June 2018 President’s Message – Save the SHSAT
By Phil Orenstein
It’s the progressive left versus both Republicans and Democrats on this issue. Every parent wants to preserve higher standards in education for their children. The vast majority of teachers who work for the DOE want to keep the SHS admissions process the way it is. The majority of voters of all political parties want to keep the merit system from being undermined by a small minority of leftwing elitists who want to dictate their utopian vision of mediocrity to all of us.
They’re at it again. The progressive left, or the “new progressives” as they like to call themselves, are challenging the exceptionalism and merit system of American institutions, and they are taking the Democrats down this dangerous path with them. They want jobs for all, free college tuition, free universal healthcare, they want to coddle criminals and attack law enforcement, abolish political views they disagree with, and they want to punish success and achievement, and reward mediocrity in every institution of America.
I am a candidate for State Assembly in District 26, Northeastern Queens, because of my concerns with the state of affairs within our political landscape. We have a Governor who signed an executive order to allow felons to vote, a NYS Assembly that voted to make NYS a Sanctuary state, and a Mayor of NYC who wants to close down Rikers and put prisons in our neighborhoods. Our Mayor also eliminated armed guards in our schools that protected our children. This is not the city or state I so proudly was raised in. These are extreme progressive politicians who are making our city and state less safe and are not following the rule of law. That is why we are at a crossroads in local politics.
Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech, known as the Specialized High Schools (there are five smaller schools created during the Bloomberg administration), are the best high schools in New York City and among the best, if not the best, in the country. Admission to the Specialized High Schools is based on a single admissions test known as the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test or SHSAT. The SHSAT is an academically rigorous test which is half math and half verbal, similar to the SAT. The SHSAT is merit based and completely objective. It is the student taking the test who, based on his or her score, is in control of whether he or she is admitted to a Specialized High School. There are no admissions officers, verifying subjective criteria, whose decisions are influenced by their biases. There are no subjective essays on the SHSAT and there is no partial credit. A student’s score does not differ based on who is grading it.