Merit-Based Admissions: A Reward for Hard Work or a Cause of Segregation?
By Rilan Zahir, Amden Zahir, Alexandre Taverne
Oliver Duffy dreams of being an engineer one day. The ambitious sixth grader from Manhattan tries hard in school, yet he still struggles to get perfect grades and high test scores. That’s because Duffy has anxiety and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Those conditions require an Individualized Education Program (IEP) to accommodate Duffy’s unique learning challenges. He doesn’t always do the best on high stakes tests, but he hopes his scores won’t hold him back from achieving his dreams.
“I’ve always worked really hard and it’s mean when people say that just because I don’t do great on big tests or get A’s all the time that I’m not curious or smart,” Duffy said at a Community Education Council meeting about middle school admissions. “[I]get really stressed when I have to take tests or focus for a long time. My brain gets overwhelmed and I have a hard time remembering things.”
The controversial admissions process called merit-based admissions allows high-achieving students to get their preference when applying to middle and high schools. While some see merit-based admissions as a tool to sort students based on their academic needs and incentivize achievement, others see them as a cause of segregation.
The New York City Department of Education recently reversed changes made during the pandemic that banned academic screening during admissions for middle-school applicants in favor of a random lottery system. Now, neighborhood school districts within the city are once again able to decide whether or not they will allow their middle schools to screen students for merit criteria. After a month of discussion at local Community Education Council meetings, all but two school districts decided to discontinue middle school screened admissions. Out of 478 middle schools in the system, 24 will admit all of their students based entirely on fourth grade grades, while 59 will admit some of their incoming students based on fourth grade grades, according to Chalkbeat.
“I got into a middle school that used to screen kids because of the lottery last year. My test scores couldn’t be used against me,” Duffy said. “I love my new school and have learned so much already. I want all kids to be able to go to a school like mine.”
Merit-based admissions are even more common in high school, where schools can screen incoming students based on grades from seventh grade, require portfolios to be submitted or even require students to take tests. The city’s most competitive public schools — specialized high schools like Brooklyn Technical High School — have an entrance exam.
In a press release, the Department of Education said that this year’s changes aimed to make the process easier for families and “reward students.”
“Screening process for middle and high schools will reward students for classroom success,” the DOE press release said.
Since preference is given to students with higher grades and scores, students who do not meet certain criteria often end up in the least desirable schools that receive less applications.
Advocacy groups for educational equity in New York City continue to push for the end of merit-based admissions, saying that they contribute to New York being one of the most segregated school systems in the country.
During last year’s high school admissions process, Black students made up 20 percent of applicants for specialized high schools, but received only 3 percent of the admission offers, according to Gothamist. Latino students made up 25 percent of applicants and received only 5 percent of the offers that went out. Asian students made up 31 percent of applicants, but received 52 percent of offers. White students made up 17 percent of applicants and received 28 percent of offers.
“To have all of the schools that are segregated based on academic indicators is a huge difference between New York and the rest of the country,” said David Bloomfield, professor of educational policy at Brooklyn College. “There's no question that those admission policies contribute to segregation.”
Bloomfield also said that many school districts allow for accelerated programs within a school, but that New York City’s large number of schools that screen all of their incoming students is unique.
Bloomfield says that a family’s “cultural capital,” or affluence, contributes to their children’s ability to get into merit-based schools. Bloomfield said some families spend up to thousands of dollars to prepare for entrance tests, which help their children get into their schools of choice. Others aren’t so lucky.
Isabella Juma, high school sophomore and a youth activist with Teens Take Charge, said she didn’t find out about the test for specialized high schools until the end of seventh grade, after many of her peers had already started preparing. Juma said she didn’t feel like the test was a fair measure of students’ ability, since some students had access to tutoring while others didn’t.
“I know the process of even getting into specialized high schools is stressful enough, but it's just the fact of how unfair the system was made,” Juma said.
Not everyone agrees that merit-based admissions are wrong.
Lucas Liu, the co-president of the educational advocacy organization Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education (PLACE), is a big proponent of merit-based admissions and thinks they should be expanded. Liu thinks high-achieving students learn more efficiently when surrounded by classmates at a similar academic level. Liu also thinks high-achieving students who attend class with students of varying levels of academic achievement could be ignored by their teachers and stunted in their learning process. Liu denied that merit-based admissions contribute to a segregated student population. Instead, he said low-performing elementary schools are at fault.
“PLACE believes it’s not the screens that prevent kids from getting into certain middle or high schools, it’s the subpar education they have received starting in elementary school that keeps them out,” Liu said.
Along with IEPs, issues like unstable home lives, poverty, transportation barriers, health issues and curriculums that are out-of-touch with their students, can contribute to bad grades and low test scores. Despite how hard some of these students might try in class, their grades still may suffer because of the obstacles they face.
Emma Rehac, community organizer at Youth Alliance for Housing –– a youth led advocacy organization working to address the issues amongst youth caused by housing insecurity –– says economic disadvantages make it more difficult for some students to match the merit-criteria for their school of choice. But she still thinks they deserve an equal opportunity to get into the schools they want to.
“[Students in insecure housing situations] have difficulty even just within the admissions policy. You don't technically have an address [so] your admissions looks different for those students,” Rehac said. “Your access to transportation, your access to food, everything looks different for those students. Then they aren't given the necessary additional supports needed and they're expected to perform and act like a lot of other students who have the resources that they need.”
Gabrielle Cayo, high school senior and student representative on the city’s school board, said that if students were given more power, they would change the admissions process to make it more equitable. The ones who are making the decisions are the parents, educators and politicians, Cayo said.
Cayo knows the difficulties of merit-based admissions first hand. She attends Brooklyn Technical High School, one of New York City’s specialized high schools and one of the hardest to get into.
“I would say around 80% of the students who go to [Brooklyn Technical High School] believe that there should be a more holistic admissions process, at least,” Cayo said, who emphasized she is against all forms of academic screens for admissions. “We do see our privilege of being at the school, and we want to extend the same educational opportunities that we have to other students in our district and in our city.”
While some advocates for merit-based admissions often say that high achieving students learn better when surrounded by other students who are at a similar level, Cayo believes that a more diverse classroom is the way to go. As a Black student in a school which admits a disproportionately low percentage of Black students, Cayo says she and her peers experience racism that distracts her from learning.
Cayo doesn’t think her high-test scoring peers are the reason her school is providing her a good education.
Cayo thinks the good education at Brooklyn Technical High School comes from the additional funding that specialized high schools receive. Thirteen elite high schools, including specialized high schools, receive roughly $1,049 per student more than other schools, according to Chalkbeat. At Cayo’s school, that accounts for about $8 million additional funds per year.
“I would be happy to go to my [neighborhood] school if every single school had the exact same funding per-student, had the same level of teachers, had the same quality of education, had the same number of textbooks,” Cayo said. “But unfortunately, that's not the case. When you look at my local high school, it has none of those things.”
Aixa Rodriguez, an English as a Second Language teacher at a Bronx public high school, is an education advocate who hopes to end merit-based admissions. The school Rodriguez teaches at does not use merit-based admissions because they want to keep their educational opportunities available to all students, Rodriguez said.
“Our ethos and our beliefs is that we need to open up opportunities to all kids,” Rodriquez said. “Lots of screens, what they do is they sift and they segregate and we don't believe in those.”
Rodriguez says that proponents of merit-based admissions want to ensure that their students go to schools with high funding and resources and that they want to “gate-keep” their resources from other students.
“[Screened] admissions is connected to wanting to hoard the supply,” Rodriguez said. “What they want to do is create a situation where they can still go to public schools, but that they can stop certain types of kids from going.”
Rodriguez also states that she believes screens create an environment where kids can’t get along with others because they haven't been around students from different backgrounds.
“Screens create situations where kids don't get along with others because they've never been exposed to these people and then you end up having schools that have predominantly one racial, social and economic group,” Rodriguez said. “I don't feel as if screens are helpful with creating a dynamic in a school that has a variety of people because it just creates a sift and separate situation. If you want to have an orchestra, you need to have people who play a variety of instruments.”
But according to Rehac, integration efforts often focus too much on the “movement of bodies.” Rehac thinks true integration isn’t only focused on student demographic statistics, but also about making schools more accessible to all kinds of students. That includes changing systems within them.
“Real integration is about a more holistic transformation of the school system,” Rehac said. “You have to change what your curriculum looks like. You have to change the way that you discipline students. You have to change the resources that you give to students. You have to change your enrollment policies.”
Rodriguez said that in order to improve access to education in marginalized communities, the city needs to invest in local, neighborhood schools.
“There seems to be this desire to remove them and place them somewhere else instead of investing in the local school,” Rodriguez said. “That makes no sense to me.”
Rodriguez said that in order to attract students and teachers to local schools in marginalized communities, the city needs to invest in those communities as a whole.
“There is a very big problem with the urban planning of the schools that are located in food deserts, located in an area that don't have sit-down restaurants, that don't have positive environments,” Rodriguez said. “Teachers don't want to teach in those areas where they can't get parking, can't get lunch, can't get any type of services or whatever, because it's so far or is located in a dim, scary, not-well-lit area. That needs to change.”
Julian Roberts-Grmela contributed reporting to this story.
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