Mixing in the middle: Few NYC middle-school admission screens survive, which is fine by us

After a pandemic during which admissions criteria for selective middle schools throughout the five boroughs gave way to lottery-based entry, Chancellor David Banks rightly opened the door for community school district superintendents to bring them back on a case-by-case basis after consultation with parents. The result is positive: Going forward, students won’t have to jump through special hoops to get into nearly 90% of the city’s middle schools, a sharp drop from the pre-pandemic status quo. Expect some grousing but better mixing of kids from all backgrounds.

We’ve never much liked middle-school screens, which in nearly 200 schools and programs forced fifth-graders to compete for slots using grades, test scores and attendance from when they were as young as 9 years old. The resulting sorting typically reinforced housing segregation, often for minimal or no academic benefit. Integration isn’t just a nice thing in a diverse city; when well executed, it benefits everyone academically. When Brooklyn’s District 15 dropped its middle-school entry screens, naysayers suggested dissatisfied white families would flee in droves. That didn’t happen.

In a system that serves nearly a million kids, screens have a limited place — it’s fine for a few schools to cater to the performance arts or to the academically gifted, and certainly to have programs within schools that challenge students who are learning at a faster rate — but the rule should be open entry.

So it is now in New York: Kids will rank their preferences, then get matched. And even when screens are now employed, they won’t include lateness, attendance or state test scores, just performance in fourth-grade classes. That’s positive. The only word for penalizing a youngster because she had a two-week bout with the flu, or because a subway train was delayed, is madness.

What’s essential now is for the many, many screenless schools to do the hard work of delivering rigorous and appropriate instruction to all their students. No matter their race or ethnicity, different kids learn at different paces in different subjects. Teachers must challenge every child.