More counseling, streamlined choices: How NYC could fix its complicated high school application system
Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.
Debates over how to make New York City’s high school admissions system fairer have often focused on the criteria schools use to select students.
But a new report released Tuesday urges the city to take a closer look at the application process itself, arguing that it favors families with time and resources.
Each year, tens of thousands of eighth graders choose 12 or more options from a list of over 700 programs spread across roughly 400 high schools, with varying admissions rules. Some families spend hours poring through information online, visiting schools in person or virtually, submitting supplementary application materials, or even hiring paid admissions consultants.
Many other families lack the time, money, language, computer access, or support to decipher the complex application system, leaving their kids with a more limited set of high school choices.
“That process is going to be complex no matter what,” said Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed and one of the report’s co-authors. “The more that we can do to recognize that and simplify it so that everyone has equal access to a public high school, the better off we’ll be.”
But simplifying the admissions process can only go so far, the authors said: The city must also do more to support families at the biggest disadvantage in navigating the admissions process, including those whose first language is not English and those living in temporary housing.
Middle schools should have counselors and curriculum dedicated to helping students prepare for the high school admissions process — similar to the way high schools have staff and classes dedicated to helping students transition to college and careers, the report by Appleseed and Fordham Law School’s Feerick Center for Social Justice contends. The report is the third in a series of admissions reform recommendations from a committee that includes academics, parents, and service providers. (Education Department staffers attend meetings, but don’t play a role in issuing recommendations.)
The authors identified some ways to streamline the process for families.
In many cases, a single high school offers multiple programs that require separate applications but in practice operate similarly, according to the authors. Some of those programs could be consolidated in order to cut down on the number of options applicants have to consider, the report argues. Bayside High School in Queens, for example, has eight programs that are all separate for admissions purposes.
The multiple program options within a single school was one of the things that caught Brooklyn parent Elysha Louison off guard when she began looking at high schools with her eighth grade son last fall.
“You click on a school, and then there could be 5-10 different schools within that school,” she said. “There’s no way you would have the time … to research all these schools.”
We’re on a need-to-know basis.
Every weekday morning, Chalkbeat New York is bringing thousands of subscribers the news on public schools and education policy that they need to start their day. Sign up for our free newsletter to join them.
Education Department officials have taken steps toward making the application process more centralized and transparent, including standardizing the admissions criteria at most selective high schools, adding a tool that allows families to estimate their chances of admission, and listing information about schools on a central website, the authors said.
“We remain steadfast in our commitment to support every student and family in successfully navigating the high school admissions process,” said Education Department spokesperson Chyann Tull. She added that the city offers in-person admissions help at family welcome centers and has a call center with support in multiple languages.
For Louison, better preparation starting in seventh grade, when students’ grades in core classes count for admissions at selective high schools, would have made a big difference.
“They tell you in seventh grade, ‘You’re going to apply [for] high school, get ready’… but they don’t really tell you what the process is like,” said Louison, who got additional support with the application process through the youth development organization Boy’s Club of New York.
Helping middle schools to better support families through the high school application process will require additional funding and staff, the authors said. Guidance counselors are already stretched thin and have little extra capacity to serve as admissions counselors. As of this year, there was one guidance counselor for every 259 students on average across city schools, according to Education Department data.
The authors point to a model the city could emulate: Several nonprofits run “middle school success centers” devoted to supporting students in underresourced communities with the high school application process.
Berg hopes that by providing more and better information to families, the city can also start to chip away at another feature of the application process that adds to the stress: the “scarcity mindset” that drives a disproportionate number of applications to a small number of well-known, often selective, schools.
The Education Department’s “past and present policy decisions have fueled a false notion that only a handful of ‘good’ schools can meet a student’s academic needs,” Berg said in a statement. “That narrative must change.”
Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at [email protected]
