stuyvesant high school homework policy

Stuyvesant’s Homework Policy Three Months Later

After concerns about stuyvesant’s workload were brought to light during virtual learning, the administration passed a new homework policy for the 2021-2022 school year., reading time: 4 minute s, by  james lee , liana wu , pulindu weerasekara , sakura yamanaka , sofia allouche, issue 7 , volume 112.

After concerns regarding Stuyvesant’s workload were brought to light during remote learning in the 2020-2021 school year, the administration passed a new homework policy, which limits daily homework to 30 minutes per class. While some teachers, the Student Union members, and a great number of other students at Stuyvesant support this change, the effects of the homework policy after its implementation have garnered a variety of responses from teachers and students alike.

Many teachers understand the stress that comes with a large workload and believe that this homework policy benefits students. “I kept hearing the phrases ‘the grind never stops’ and ‘Stuy or Die,’” art teacher William Wrigley said. “Giving students the opportunity to reflect on their learning in ways other than intense six hours of homework every night benefits them more than the ‘grind.’”

In addition to relieving stress, the policy change is intended to encourage homework that is more conducive to learning. “One of the goals of the new policy was to promote a more thoughtful, intentional approach to assigning homework,” Assistant Principal of Math and Computer Science Eric Smith said in an e-mail interview.

On the other hand, others expressed concerns with the number of topics that must be taught within the time constraints. “[My AP chemistry teacher said] that he can’t expect [students] to learn with only half an hour of homework,” an anonymous student said.

Additionally, the amount of time spent on homework varies depending on a student’s pacing, convoluting what constitutes 30 minutes of homework. “What’s tricky, not just in English, is that some people are faster readers, [and] some people are slower readers,” Assistant Principal of English Eric Grossman said. “It is impossible that there is always going to be exactly 30 minutes of homework for everyone.”

In teaching art classes, especially one that is project-based like AP Art and Design, Wrigley feels that he has more freedom when assigning homework and that the homework policy has had little effect on his class. “I myself am very on board with a lower level homework policy, but I also recognize that my particular example is not one that a calculus instructor or Mandarin instructor might agree with,” he said.

Math teacher Patrick Honner, who teaches AP Calculus BC, believes that homework is a necessity for students to improve in math but also makes an effort to accommodate students who have difficulty completing it. “I’ve always offered students flexibility when it comes to homework, so my approach hasn’t changed much as a result of the new policy,” Honner said in an e-mail interview. “I expect students to use their time as they best see fit, and if they find themselves working for 30 minutes and not making progress, that’s a sign they should see me to talk about it.”

At the same time, many teachers who teach core subjects at the AP level are reluctant to talk about the homework policy, possibly due to a fear of being placed in a difficult position. “[My teacher is] very serious about not giving the administration or parents anything to complain about. He does complain [...] but also [adds] that students always complain and he doesn’t want to take the fall for that,” the anonymous student said.. Several teachers who teach AP STEM courses declined an interview from The Spectator.

English teacher Mark Henderson, who teaches AP English Literature & Composition: Society & Self, believes that the most efficient way to follow the homework policy is to facilitate daily communication with students, which he ensures through ways such as posting daily Google Classroom questions for students to assess how long the homework takes. “The most important thing for students to know about homework is that teachers do not have any way of knowing how long it takes you to do unless you tell us,” he said in an e-mail interview. “If you don’t tell us how long homework takes you to do or if you cheat rather than telling us because you’re afraid that we will punish you, nothing will ever get better and your learning will suffer.”

Similarly, Smith emphasizes the importance of open communication between students and teachers. “The question is: does it appear that the assignment is designed to take more than 30 minutes, or is there a situation where some students are taking longer than the intended 30 minutes?” Smith said. “If the assignment itself looks to be too lengthy, then I think a simple conversation with the teacher should be sufficient. If it is taking a student longer than 30 minutes, then I think some form of academic intervention may be necessary.”

However, certain students are hesitant in reaching out when their teachers are violating the homework policy because they are worried about potential repercussions. “It really depends on the teacher,” freshman Tam Shafiq said. “Some teachers, like my biology teachers, are so nice, and I’d totally feel comfortable talking to them. However, for most teachers, I most likely would never ever talk to them, unless it’s anonymous, if they violate the policy, either because I don’t want to ruin their impression of me or I know they won’t be reasonable and will just be pissed off at me.”

Despite this sentiment, many teachers encourage their students to reach out regardless of whether or not they are having trouble with the subject. “In most cases, I don’t think it is reasonable to be intimidated by teachers,” Grossman said. “Most teachers want their students to be happy and successful, and very few people get into teaching if they don’t like and support their students.”

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Grading Policy Updates for Remote Learning

The Department of Education released the new Grading Policy or remote learning last week. It will mean NUMERIC GRADES as per usual for transcripts for Stuyvesant High School for the final marking period. If you have not done so already, please read the policy HERE . It is also posted on the school website. There is a family guide you can read here. The DOE Family site has many languages available in addition to Chinese , Bengali , Korean , Russian and Spanish .

Our Departments at Stuyvesant have reviewed their own grading policies and updated them for remote learning. Please note that there are some departments with NO CHANGE to their grading policies. You may view their policies on the school website under the “Academics” tab by choosing the corresponding department.

Math - Please note the following change to what you see in the policy online:

All math classes will be 75% Assessments and 25% Classwork/Homework/Participation for MP3. This is a change for geometry, algebra 2, and pre-calculus , which used to have 20% as Regents or Final exam.

Physical Education & Health created a grading rubric for remote learning posted here .

Social Studies – The policies have changes. View them here.

Chemistry – Please note the following change to what you see online:

Modern Chemistry is the only course that included the Regents Exam as part of the Marking Period 3 grade. The Chemistry teachers will be using the Marking Period 2 grade breakdown to determine the MP3 grades (i.e. 10% for Participation, 10% for Homework, 10% for Lab and 70% for Tests/Quizzes).

Chorus - MP1 (while in school)  class participation = 30%  MP2 (online)  singing projects = 20%3 opera projects = 20%  MP3 (online) end-of-year virtual choir participation = 30%

Honors Modern Biology : 60% for class participation and assignments/homework = 30% for class participation + 30% for homework; 30% for examinations and quizzes and 10% for virtual lab work

Modern Biology (SLS44) and the Freshmen Research class (SBS22HJ) - 50% - (30% class participation/engagement, 20% homework); 30% - exams and quizzes; 10% - labs and 10% - final project (in lieu of Regents Living Environment Exam for Remote Learning).

Drafting - 70% Projects; 10% Maker Site and Notebook; 10% Teacher Evaluation based on participation and attendance and 10% Exams

News/Announcements

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Stuyvesant students say the crushing workload is hurting their mental health. Here’s what they’re doing about it.

When a sophomore at Stuyvesant High School commented recently in a student Facebook group about feeling demoralized, burned out, and unsure if they could keep going, about 500 peers at the elite public school responded that they felt the same way.

“We’ve always been aware of these mental health issues, but there’s been a cone of silence around them,” said Julian Giordano, a Stuyvesant senior and student union president. “That post broke a lot of that silence.”

After the Facebook post opened the floodgates, the student union took action to assess the needs of their classmates and to confront the pressure cooker environment that drives so many of them to overwhelm — even despair. Students are now acknowledging that the famously challenging school is not always a healthy environment, and they’re demanding a culture shift.

Like many New York City high school students who have been learning exclusively from home the past four months, Stuy students are feeling isolated , according to a mental health survey the student union conducted in January. Students’ No. 1 complaint, though, is the massive amount of homework — sometimes six or eight hours of it a night. 

At the same time, only half of students surveyed reported having one adult they feel comfortable going to with their challenges. That matters, because students who had a trusted adult at school were three times more likely to rate their current mental health positively than those who lacked that connection. 

Among the other findings: Roughly 43% of students felt their teachers didn’t follow academic policies, like caps on homework. 

“Stuy is obviously rigorous and really prestigious, but it doesn’t have to be cruel,” student union senior caucus leader Ayala Sela said during a January presentation of the student mental health survey. Some 1,100 — about one-third of the student body — responded to the questions.

High schools across the nation have seen mental health challenges heightened amid the loss and disorientation the pandemic has brought. But one major shift among many young people is the willingness to expose their personal struggles and confront the toxic structures that allow them to fester.

The school’s principal, Seung Yu, says he’s listening. 

“Fortunately we have very proactive students who are more than willing to convey what’s happening,” said Yu, who has led Stuyvesant since August. “We’re trying to find the balance of academic excellence and rigor and also ensuring that young people have a positive experience at a time when it’s hard.” 

Focus on ‘better’ not ‘more’

Previous concerns about mental health pushed the school leadership team previously to set limits on homework, Giordano said. The pandemic, however, threw things off kilter. Instead of having 10 periods a day this year, the day is split in half, with periods one through five on a given day and six through 10 on alternating days. Homework for regular classes is supposed to be capped at an hour over two days, or two hours for Advanced Placement classes, Giordano explained. 

Much of the discussion about the path forward has often been mired in the debate over academic standards.

“It often comes down to this zero sum game, that in order to support students’ mental health that we need to give a little on the academics,” he said. “I think they’re both possible. They both need to be possible.”

But they haven’t always felt possible. When English teacher Mark Henderson started working at Stuyvesant about 15 years ago, the principal at the time would tell students they could only choose two of the following: friends, sleep, or grades. Though the administration no longer espouses that “macho motto,” Henderson said, the students still say it to each other.

The culture needs to shift from its ethic of “more” to one focusing on “better,” Henderson believes, but that’s not an easy feat.

“For teachers and many in general, how do we balance the desire for excellence from our students, the desire for more, and frankly, the stress and the damage we can see sometimes being done to our students,” he said. “There’s so much ingrained into the culture, and for all of us — teachers, students, and parents — it’s difficult to see our way out of it.”

Henderson has started asking his students each day how long their homework takes to better understand their experience.

The school can no longer shrug off its mental health crisis, said Amy Chazkel, a mom of a Stuyvesant junior and a professor at Columbia University. 

“The cumulative workload is just unbearable,” she said. “There are so many layers of suffering because students are under intense pressure to succeed. There’s a sink or swim mentality: You’re at Stuyvesant because you’re superior. If you’re not hacking it, you’re in the wrong place. And many teachers and the school’s administration, if they’re not actively promoting that, they’re not doing much to diffuse it.”

Commitment to student wellbeing

The student union is also trying to bridge the gulf between students and staff, sharing their survey findings with the counseling department as well as the school’s various academic departments. 

“We realized  there’s been a lack of communication and understanding between the students and teachers,” Giordano explained. “I think teachers are struggling with a lot of the same mental health issues.”

Many teachers felt overwhelmed with the late start of the school year and having to cram in material, especially for the AP tests typically administered in May.

In talking with school staff, the student union learned that many teachers felt unsupported during the transition to remote learning and said they were ill-prepared to incorporate social emotional learning online. The vast majority of Stuyvesant students opted to learn exclusively from home, mirroring citywide high school trends, and when some students return to their Lower Manhattan campus on March 22 , they will be taking classes online with teachers who are not in the same room as them.

On the heels of the survey, the school prioritized a professional development session for the teachers that included a mental health component and a socialization and engagement one.

Giordano has seen the fruits of these conversations in his math class, where his teacher recently started off a class showing the students graphs with various slopes and asked them to compare the slopes to their mental state. It got the teens talking about their feelings — and thinking about math concepts.

The counseling department is also administering a student survey and doing follow ups with individual students, as well as adding office hours, Giordano explained. Questions remain, however, about how to engage the students who need help but don’t show up. 

When the campus reopens later this month, Principal Yu said the school plans to be more “intentional” about finding free periods in students schedules where they can do small group community-building activities. Many students were most excited about sports starting up again, and Giordano was looking forward to the school’s annual Sing performance, a revered New York City tradition where grades compete with their own mini musicals.

Yu promised the school would be transparent about steps the school plans to take. 

A working draft of the “Commitment to Student Wellbeing” plan, which initially only mentioned “mental health” once and focused on “maximizing productivity” — much to the dismay of some students and parents — has already been tweaked.

“These are hard conversations. It’s emotional,” Yu told the school leadership team last month. “ It’s not always easy hearing that things are not going very well.” 

He added: “We take this very seriously, and we’ll continue to improve on it both short and longer term.”

Christina Veiga contributed reporting.

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A Message from InsideSchools: The data below is the most up-to-date data available from City and State systems. We are working hard to update the narratives for all schools. We welcome your insights in the Comments section. Questions?  Ask us!

Stuyvesant High School

Our Insights

What’s special.

Abundant variety of classes and extracurricular opportunities

The Downside

High-pressure environment

2020 UPDATE: Seung Yu, the founding principal for the Academy for Software Engineering became the school's principal in August 2020.

2017 REVIEW : The most sought-after of the city's specialized high schools, Stuyvesant High School has an amazingly talented student body and an array of course offerings that rival those of a small college. It has a sparkling, 10-story building with views of the New York harbor and features such amenities as a regulation-size swimming pool. 

More than 28,000 students vie for just over 800 seats in the freshman class. Roughly one-quarter of Stuyvesant's top graduates go to Ivy League or other highly selective colleges such as MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) or Stanford. Students may conduct research with senior scientists, take part in national math competitions or study music at a high level. Immigrants and children of immigrants make up a large proportion of the student body.

The excitement of being enrolled at Stuyvesant comes from being in the company of very bright, engaged students. The school has long been known for its talented students rather than a uniformly strong teaching staff, and kids say the quality of teaching ranges from memorably great to mediocre or worse. The stronger teachers tend to be assigned to the more advanced classes, one mother said. The course selection is vast, including organic chemistry, vertebrate zoology, multivariate and differential calculus, micro- and macro-economics, Western political thought, video-editing and creative nonfiction.

Stuyvesant has a reputation as an ultra-competitive pressure cooker. Eric Contreras, who became principal in 2016, said he is focusing on the emotional needs of students as well. "It's a feverishly intellectual, ambitious environment and kids are excited to explore the possibilities...it's equally important that we provide the right supports when they find it overwhelming," he told the Wall Street Journal shortly after he was appointed in July 2016. Prior to his arrival, the school’s efforts to shift culture towards a more positive, relaxed atmosphere included freshmen transition meetings taught by guidance counselors, new guidance offices that are more central and inviting, and more flexibility around the computer science and drafting requirements for all students. Contreras added an additional guidance counselor and "has kept his word" about providing more supports for students, a counselor told InsideSchools.

Still, Stuyvesant is a hard place for a B student. Most elective and AP courses require a minimum GPA to qualify, though each student has an opportunity to take at least one AP in his or her best subject. There is an informal cap on the number of APs a student may take, to ensure wider access. Freshmen typically have about three hours of a homework a night; upperclassmen taking AP and advanced courses could have up to five hours some nights.  Students who fall behind admit that it’s hard to catch up, especially when juggling the typically heavy load of extra-curriculars. There are tutoring opportunities and teachers who are generous with their time outside of class, but it can be hard for struggling students to get the attention they need. The school works best for kids who are self-starters, self-confident and not afraid to seek out help from adults and other students.

Some classes are taught as seminars, with desks arranged in a circle and plenty of class discussion. But most are traditional, with desks in rows and the teacher at the front doing most of the talking. Science labs are shared by multiple teachers of the same subject, so teachers have no flexibility to divert from the scripted lab notebooks that students fill out like worksheets. This allows for little scientific inquiry by the students, except the 50 or so who qualify to conduct new research with professionals or college faculty as part of the Regeneron Science Talent (formerly INTEL) competition each year. English and social studies offer much greater flexibility for teachers and students to pursue their own interests while still covering core themes and skills. Stuyvesant was founded as a math-science school, but its English and history departments are uniformly strong. In a nod to its roots as a trade school, Contreras opened a maker lab in January 2018.

There are five bands, a jazz combo, a symphony orchestra, a guitar class,  many theatrical productions and a strong debate team. There are dozens of sports offered, including rollerblading, cricket, coed wrestling and kickboxing. After-school clubs serve students interests ranging from Chinese chess to film appreciation.

SPECIAL EDUCATION : In recent years, the school has become more sensitive to students with special needs. At the time of our visit, there was one student who was visually impaired and a number with ADHD. "Now we realize that kids who are very, very strong academically may have learning differences and it is our job to support them," said guidance counselor Harvey Blumm. The administration has assigned a guidance counselor to focus on special education, and a psychologist and a social worker are available for counseling.

COLLEGE ADMISSIONS : The school has 13 full-time guidance counselors and three full-time college counselors. One staff member is dedicated to helping students find internships. Top students are accepted by highly competitive universities such as the University of Chicago and small liberal arts colleges such as Swarthmore, Haverford, Kenyon and Macalester, as well as the Ivy League. A good percentage stay local, attending city and state schools.

ADMISSIONS : Students are selected according to their score on the SHSAT (specialized high school admissions test) administered in October. The school offers an open house for prospective students and their parents in the fall. Check the  Stuyvesant website  for the dates or for a virtual tour.  (Nicole Mader, December 2014; updated December 2017)

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College Readiness

Programs & admissions, stuyvesant high school (m89s), program description:.

Admission to this specialized high school is based solely on the score obtained on the Specialized High Schools Admission Test (SHSAT). Students should speak to their school counselor in the Fall to register for the SHSAT.

Language Courses

French, German, Japanese, Latin, Mandarin, Spanish

Contact & Location

345 Chambers Street Manhattan NY 10282

Buses: BM1, BM2, BM3, BM4, BxM18, M20, M22, M55, M9, QM11, QM25, QM7, QM8, SIM1, SIM15, SIM1C, SIM2, SIM32, SIM33, SIM33C, SIM34, SIM3C, SIM4, SIM4C, SIM4X, SIM7, SIM9, X27, X28

Principal: Seung Yu

Parent Coordinator: Realdina Ingram

Phone: 212-312-4800

Other Details

This school is in its own building.

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Source: The Education Trust – New York

Thanks to the generous support of the Heckscher Foundation for Children, we have partnered with EdTrust–NY to bring you this important data about advanced course access at each high school.

All New York City students should have equitable access to key gatekeeper and advanced courses that lead to college and career preparedness. Yet across the city, students who are Black, Latinx, and American Indian, and students from low-income backgrounds, are less likely than their peers to attend schools where advanced courses are offered. And even when they do attend schools that offer these courses, they are less likely to be given access.

Exploring this data will help you understand which key advanced courses are offered at each high school, and whether students across different racial groups and income levels have equitable access to those advanced courses. Please see the “learn more” link above the data for important notes about how the data are calculated and displayed.

Thanks to the generous support of the Heckscher Foundation for Children, we have partnered with EdTrust–NY to bring you this important data about how well each high school is preparing students to enroll in and persist through college.

Every student deserves a high school education that prepares them for college, careers, and active citizenship. For students who enroll in college, the best measure of college readiness is whether students ultimately succeed. Exploring this data will help you understand how prepared students from this high school were to persist through college/university and complete their postsecondary degrees or credentials.

Data notes: The data shows what percent of all students in Grades 9-12 were enrolled in each type of course during one school year. If every student took each course once over the course of 4 years, we would expect to see annual enrollment rates around 25%. If you see annual enrollment rates above 25%, that may mean students are taking more than one course in a given subject over the course of 4 years, for example, Regents-level Physics and AP-level Physics.

If 0 students were enrolled in a course at this school, that course will display as “not offered” for that year. Students can take more than one course in each category, but enrollment rates are capped at 100%.

Comparisons under “By Income” are calculated by subtracting low-income rates from not-low-income rates; any difference larger than 3% is noted as less or more access. Comparisons under “By Race/Ethnicity'' are calculated by subtracting each group’s rate from the All students rate, then adding the absolute differences for a “racial balance” score not shown here. Schools are designated as “far more equal” or “more equal” if they fall in the more balanced quarter or half of schools, respectively, and “less equal” or “far less equal” if they fall in the least balanced half or quarter of schools, respectively.

How to read the radar graphs under By Race/Ethnicity: look at both the shape and size of the shaded area. If the shaded area is very small, then very few students from any racial/ethnic group have access to that type of course at this school. If the shaded area looks like a circle, then students from all racial/ethnic groups are taking that advanced course at about the same rate. If it has spikes or dips, then students from certain racial groups are taking the course at higher rates than students from other racial/ethnic groups.

Thanks to the generous support of the Heckscher Foundation for Children , we have partnered with EdTrust-NY to bring you this important data about how well each high school is preparing students to enroll in college.

This Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) completion data helps you understand how well this school is supporting students to access the financial resources and supports that make a critical difference in whether they are able to attend college.

National research shows that 90% of high school seniors who complete the FAFSA go to college immediately after graduation compared to just 55% of seniors who do not complete the FAFSA. High schools can make a significant difference in helping students who are low-income and first-generation college students complete the FAFSA.

Graduates of this school that are included here are those who enrolled in a public New York State college or university the following fall and participated in the Tuition Assistance Program (TAP), which provides financial aid to families generally earning up to $80,000 a year.

How to read the bar charts: Use the dropdown menu to select students who earned either an Associate’s or a Bachelor’s degree. The first two bars display all students from this high school who went on to persist in college, regardless of their intended degree. The following bars display the number of students who earned the degree type specified in the dropdown menu.

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Stuyvesant Students Describe the How and the Why of Cheating

By Vivian Yee

• Sept. 25, 2012

The night before one of the “5 to 10” times he has cheated on a test, a senior at Stuyvesant High School said, he copied a table of chemical reactions onto a scrap of paper he would peek at in his chemistry exam. He had decided that memorizing the table was a waste of time — time he could spend completing other assignments or catching up on sleep.

“It’s like, ‘I’ll keep my integrity and fail this test’ — no. No one wants to fail a test,” he said, explaining how he and others persuaded themselves to cheat. “You could study for two hours and get an 80, or you could take a risk and get a 90.”

A recent alumnus said that by the time he took his French final exam one year, he, along with his classmates, had lost all respect for the teacher. He framed the decision to cheat as a choice between pursuing the computer science and politics projects he loved or studying for a class he believed was a joke.

“When it came to French class, where the teacher had literally taught me nothing all year, and during the final the students around me were openly discussing the answers, should I not listen?” he said.

These are the sorts of calculations many students at Stuyvesant, New York City’s flagship public school, learn to make by the middle of their freshman year: weighing two classes against each other, the possibility of getting an A against the possibility of getting caught, keeping their integrity against making it to a dream college. By the time they graduate, many have internalized a moral and academic math: Copying homework is fine, but cheating on a test is less so; cheating to get by in a required class is more acceptable than cheating on an Advanced Placement exam; anything less than a grade of 85 is “failing”; achieve anything more than a grade-point average of 95, and you might be bound for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Yale.

In interviews this month, more than three dozen students, alumni and teachers said that large-scale cheating, like an episode in June when 71 juniors were caught exchanging answers to state Regents exams through text messages, was rare at Stuyvesant. But lower-level cheating, they said, occurs every day.

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Stuyvesant High School Parents' Association

Supporting our Students, Parents & Guardians, and Stuyvesant High School

SLT and CEP

The School Leadership Team (“SLT”) is an advisory committee comprised of teachers, students, administrators, and parents. SLTs are mandated by the New York State and receive funding from the Department of Education to operate. The primary responsibilities of the SLT are to develop the Comprehensive Education Plan (“CEP”) for the school and to align the budget with that plan. The SLT also discusses and makes decisions on various substantive issues as they arise.

In recent years, Stuyvesant’s SLT has made recommendations on such issues as ethics, research skills, homework policies, sexual harassment, student stress reduction, and smoking. It has been instrumental in introducing English composition courses, expanding options for electives, and in creating an Open School Week policy to facilitate parent observation of classroom instruction. The SLT is a vital forum for shaping school life.

SLT Meeting Minutes

To read SLT meeting minutes beginning in the 2015-2016 academic year, please log in to Naviance. Near the upper right of the page under the green banner, under the language drop down, click on the link for the “document library” to view the SLT meeting minutes.

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Teachers at stuyvesant high school revolt amid softened academic policy.

The city’s most prestigious high school has barred teachers from lowering scores for kids who miss tests and take them later, The Post has learned.

New Stuyvesant High School principal  Seung Yu issued a memo telling staffers that kids who blow off a test “for any reason” must be given a makeup date – and that they can’t have their exam grade dinged.

When they do get around to taking the exam or turning in their work, teachers at Stuyvesant can only deduct “homework/preparation” points, which are a marginal component of overall grades.

The Department of Education defended the new policy.

“Stuyvesant is more focused than ever on students mastering rigorous academic content, and this updated grading framework aligns with NYCDOE academic policy,” said spokeswoman Danielle Filson.

“Teachers are still permitted to penalize students for tardiness, this just makes sure there is more consistency and transparency across all departments.”

Roughly 100 teachers signed a letter objecting to the dictate last week, arguing that administrators were undermining their authority and diluting student responsibility.

“These are our city’s best and brightest kids and we’re weakening their accountability on purpose,” said one Stuyvesant source. “It’s baffling.”

Yu took the  reins at Stuyvesant  from Eric Contreras,  who left the school  at the end of the last academic year for a new position on Long Island.

Other city schools have introduced similar policies that have drawn backlash from both parents and teachers.

Staffers at Marie Curie MS 158 in Bayside were incensed last year after a former principal told them to accept late work from kids without consequence.

In addition, several Stuyvesant parents said they were disquieted by Yu’s introductory letter earlier this year because it made no specific mention of the school’s vaunted science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) focus and instead highlighted student social and emotional needs.

“Yu’s use of Tweed-speak is deeply alarming,” wrote one parent in response last month. “What Stuyvesant parents want to hear from Yu is commitment to advanced Math and Science courses despite the lockdown, commitment to ever more rigorous and challenging STEM offerings, and commitment to a Stuyvesant that remains world-class competitive in STEM.”

The city’s specialized high schools have become political powder kegs in recent years, with critics arguing that their single-test entry system has produced minimal black and Latinx enrollment.

Objectors to the current admissions process contend that the exam is an arbitrary measure of student talent and favors those with the resources to prepare for it.

They favor scrapping the exam altogether and using multiple admissions metrics.

Backers counter that the test is inherently color-blind and has forged some of the most academically renowned public schools in the country.

Stuyvesant is currently 73 percent Asian, 19 percent white, 3 percent Latinx and 1 percent black, according to DOE figures.

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SHSAT Cutoff Scores 2012 through 2024

• June 20, 2024

Table of Contents

What are the cutoff scores for the specialized high schools.

Offers to the testing Specialized High Schools are made in descending order of SHSAT score, combined with each student’s preferences listed on their SHSAT registration. Here’s how that works:

The student with the highest SHSAT score receives an offer to their first choice school. The student with the next highest SHSAT score receives an offer to their first choice school. This continues student by student in downward score order until a student’s first-choice school does not have any remaining seats. That student is then considered for their second-choice school. If there are remaining seats at the second-choice school, that student receives an offer there. If the second-choice school has no remaining seats, that student is considered for their third-choice school, and so on. This continues until all seats at all Specialized High Schools have been filled.

If a student doesn’t get an offer to their first-choice school, it is because all seats at that school have been filled by students with higher SHSAT scores. Similarly, if a student gets an offer to a non-first choice school, it is because all seats at schools they listed higher have been filled by students with higher SHSAT scores (e.g., if a student gets an offer to their fourth-choice school, then seats at their first to third-choice schools are filled with higher scoring students.)

If a student doesn’t get any offer to a testing Specialized High School, it is because all seats at all the schools they listed on their SHSAT registration are filled by students with higher SHSAT scores. Students are not considered for offers to schools that are not listed on their SHSAT registration.

The SHSAT is the only criteria used to admit students to the eight testing Specialized High Schools; no other criteria are used.

The table above shows the lowest qualifying score that resulted in an offer to each testing Specialized High School from 2012 to 2024. This means that any student with a SHSAT score lower than one listed on the table did not get an offer to that school. The lowest score to result in an offer changes each year based on that SHSAT scores and preferences of the pool of testers for that specific SHSAT administration.

What score do you need on the SHSAT to get into Stuyvesant in 2024?

The cutoff score for Stuyvesant in 2024 was 561. Last year, there were 22,354 applicants for 850 seats, an average of 26 applications per seat.

What score do you need on the SHSAT to get into HSMSE in 2024?

The cutoff score for HSMSE in 2024 was 542. Last year, there were 19,661 applicants for 140 seats, an average of 140 applications per seat.

What score do you need on the SHSAT to get into Staten Island Tech in 2024?

The cutoff score for Staten Island Tech in 2024 was 519. Last year, there were 15,704 applicants for 328 seats, an average of 48 applications per seat.

What score do you need on the SHSAT to get into Bronx Science in 2024?

The cutoff score for Bronx Science in 2024 was 526. Last year, there were 19,396 applicants for 748 seats, an average of 26 applications per seat.

What score do you need on the SHSAT to get into Queens High School For The Sciences At York College in 2024?

The cutoff score for QHSS in 2024 was 524. Last year, there were 16,873 applicants for 116 seats, an average of 145 applications per seat.

What score do you need on the SHSAT to get into High School Of American Studies At Lehman College in 2024?

The cutoff score for HSAS-Lehman in 2024 was 514. Last year, there were 16,740 applicants for 104 seats, an average of 161 applications per seat.

What score do you need on the SHSAT to get into Brooklyn Tech in 2024?

The cutoff score for Brooklyn Tech in 2024 was 507. Last year, there were 23,910 applicants for 1,490 seats, an average of 16 applications per seat.

What score do you need on the SHSAT to get into Brooklyn Latin in 2024?

The cutoff score for Brooklyn Latin in 2024 was 492. Last year, there were 17,529 applicants for 215 seats, an average of 82 applications per seat.

Is 600 a good SHSAT score?

600 is an excellent SHSAT score that would guarantee admission to any of the Specialized High Schools.

What is a perfect SHSAT score?

The maximum score on each section is usually around 350, and the maximum composite score is usually around 700; however, the actual maximum and minimum scores change from year to year.

What is the minimum score to pass the SHSAT?

There is no single passing score on the SHSAT. Read more about each high school’s cutoff score at the top of this page.

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Stop Homework

High School Student Takes on “Vacation” Homework

A high school student at one of the most elite public high schools in the country, “Stuyvesant High School in New York City, “persuaded the principal to put limits on homework over school breaks. According to an article in The New York Times , “Like the earnest boy in ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’ Sean pointed out what seemed obvious — that long vacation projects ruin the chance to recharge, catch up on sleep and spend time with family and friends.” While the school did not eliminate vacation homework altogether, “The principal, agreeing that vacations are ‘down time’ and should not be used to ‘heap on homework,’ responded by suggesting to teachers that brushing up on Shakespeare would be a fine spring-break assignment; writing an entire play would not.”

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13 thoughts on “ high school student takes on “vacation” homework ”.

I wonder how much homework each of the teachers will have to do?

I wish I knew.

Last year, I read a blog entry by Todd Seal, an award winning teacher from California, who was thinking out loud in his blog that maybe he should have given his students the same break over vacation that he took for himself. You can read that blog entry here.

I am a Stuyvesant student, and heard when Mr. Teitel made the announcement telling teachers to try not to give so much homework over break. However, teachers have found away to get around this. They instead give gigantic extra credit assignments. Though they are optional, the competitive nature of the students forces virtually the entire class to do them, which the teacher knows when assigning the project. Everyone is worried that the rest of the class will do the assignment, and that their grade will suffer in comparison with everyone else’s, so the entire class is pressured into doing it. In this way, we really have no way of escaping massive break homework, whether or not Mr. Teitel lays down the law.

Of course, you could get an agreement with the entire class not to do the extra credit assignments….that would be one way of getting around these massive projects.

Or, if everyone has already done the assignments, you could get together with some other students and talk to Mr. Teitel about your “break.” You could also ask your parents to go to the Parent Association meetings and bring up the issue there.

I’m sorry Sara, but that wouldn’t work. Teitel worded the policy to give the teachers as much wiggle room as possible, and I know that there are plenty of teachers that assigned quite required hw’s (including nearly all of mine). Teitel does not decide on our grades, the teachers do, and whatever he does, they have the final say, and he can’t fire them because the UFT has worked in all kinds of requirements to fire teachers into the contracts. Stuyvesant is a grade-driven atmosphere, which I know that you frown upon, but Stuy students do well because they are grade driven. The PA has no power–example: Open School Week was just cancelled, without any notification, and the PA couldn’t do anything about it. The SU (Student Union) has no power. We simply resign ourselves to the fact that Sturvesant is a school with a lot of work, but that work pays off in the end: It prepares you well for AP exams–because the curriculum simply cannot be covered as in depth as everyone wants just in class. It gets us into good colleges, and once people are there, the workload at college seems like nothing, so it is good preparation.

Change happens slowly, but it can happen even when it’s hard to imagine that it will.

There’s a teacher from Palo Alto, California, who teaches AP Economics and History without ever assigning homework, and his students do incredibly well on the AP exams. You can read about him in my blog entry of October 10, 2006.

One of the interesting things about this whole story is how much of it was missed by the New York Times in their article, which made it sound as if Sean marched into the principal’s office one day and talked him into changing the vacation homework policy. The reality is that Sean started attending meetings of the School Leadership Team and, after discussions with some of the parents and teachers, wrote up a fairly comprehensive proposal addressing homework and testing policies in the school. The policy change adopted by the principal was just a small part of his proposal.

In this case the issue was homework, but the larger question is how do students and parents who want to have a voice in school policies get heard? Are the School Leadership Teams, which are supposed to exist in every NYC school, possible forums where students and parents might have an impact? The Times article ignored this aspect of the story.

In any case, Stuy Kid had it right. Despite the new policy, Sean had a lot of homework over vacation including a huge extra credit assignment which apparently all but one kid in the class completed.

Sigh…..i don’t even know why you have to even comment about this -.-

I came to this website in search of information regarding homework. I had heard that there were laws on the books that state “a school will not determine what a student does as home”. (I’m still searching).

My thoughts on homework are this. Home work should be in the areas a student is weak. From kindergarden to high school. Why should a kid who is excellent in Math, and gets it from start to finsh be doing math homework. One of the things I think gets overlooked the most is “time to absorb and become proficient ” in any subject. Let them “recharge,have family time and work in those areas that need work during there vacations. Since the school’s are only teaching to “a test” and leaving no time for absortion. And as to the comments about what the teachers are doing during this vacation, Its there “Job”,I know no other profession that gets so much time off. They are not children.

I have a Freshman daughter at Stuy, and she’s getting 5 hours of homework nightly. Never a minute less. Add commute, eating, and showering, and there’s literally about 60 minutes during the week to relax. Weekends and holidays are little better.

The new Holiday Homework Policy is strangely worded.

“Teachers should assign no more written homework than is necessary for the review and retention of prior learning”

This implies that, when there’s no holiday, teachers should (or can) assign homework beyond review and retention of prior learning. In other words, students are expected to learn concepts during homework. What are we paying teachers for?

Oh, boy, do I need to talk to you. My daughter attends TJ in Alexandria, Virginia and it’s even worse as a junior. The homework overload is completely out of control. I tried to meet with the principal and haven’t gotten very far yet.

How much homework do they give in stuyvesant

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I Am A, where the mundane becomes fascinating and the outrageous suddenly seems normal.

IAmA student of Stuyvesant High School. AMA

A lot of people ask me about the school when I tell them I am a student at stuy. In addition to that, the media has recently gotten the school a lot of hype. AMA.

I'd show proof, except I've thrown away my school planner, and I'm not sure how to verify web-based proof. here's the best I have at the moment: http://i.imgur.com/ENI9L.jpg . It's a screenshot of a page that only students can access. If any of you have a better idea for proof, please let me know and I'll do my best to comply with your request.

I'm going to sleep soon... so any questions past 1:00 AM is probably going to be answered tomorrow.

Thanks for your interest, if there is any!

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