Getting Into Boston Latin

The pandemic that has shaken higher education this year is also having an impact on admissions at public high schools that are competitive to get into.

Last week, the Boston School Committee voted for a one-year suspension of an admissions test that is used by the city's exam high schools, including the famous Boston Latin School, whose students are highly sought by colleges and universities. Boston Latin will use instead a system that allocates 20 percent of the new slots based on grade point averages citywide. The remaining slots will be given out based on student GPA and ZIP code.

In San Francisco, the Board of Education voted to admit students to Lowell High School -- just for this year -- by lottery instead of the traditional system of using GPA and standardized test scores, CBS San Francisco reported.

Admission to public high schools with competitive admissions has been controversial for years. Parents in Boston, San Francisco and elsewhere cite the racial makeups of the schools as evidence that the system is unfair. Other parents say the system is totally fair in that it is not based on race or ethnicity.

According to WBUR, white and Asian students make up small minorities of the students enrolled in the Boston Public Schools, but a majority of the students at Boston Latin.

Go Sasaki is a teacher at O'Bryant School of Math and Science, another exam school in Boston, where he teaches many Asian students. "A lot of our families that are immigrants -- they come from countries where there is a big exam," Sasaki told WBUR. For many, there's a sense that "an exam school is the only chance for them to get a good education for their children."

Advocates for Black and Latinx students disagree and say that these students are being excluded from public schools.

José Valenzuela, a teacher at Boston Latin (and an alumnus), told WBUR, "It was not really a great indicator of whether a student can do exam-school work. I don't think it really indicates anything."

The best-known exam high schools in the country are New York City's: Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical School and Stuyvesant High School.

Two years ago, Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City, proposed abolishing the system used for admissions, which is entirely based on a standardized test. All three schools have solid majorities of Asian American students.

In March, the city announced the racial makeups of the exam high schools, which are not that different from when de Blasio proposed the change. The New York Times reported that 10 Black students got into Stuyvesant, out of a freshman class of 760. And only 20 Hispanic students gained entry, down from 33 last year.