UPDATE: The PEP voted to approve Pearson's contract for the new online Specialized High School Test. 

There's a vote coming up to renew Pearson's contract to write the SHSATs. The kicker here is that the powers that be want to move the test to an online adaptive model in less than one year. The change has been presented as do or die. I.e., if the new contract is not accepted with the new changes there will be no SHSAT next year.

It is not clear why the situation has been made all or nothing. It has the earmarks of a backdoor attempt to eliminate the exam. Especially odd is the hasty timeline. It's taken 7+ years to move the State Tests to computer based. How can we hope to move a far more consequential test online in 10 months? More troubling still, there will be little to no run up time for most students to prepare for a new online SHSAT. ibid is doing its best to anticipate the changes, but it is hugely unfair to expect most participating households to get up to speed on in-home computer test preparation. We've been down this road before with remote schooling. During COVID, we saw how difficult circumstances at home cruelly widened gaps in academic performance. Here we see the potential for inequities to increase just as dramatically.

Unfortunately, as we are in this corner, there is no choice but to urge the PEP to approve the contract. No matter what received opinion may hold for some, a hasty switch to an online test is better than no test. No test would be a disaster.

The problem with diversity in Specialized High Schools is not the test or even test prep. The problem is the poor learning conditions in far too many homes, pre-schools and elementary schools across the boroughs. This was the problem that sparked the NYC Teachers' Strike of 1968, and the needle has barely moved since. Nonetheless, the SHSAT is an easy target, but care must be taken. Eliminating the exam would undermine a system that has provided life-changing opportunities for tens of thousands of students from lower- and middle-class families across decades.

It is criminal and awful that we have never found a way for this miracle to work equally for all students, but eradicating the SHSAT will not make more black and Hispanic students aware of, interested in, or prepared for Specialized High Schools.

More and more as ibidPREP (and our charity arm, FootNotes AfterSchool) works with students in schools from all strata, we are seeing educational gaps widening as a result of COVID, phones, microplastics, you name it. Improving outcomes is hard (though we do it every day at ibid), but closing massive educational, social and economic gaps is really, really hard. It's hard to change the culture at subpar schools where money and motivation are often lacking. Even when resources are available and staff are willing and dedicated, they're often derailed by hunger, homelessness, discipline, ADD, dysfunctional homes, generational poverty—the list, sadly, goes on.

Improving education and opportunities for all is exceedingly difficult which is why it's much easier to blame the test.

Keep the test. Improve the schools.