On March 22, 2017, Damon Hewitt published an op-ed in the NY Times critical of the admissions process for the specialized high schools of New York City. His argument is self-refuting on three levels.
First, Mr. Hewitt argues that an admissions process that is meritocratic in theory is not meritocratic in fact because not enough Black and Latino students are admitted. But skin color is not a measure of merit. To make an admissions decision on the basis of skin color is the opposite of merit. It is blatant racism.
Stuyvesant High School wants to admit students who can solve a certain class of mathematical problems so they test on the math and select the students who can solve them, irrespective of skin color or national origin or religion or any other irrelevant and extraneous factor. That is meritocracy, plain and simple.
To demonstrate there is something nefarious with this process, Mr. Hewitt would have to show that there is a significant number of Black and Latino students who can solve these problems but who are still not selected. He did not even attempt to do that.
Second, Mr. Hewitt then declares that by focusing exclusively on one single test, specialized high schools ignore all the "traditional hallmarks of a great student," which he enumerates, and again concludes the test is discriminatory. And this again is an evident non sequitur. Whether it is solving calculus problems or declining Latin nouns, every test filters on something (eg, those who can decline Latin nouns and those who cannot), and so long as it does not filter on skin color it is necessarily not discriminatory in the sense Mr. Hewitt uses that word.
Finally, Mr. Hewitt implies that he knows better than the principal and teachers of Stuyvesant High School what should be done in Stuyvesant High School, a highly dubious proposition. Imagine, he says, if a test to determine who could become a firefighter had little relation to the actual job. So, Mr. Hewitt knows what Stuvyesant should be doing and he is sure the admissions test has
nothing to do with that. I do not believe Mr. Hewitt knows any of this.
However, let's suppose Mr. Hewitt is right. First, if the admissions test ignores all the traditional hallmarks of a great student, as he claims, then there remains a sizable pool of great students available to someone who wants to serve them. Second, if the existing admissions test does in fact align with what the specialized high schools are doing, then they are doing education all wrong, according to Mr. Hewitt. So, why does he want to send great students to bad schools?
If Mr. Hewitt is right, and he has the courage of his convictions, there lays before him a fantastic opportunity. Let him and his friends band together and create a school on the principles he espouses, and let them admit students by the criteria he recommends to others. If he is right, he will have created a great high school and done much good in the world.
This is exactly what the president of Bard College did. Around 2001, Leon Botstein thought he had a better idea for a New York City high school, so he called then chancellor Joel Klein, and Bard High School Early College was conceived over lunch. So far as I know, Bard High School is a great success, and they did not have to wreck Stuyvesant High School to create it.
It seems to me that Mr. Hewitt and his colleagues are more interested in wrecking Stuyvesant and the other specialized high schools than they are in serving the interests of the students he claims to champion. If Mr. Hewitt were sincere in his beliefs, he would build a new high school rather than work so hard at tearing down an old one.
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