Students from Eva Moskowitz’s charter schools gained entrance into the city’s elite specialized high schools for the first time this year — and they didn’t even really study for the admission test, Moskowitz said Thursday.
Six students out of 54 Success Academy eighth-graders who took the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test were offered seats in 2016 at one of the elite high schools that rely on the test, like Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech or Bronx Science, Moskowitz said in a wide-ranging interview with the Daily News Editorial Board.
That’s up from zero kids who gained seats in 2014 and 2015.
The performance is below the city average acceptance rate of nearly 19%. However, all of the Success Academy kids who took the test and gained acceptance are black or Hispanic, making her acceptance rate of 11% about twice the citywide average for students of color. Only 4% of black students and 6% of Hispanic students who took the test got offers in 2016.
“It’s a rigorous test, and the kids have to prepare for it,” Moskowitz said. “Truth be told, our kids, most of them did not study for it. They took it cold.”
Students who pass the difficult test often practice for months, and there’s a cottage industry of prep firms that train kids specifically for the exam.
But Moskowitz said the Success Academy kids who got in did so without the drilling.
“I’m very proud of the fact that our kids are flexible thinkers,” Moskowitz said. “They have read a lot and done a lot of mathematics.”
Just under a quarter of Success Academy eighth-graders took the test, roughly the same as the city average for black and Hispanic kids.
Overall, the city offered seats at the test schools to 5,106 students this year, including 530 black and Hispanic kids.
The city’s specialized high schools are a lightning rod of controversy in part because they admit very few students of color.
Mayor de Blasio campaigned on a promise to overhaul admissions procedures for the schools to increase their diversity, but he has not yet done so.
The vast majority of the 230 kids in Success Academy’s eighth-grade class will move on to a Success Academy high school, Moskowitz said.
The fiery former city councilwoman said her fast-growing charter school network aims to graduate 3,000 students from its high schools each year by 2026.
She also said that her network took in $30 million in private donations in 2015 and will need to hire 500 employees in 2016 just to keep up with its expansion.
Success Academy will open five new elementary schools and two new middle schools in August, adding to 34 schools already in operation, which enroll 11,000 students in every borough except Staten Island.
