High-stakes high school admissions: breaking the news, good and bad
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Rejection isn’t easy to take, no matter how it arrives. When my toddler son didn’t get accepted to a neighborhood pre-school more than 10 years ago, I was new to the concept of competition for education — a commonplace of New York City life. And because he could not read the letter, I saw no reason to explain: “Umm, you weren’t allowed to play Lego and learn the alphabet at School X because too many other three-year-olds wanted to do the same thing and there wasn’t enough room…”
Now, before high school, the stakes are much higher. On Thursday, about 27,000 eighth-graders will learn if they’ll be offered seats at one of the city’s eight specialized high schools. Fewer than 6,000 students scored high enough last year to earn entry. This year as last year, another 9,000 applicants vied for just 664 spots at Fiorello H. Laguardia. And this week, the kids who took the tests and auditioned will get their placement results.
Many parents worry about especially fierce competition this year, as private-school students and their families consider free public options. Regardless, thousands of bright, talented and deserving students may not be admitted to these schools at all. Those that do may have to settle for second and third choices.
How and where students learn the actual news can be public or private. Middle-school guidance counselors are the first to learn, on February 5th, the same day results are distributed to students. At my son’s school, kids can choose how they want to hear the news, and whether they’ll get word in front of their equally nervous friends, with middle school staff on hand. “In the past, our students have been very supportive of one another,” wrote my son’s guidance counselor in a note to parents. The school also offered to contact parents before the letters go out “so you can be aware and support your child.”
All this reminds me, in the pit of my stomach, just how it felt when I was hoping for a thick envelope from my first-choice college a lifetime ago. But now, I won’t be opening the letter. I’m grateful to my son’s middle school for taking the envelope out of my hands.
I hope the students will be kind and supportive of one another, no matter what news they get. And I hope that those who are disappointed by the specialized schools will match at high schools that suit their needs and interests.
I haven’t been through the entire process yet, but I can’t help wondering if there is a better system for matching students to city high schools. Suggestions, anyone?
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Our middle school mailed the results which means another day+ of waiting. I can hardly stand it.
My ideas for a better system
- make sure the exam is testing what leads to success at these schools; it is not clear to me how a single test score can differentiate between students how would do well at Stuyvesant versus Lehman American Studies. The schools are so different.
- make the process clearer to parents. I know what to do; I just don’t understand how decisions are made. I have a better understanding of the more subjective private school admissions process than I do of the public one.
- ensure there are good choices in all neighborhoods so students do not have to travel such long distances to get a good education. I was stunned to learn recently that a high school located 2 blocks from my house in Yorkville does not have any students from the neighborhood; in fact it has few students from Manhattan.
- let the parents and students decide. Have the schools compete for applicants and enrolled students the way colleges do instead of the forced ranking system.
That envelope cannot come fast enough.
Waiting in Yorkville,
Jennifer
Comment by Jennifer Krueger — February 5, 2009 @ 4:04 pm