he or she fared based on everyone else who took the test.  When we look at the actual scaled scores, we see a large range of scores. Therefore, just because a student scored better than 99% of people taking the test, that doesn’t mean he or she got a perfect score on the test.  Also, this doesn’t mean that we are not grading the full test.

Three hundred points does not necessarily equal a perfect score on the test, and when we look at the actual scale scores, you can see that. It’s harder to give points based on a scale score because every year, depending on the competition level, the number of points you would give would have to change. Percentiles are an easier way to convey to parents how students are actually doing.

Why can’t the SE test happen earlier so kids can know their whole 900 point score BEFORE applying to schools?  This would help frame their expectations and be more efficient for touring schools.

We have to allow time in the fall for kids to take the ISATs if they missed them.   These scores are used to see who qualifies for the SE test.  So once it is all scheduled, we end up with the SE test happening when it does.  The other option would be to allow everyone to take the test earlier, but this is a big expense for the district (since all kids could take the test, but roughly only half would qualify for application to the SE schools based on their ISAT scores.)

Why do the letter mail out late every year?!

We do the best we can, trying to make sure everything is accurate.  We worked that weekend to get them out on Monday.

Why does it take the whole week to post the cutoff scores?

There are a few kids who experience calculation errors each year.  We work to resolve those and post only the final cutoffs.  We don’t want to post anything inaccurate so we wait until those issues are resolved.

What is the story about birthdate being used as a tiebreaker?

That is the 6^th criteria after other test-based criteria and has never actually been used.  But it exists, just in case.

What are parents supposed to do who have kids who have very good scores, but not good enough to place into an SE high school?  Where does CPS see as a place for these kids?  The neighborhood schools still look pretty scary.

The portfolio office is analyzing this.  The goal is to have a good option for everyone.  We know we’re not there yet, but that is the goal.  We encourage parents to be open minded about their options and be thorough about seeking options.

What is the selection process for out-of-neighborhood kids at neighborhood high schools such as Lake View?

It is lottery based, with no Tier impact.  Last year LVHS had 1200 applicants outside of their area.

Is there a department or person in CPS who can help parents who are trying to improve their neighborhood high school?

(Sounds like not really.)  The portfolio office might be a place to start.

March 3, 2012 at 2:41 pm 123 comments