Make NYC Education Great Again

I am a father of a 7th grader at a NYC public school who is studying to take the SHSAT next year in October 2025. If the contract to continue administering the objective standardized admissions test is not approved, there will be no test administered next year and no students admitted, starting September 2026, to any of the eight Specialized High Schools that base their admissions solely on the test. This means the highest academically performing students across NYC, including a majority who are from first generation immigrant and low income families, will lose access to schools that have, for many decades, provided students like them with rigorous, challenging and fulfilling curriculum that enable them to pursue advanced degrees and successful careers in STEM or other intellectually challenging fields.

In the past 8 years, New York City and State politicians and their education appointees, driven by radical ideology, have decimated education quality and opportunities for NYC students. They took away Gifted and Talented and academically screened programs and replaced them with subjective teacher nominations and lottery-based admissions. Most recently, they took away the Regents Diploma requirements, further reducing the rigor and reputation of a New York State education.

With less than 50% of all New York City students at grade level proficiency, which was exacerbated by the Covid school closures and the failed remote learning program, these anti-education ideologues do not focus on addressing the root causes of the worsening academic performance. Instead, they leave struggling students behind and then rob students who have overcome all kinds of life challenges to achieve academically at a high level of opportunities to further their development and ambitions to succeed in life.

Many families have left the public school system and even left New York City and State to find better education options for their children. Those who couldn’t leave recently expressed their dissatisfaction with the political status quo by voting for Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the largest shift in decades. Every anti-education ideologue politician needs to beware of angry voting parents of children frustrated by the terrible education quality across the learning spectrum regardless of race, ethnicity and income.

Renewing the SHSAT testing contract is a small but vital step for politicians to show they value and support high quality rigorous education and the highest academically achieving students in New York City, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender, zip code or family income.

Chien Kwok, parent of two public school children and a graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School. His eldest is currently a junior at a Specialized High School and his youngest is currently a 7th grader.