Story by Deirdre Bardolf | April 21, 2024 | New York Post
Four published books, debate trophies, perfect attendance and a 100 average weren’t enough to get a Queens eighth-grader into her dream high school.
Kristina Raevsky, 14, found out on March 7 she wasn’t accepted to Townsend Harris High School in Flushing because of a lottery system that grouped her perfect test scores with kids who scored over a 94.
“I was shocked,” Raevsky told The Post. “Everyone I told said, ‘How is this possible?’ And I told them, ‘I don’t know, it isn’t me that is the problem. The system is the problem.
“Prior to the lottery, before COVID, my mindset was, ‘Well, I have a 100 average, I’m at the top of my class, I have perfect attendance, and I did well on the state tests . . . what could possibly go wrong?’”
But Raevsky’s attendance record and stellar average were no longer factors in the admissions process, which, since 2022, sorts kids into five groups based on seventh-grade core subject grades. For screened schools like Townsend Harris, an essay and a two-minute video submission are additionally considered. Then, kids are subject to a lottery.
“That’s where all the subjectivity comes in,” the Forest Hills student said of the writing and video portions. “If you ask me what to do to change the system, I would say put it back to the way it was when we had objective measures like state tests.
“The lottery determined my fate. At the end of all this, I was reduced to a lottery number,” Raevsky said. Her poor lottery number put her in the 72nd percentile of applicants.
“Life is not a lottery,” she added. “When you go into the medical field, the law field, every single field, everything is based on merit.”
Before the pandemic, screened schools like Townsend Harris chose their own admissions criteria. In 2020, former Mayor Bill de Blasio nixed attendance, state tests and letter grades and implemented a system where students with an 85 or above were entered into the same lottery pool, in an attempt to diversify selective schools.
In 2022, Chancellor David Banks, under Mayor Adams, brought back screens and narrowed the top tier of kids to those with a 94 or above, which those fighting for high-achieving students welcomed.
“Although we agree that it moves high school admissions policy in the right direction, this policy change is just one small step forward after NYC took three very large steps backward,” Raevsky wrote in a Fordham Institute article in 2022. She has long been a vocal advocate for education meritocracy.
Raevsky says she was never a 94 student.
“I can tell you from experience that the difference between a 94 and a 100 is miles apart … the 100 student is sitting there the moment something is assigned thinking, ‘How am I going to complete this assignment? Let me start planning.’
“The 94 student says, ‘Oh, I’ll come to the movies even though there’s a test two days away.’ The 100 student says, ‘I’m sorry but I can’t come. I’m studying.’
“Hundreds take time. Hundreds take sacrifice and perseverance,” said the student, who is on track to be the valedictorian at JHS 157.
Raevsky put Townsend Harris, which offers no geographic preference to Queens students, and only one other school on her list of 12 high school choices.
She was accepted into the Bronx High School of Science, which has its own admissions process, but said it is too far from home.
Plus, she doesn’t want to go to a STEM school.
“I’m a humanities kid,” she said. “I like math, but I like history more, and I like writing and reading more.”
The last book that she wrote, “Marriage or Espionage: Read Between the Lines,” is a historical fiction novel about a spy during the American Revolution.
Raevsky’s ultimate goal is the US Senate, she said, where she would focus on education and public safety.
Now, it’s off to nearby parochial school for her, where she was offered a scholarship. Like many families fed up with the system’s policies, hers is bidding farewell to the city Department of Education.
“I’m really glad I’m going to a private school,” she said. “I’m finally going to be in a place where I belong and am appreciated for my merit and my academic abilities.”