As alumni of these schools, we all know that they are considered the crown jewels of New York’s City’s public school system. Unfortunately, low-income students enter the Specialized Science High Schools in proportions drastically lower than those at other New York City public schools. In 2005, for example, Stuyvesant had 3 times fewer low-income students than the average New York City high school.
A significant reason for this disparity is the cost of test preparation. Prep courses for the SHSAT are widely available and students who take them are much more likely to be successful on the exam. It is for this reason that higher income families pay the rates charged by the private test prep companies for these courses year after year. Yet for low-income families these courses are prohibitively expensive: Kaplan Test Prep, for example, charges $3399 for a 24 hour private tutoring course and $849 for a 33 hour class. Even the $849 cost for a test prep class surpasses what the family of a twelve year old student eligible for free school lunch can afford. Consequently, on the day of the test low-income kids do not stand a chance when they compete against kids from higher income families.
We will level the playing field for kids from low-income families by making available to them the high quality exam preparation for the SHSAT that has always been available to kids from more affluent families.
Our program is results oriented. All of our tutors are graduates of Stuyvesant, Science, and Tech. In addition to rigorous test preparation, these alumni will provide ongoing mentoring and motivation to our students. They will illustrate for our students the experience and advantages of attending a Specialized Science High School, motivating them to persevere in their preparation for the SHSAT.
Your donation will help underprivileged kids get the preparation they need to achieve admission to our high schools, fulfill their academic potential, and remedy a problem that has plagued Stuyvesant, Science, and Tech for decades.
Thank you for your support.
