Four published books, a debate trophy, perfect attendance and a 100 GPA weren’t enough to get a Queen’s eighth-grader into his dream high school.
On March 7, 14-year-old Christina Raevsky learned she was not admitted to Townsend Harris High School in Flushing because of a lottery system that grouped her with students with perfect test scores of 94 or higher.
“I was shocked,” Raevsky told the Post. “Everyone I talked to said, ‘How is that possible?'” And I told them, “I don’t know, it’s not me.” The system is the problem.
“Before I won the lottery, before COVID-19 hit, my mindset was, ‘Well, I have a 100 point average, I’m at the top of my class, I have perfect attendance, and I do well on state tests.’ What could possibly go wrong?”
However, Raevsky’s attendance record and strong GPA will no longer be a factor in the admissions process starting in 2022, which uses a combination of seventh-grade major subject grades, an essay, and a two-minute video submission. The children are then divided into five groups based on their performance and receive a lottery.
“That’s where all the subjectivity comes in,” the Forest Hills student said of the text and video portions. “If you ask me what should be done to change the system, I would say that I would return it to the way it was when there were objective measures like national exams.”
“The lottery decided my fate. At the end of all this, I was reduced to a lottery number,” Raevsky said. Her lottery numbers were bad and she was in her 72nd percentile of applicants.
“Life is not a lottery,” she added. “When you go into the medical field, the legal field, any field, it’s all based on merit.”
Before the pandemic, vetted schools like Townsend Harris chose their own admissions criteria. In 2020, former Mayor Bill de Blasio sought to diversify school choices by eliminating attendance, state exams and grading, and introducing a system in which students with scores of 85 or higher were eligible for the same lottery.
In 2022, under Mayor Adams, Chancellor David Banks reinstated the screens, narrowing the top-performing students to those with scores of 94 or higher, a move welcomed by those fighting for high-achieving students.
“While I agree that high school admissions policy is moving in the right direction, this policy change is only a small step forward after New York City took three very large steps backwards,” Raevsky wrote in a 2022 Fordham Institute article. No,” he said.
Raevsky says he wasn’t a 94-year-old student.
“I can tell you from experience that the difference between a 94 and a 100 is miles away. The moment a 100 is assigned, a student is sitting there thinking, ‘How am I going to finish this assignment?’ “Let’s start planning.”
“The 94th grade student says, “Oh, I have a test in two days, but I’m coming to see the movie.” 100 students say, “Sorry, I can’t come.” i am studying. ‘
“It takes hundreds of hours. Hundreds of people sacrifice and persevere,” said the JHS 157 student who is on track to become valedictorian.
Ms. Raevsky included Townsend Harris, which does not offer geographic preferential treatment to Queens students, on her list of 12 high schools, along with only one other school.
She was accepted to Bronx High School of Science, which has its own admissions process, but said it was too far from home.
Plus, she doesn’t want to attend a STEM school.
“I’m a liberal arts kid,” she said. “I like math, but I like history more, and I like writing and reading even more.”
Her last book, Marriage or Spy: Reading Between the Lines, is a historical novel about spies during the American Revolutionary War.
Raevsky’s ultimate goal is the U.S. Senate, where she said she will focus on education and public safety.
She is currently attending a nearby parochial school where she was offered a scholarship. Like many families fed up with the system’s policies, her family is saying goodbye to the city’s Department of Education.
“I’m so glad I went to a private high school,” she said. “I will finally be able to take my place and be recognized for my accomplishments and academic ability.”
