On Friday, Mayor de Blasio announced a set of new school admissions policies for hundreds of the city’s middle and high schools. For the 2021-22 school year, the city will cease using screens (test scores, grades, attendance) for the 200 middle schools that currently use them, and use a lottery-based system instead -- building on the work we’ve done over the past few years here in District 15. At the high-school level, the city will phase out district level geographic screens that have preserved high performing schools for students who live nearby, and require schools that utilize academic screens to go through a more centralized, fair, and transparent process. (More information on the new policies can be found in the FAQ below).

This is a big and important step towards fairness and integration in our schools (and one I’ve been calling for since the spring). And it is necessary this year, both to mitigate the inequalities of pandemic school, and to deal with its realities. 

The pandemic has rendered the attendance, standardized test, and grade data used in admissions nearly meaningless for this year. And it has also helped to reveal how ridiculous it is in the first place to sort the life-chances of our kids based on their grades and attendance records as 8- and 9-year-olds. Let’s be clear: it sorts them based on the race and class of their parents, much more than on any meaningful measure of their effort or ability. 

Six decades after Brown v. Board, and five years after we started working together actively with student activists, parent leaders, and educators to do something about it, New York still has some of the most segregated schools in the country. While City Hall dragged its feet, here in District 15, after an extensive community planning process, we adopted the D15 Middle School Diversity Plan in 2018. In its first two years, we’ve seen great success. Once-segregated schools have come to match the diverse makeup of a district that spans from Boerum Hill to Red Hook, and Park Slope to Sunset Park. Few families have been “chased away.” And students (of course) and parents (very promisingly) report strong satisfaction. 

Talking about segregation in our schools is hard, there's plenty of anxiety because we want the best for our own kids, and it can feel like people are talking in platitudes, rather than addressing what’s best for all of them. I try (not always successfully) to listen with humility when people understandably accuse me of hypocrisy, having raised my kids in the segregated systems we’ve had, benefiting greatly from the privilege that they provide. But I really believe we are doing something important here. Segregated schools can’t teach inclusive multiracial democracy. And they sure can’t model the ideals of equality that we teach our kids are the foundational truths our country is built on.

COVID-19 has shined a spotlight on the inequalities of our segregated city, amplifying them even deeper. Not only in the infection, hospitalization, and death rates, but in our schools as well. White parents have been more likely to send their kids to school in-person, while low-income students are more likely to lack good internet connections and remote devices. 

Even if it took a pandemic to force us to do it, and even though thee changes aren't near enough to address the harms of this pandemic school year, these new admissions policies to further fairness and integration are a welcome change. Maybe the pandemic can be a portal, as Arundhati Roy has exhorted, forcing people to “break with the past and imagine their world anew.”

The DOE has said the suspension of screens is just for this year, to start, but it is hard to imagine that there will be data next year to sort students as we did in the past, and I’m hopeful that we can make the shift permanent. This change absolutely would not have happened without strong organizing, by students working with Integrate NYC and Teens Take Charge, supported by parents and educators in the Alliance for School Integration and Desegregation. 

We still have a lot of work to do to advance real integration and equity in our schools and neighborhoods, and to make it work for all our kids. But these steps can build momentum to force us to keep going. High school students are demanding further steps in smart and powerful and inspiring ways, showing us that they are ready for inclusive multiracial democracy.  We should follow their lead. 

Brad

P.S. Congress is expected to pass today a $900 stop-gap aid plan that will help small businesses, artists and venues, extend unemployment insurance, stave off massive service cuts by the MTA, and provide survival checks of $600. We’re learning more about the details in the aid bill, and will share more about what we know and how we can help navigate the new relief aid in our COVID-19 newsletter later this week. 

FAQ on the New NYC Schools Admissions Policies

What’s changing for middle school admissions? 

Middle schools will not use academic records, auditions, or other screens or assessments to evaluate or admit students this year. Schools will maintain priority for in-district students, because families across the city made it clear that they want to attend middle school closer to home. If a school has more applicants than available seats, offers will be made using a random lottery. In a small number of schools that have launched their own Diversity in Admissions pilots, they will admit priority groups of students first based on their school plans. As of now there is no city-wide middle school sibling preference being introduced. Middle school admissions in District 15 will remain the same (including the sibling preference that we won last year). City-wide schools such as Mark Twain and ICE will utilize lotteries that draw on applicants from across the city. 

This year’s middle school application will open the week of January 11 and close the week of February 8. 

What’s changing for high school admissions? 

Geographic admissions priorities for high schools will be phased out over the next two years: district priorities for high school admissions will be permanently eliminated this year, and all other geographic priorities—like borough residence requirements— will be eliminated next year.

For remaining screens at high schools, schools can choose to remove or alter their screens in the year ahead, or they may maintain them. Schools that maintain academic screens are encouraged to make a concerted effort towards greater equity in their processes, either by electing to remove additional screens now, or implementing a Diversity in Admissions priority.

Arts high schools will move to a virtual audition system that will allow students to submit their audition online. Students will only need to create one audition that can be submitted for all schools that require it.

The high school application will open the week of January 18, 2021, and the deadline to apply is the week of February 22, 2021

What about the specialized high schools and the SHSAT?

The DOE is required by State law to administer the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) for admissions to the 9 specialized high schools (Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, LaGuardia, etc). The SHSAT exam will be administered in students’ own middle schools to reduce travel and mixing of different cohorts of students. 

Registration for the SHSAT opens today, Monday, December 21, 2020 and ends on January 15, 2021. Test administration will begin January 27.

How to apply?

To apply to middle schools and high schools parents must create a MySchools account here.  More from the DOE is available here.