(2010-08-05) Hunter Diversity Test Battles

Hunter College High School is going through internal battles over its declining Diversity and how that relates to its use of testing (not Standardized Test-s, but its own) as its only/blind admissions basis. As has happened at other prestigious city high schools that use only a test for admission, the black and Hispanic population at Hunter has fallen in recent years. In 1995, the entering seventh-grade class was 12 percent black and 6 percent Hispanic, according to state data. This past year, it was 3 percent black and 1 percent Hispanic; the balance was 47 percent Asian and 41 percent white, with the other 8 percent of students identifying themselves as multiracial. Ironically, one argument in favor of such tests is that they take assessor-bias out of the process.

A big counter-argument is that families with money can buy more test-prep tutoring.

• It would be interesting to have a process of letting students take the tests multiple times, and look at retrospective data to see whether tutored students (a) actually improved their tests scores, and (b) whether that correlated with being more successful students once admitted.