The mission is difficult, but doable: an almost serious guide on how to enroll a child in a good school in New York

Getting into high school in New York is not an easy task. But it is doable, it convinces New York Daily News. You are ready? Forward!

• If you haven't already, create an account record on the portal Department of Education. Now you can start searching for schools and add them to your favorites list!
• No, wait. You cannot add schools to your favorites list. We suggest you try another browser.
• Download another browser. Now we are ready!
• Register for the SHSAT, the high school test. It determines eligibility for Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, and five other elite schools throughout the city.
• Check the SHSAT schools in order of your child's preference. Fortunately, the SHSAT will be held in schools during the regular school day. So it is much easier for children than going to a special place on the weekends.
• Forget it. Your child's school may have filed application for release from conducting the SHSAT during the school day. The school authorities believe that the SHSAT is unfair (plus, teachers lose overtime pay if they supervise the test during the school day and not on weekends).

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• Your child will get up at 6:30 am on the weekend and drive to an unfamiliar school in another area to take the SHSAT. Fair!
• Since you won't know your child's SHSAT scores for several months, go back to brokerto find non-specialized schools. The Department of Education (DOE) has announced that there will be no more geographical priority, so you can search for schools anywhere in the city. Make a list of your favorites.
• In December, city officials changed their minds and decided that geographical priorities will still be preserved. Drop your list.
• Try to get your child interested in the process of entering high school. Your child is 13 years old. He is not interested in anything but football and YouTube.
• Check school websites for information on open days. There is no official way to find out about open days other than on a school-by-school basis.
• Join the parent group to share information about open houses. You're sure to meet a parent who quit her job to focus on getting her child into high school.
• Virtual Open Houses have limited attendance, so you must register early or you won't get in.
• Change your schedule to attend more virtual open days.
• Find out that open houses are just Zoom meetings. Here, school administrators call from their living rooms, spending most of their time on slideshows about the school. It could just as well be posted on a website for parents to view the slides at any time.
• Find out that all open days contain the phrase: “Please don't ask us about admission. We do not know. We are awaiting a response from the Department of Education."
• Start losing hope that anyone has any idea what's going on in the New York City Department of Education.

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• Keep adding schools to your list. It doesn't matter that all schools are still saying "More information coming soon" right up to the application opening date. Therefore, you have no way of knowing if your child is eligible to apply to the schools you are considering.
• Apply to charter schools as a fallback.
• Apply to Catholic schools as a fallback. You are not a Catholic, but you will get a good education for your child. Catholic schools administer a standardized academic test called TACHS to distribute applicants to different diocesan high schools in the city.
• You would like to go to a private school, but who can afford it in a city where tuition fees can easily exceed $50 a year? And no, this is not a joke.
• Seek help from your child's school psychologist. Unfortunately, she is the only assistant for hundreds of students and has little time. She has no idea who your child is and cannot recommend schools that would suit him. Also, she says that she only has access to information released by the Department of Education, so she finds information the same way you do.
• Find out what exists prosperous industry, which serves parents who need help in this confusing process of registering a child for school. Parents can get help if they can afford to pay hundreds of dollars an hour.
• Applications for public schools are finally open. This year, the city promised a fairer and more orderly process. Do you dare hope?
• Leave hope. Hope is for the weak. The system seems worse than ever.
• Ask for help from parents who have already gone through this process. But since this process is new this year, they will tell you that they cannot help.
• Find out that all schools offer places through a lottery, a system with a volatile history of growing diversity.
• Just wait, there is no liberal arts school lottery. Selection for artistic talent or "talent" does not appear to be unfair. LaGuardia is only 27% low-income, but that's okay because liberal arts selection is good and fair. Brooklyn Institute of Technology, which is 59% low-income kids, is bad because academic selection is clearly unfair.
• For review: Humanities checks are good and acceptable sorting mechanisms. Exact science tests are bad. Except that some non-humanities schools will still have such checks. It is not clear which schools and families should visit each school's website or MySchools page individually to see if they will have a review. Maybe quitting your job to focus on getting your kid into high school isn't such a bad idea.
• Please note that the Department of Education has finally released the list special schoolswho use the knowledge test this year. Now parents can see all schools that have audits in one place. Ouch! One of them has a link to Web site, which says that their review process had already been completed before DOE applications were open.
• Most of the knowledge tests at these schools involve writing an essay (one school requires three essays). In your parent's group, you see several posts about looking for tutors to help their children "compose" an introductory essay. Tutors charge a minimum of $100 an hour. Fair!
• Do not forget that testing knowledge of the exact sciences is bad. Many schools will test students' knowledge based on their grades. But now they will do a "group review" based on the highest score from the last three benchmark periods. For example, a child who received 2021% in Spring 65, 2021% in Fall 85, and 2022% in Winter 65 would be in the same intake group as a child who received 99%, 99%, and 99%. This makes sense because the score check is unfair. But they will still check the estimates. But not really. The system is quite confusing. Complicated admission criteria are the fairest.
• Get offers for Catholic High Schools. Unfortunately, offers for admission to public schools New York will not be published for several more months. Therefore, you will have to choose between making a deposit that you cannot afford to lose in a Catholic school to secure a place for your child, or making sure you get a place in a public school.
• I wonder why it takes so long for SHSAT results to be published? Children take it in December. It's February now.
• Consider that the more tedious the confusing admissions process, the less parents will have to demand quality education for everyone.
• Explore homeschooling.