Indiana University is “the new Wisconsin.” [WSJ]
NYC toddlers are 34% more excellent than last year. [NYT City Room]
The SAT still discriminates. [Head Count]
This professor is 110! [Tweed]
Posts Tagged ‘equal access’
after unforgivable delay, news you can use
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010thanks, compulsive list-makers: high school rankings
Friday, December 11th, 2009The US News public high school rankings came out at midnight Wednesday. Meant to compete with Newsweek’s less-than-useful annual list (which ranks schools solely on AP/IB participation), the survey is based pretty much entirely on the same thing, plus state tests, with some attention to economic and racial parity.
12 NYC schools made the US News gold list: Newcomers High School in Long Island City (#6), the High School of American Studies at Lehman College (#19), Stuy (#31), Townsend Harris High School in Flushing (#33), Staten Island Tech (#34), the Baccalaureate School for Global Education in Long Island City (#35), the High School for Dual Language and Asian Studies (#52), Bronx Science (#58), Brooklyn Tech (#63), NEST+M (#64), the High School for Law and Public Service (#75), and Queens High School for the Sciences at York College (#81). You can judge for yourself how arbitrary (or not) this list is, but since no NYC schools made the Newsweek top 100, I’m inclined to think of the US News rankings as an improvement.
Also newsworthy: Stuy and Bronx Science are good schools with similarities and differences.
On the silver list: Baruch, the Collegiate Institute for Math & Science in the Bronx, Benjamin Banneker, Bronx Engineering and Technology Academy, Eleanor Roosevelt, LaGuardia, Frederick Douglass, the High School for Health Professions and Human Services, the High School of Economics and Finance, the High School of Telecommunication Arts & Technology, Hostos-Lincoln Academy of Science in the Bronx, the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, Manhattan International High School, Queens Gateway to Health Sciences Secondary School, Millenium, Riverdale/Kingsbridge Academy (MS/HS 141), the Academy of American Studies in Queens, the Marble Hill School for International Studies in the Bronx, the Michael J. Petrides School in Staten Island, and the Urban Assembly School of Design and Construction. There’s also a bronze list, but you get the idea.
kindergarten admissions: a total nightmare?
Monday, November 23rd, 2009This week’s 8th most emailed Times story (maybe you’ve seen it?) examined preparation of pre-schoolers for the admissions tests (the OLSAT and Bracken School Readiness Assessment) to public gifted & talented kindergarten programs. Most interesting (to me) is the difference between private and public kindergarten admissions practices, at the heart of which is, as always, the question of access:
“Private schools warn that they will look negatively on children they suspect of being prepped for the tests they use to select students, like the Educational Records Bureau exam, or E.R.B., even though parents and admissions officers say it quietly takes place…No similar message, however, has come from the public schools. In fact, the city distributes 16 Olsat practice questions to ‘level the playing field,’ said Anna Commitante, the head of gifted and talented programs for the city’s Department of Education.”
Fair enough. Spreading the SAT prep around is crucial (although not sufficient) for equal college access, so it makes sense to let everyone prep for the kindergarten exam. But Teachers College professor James Borland says the test itself causes major inequities in gifted admissions. And Leonie Haimson at the NYC Public School Parents blog, agreeing with Boreland, is sick of the Times’s “obsession” with gifted programs.
For more (Manhattan-centric) insight into kindergarten admissions, check out this awesome but completely horrifying documentary.
