Also

[conuly]

it's not a matter of "lowering standards". Bard, ICE, Millennium - these school don't have "lowered standards" for admissions nor for their already admitted students, but they still manage more than 4% black and Hispanic students. That's 4% total at Stuy, not 4% of each of those racial/ethnic groups.

And while I don't know what the situation is at those other schools, I can tell you now that I'm hardly the only person I know who attended a specialized science high school and either left or was basically counseled out due to a. undiagnosed invisible disability b. undiagnosed/untreated/undertreated mental health issues c. hitting the academic wall in one or more subjects and not having the experience to know how to move past it. I'm not going to say that this is how those schools keep their high academic stats (I think the fact that they stack the deck has got to be a larger part of it) but I did have a surprising number of teachers who seemed to expect self-teaching students. Has this changed? Maybe. It's now been nigh on 20 years. But I wouldn't bet on it. I don't think change is going to come to any of those schools without a lot of enforced, very public self-reflection first.

Comments

[crystalpyramid]

I would definitely believe that the more prestigious schools are getting it all out of selectivity rather than teaching. My (college) alma mater pulled that trick in the 1920s, ramped up selectivity and now everyone a hundred years later thinks they're great.

[conuly]

I have spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to cram a very basic fact into people's heads: a school which takes 9th graders who are working 2 years above grade level and produces 12th graders who are working 2 years above grade level has effectively done nothing. A school which takes 9th graders who are working 2 years *below* grade level and produces 12th graders who, after four or five years, are working at or near grade level is actually doing a better job at teaching. Yes, the numbers damn well do lie if you think the former schools are better than the latter simply because their students do more APs!

[crystalpyramid]

I thought that was the entire point of those No Child Left Behind ratings! You would think people would have had time to figure it out by now.

Although if your kid is two years ahead, it's not necessarily clear that the school where people are generally behind but improving rapidly is the best fit for them. Differentiated instruction can be tricky, much as administrators love to talk about it.

[conuly]

Although if your kid is two years ahead, it's not necessarily clear that the school where people are generally behind but improving rapidly is the best fit for them. Differentiated instruction can be tricky, much as administrators love to talk about it.

This is true, although it depends on other factors, like what electives and extracurriculars it has. If you're two years ahead and really want to work on plane repair, then hey, NYC has a school that focuses on plane repair and kids learn that and that's a good fit for you even if you're more advanced in literature than your peers. (I don't know what the stats are for incoming students to that school.)

[crystalpyramid]

Yay plane repair school, that's awesome.

[conuly]

At any rate, if your super smart kid ends up going to a super average school and they're bored, well, it's not a great thing but neither is it the worst thing ever. They'll come out at the end, at the very worst, on grade level. (The horrors!) Most likely they'll do a lot of self-study, take summer classes and APs at home and dual enrollment at the local college, and graduate early but still two years ahead.

[crystalpyramid]

Right. On a population level it's fine. From the perspective of a parent making choices about where to send a child, how fine it ends up being depends a lot on the individual kid and how intrinsically motivated they are. On grade level isn't terrible but it's not a high bar either.