Belmont World Film and Belmont Against Racism co-present the award-winning documentary Tested followed by a discussion with Director Curtis Chin, a well-regarded writer, filmmaker, and community activist, who is currently a Visiting Scholar at NYU, and Dr. Colin Rose, Assistant Superintendent of Opportunity and Achievement Gaps for the Boston Public Schools.
The film follows a dozen racially and socio-economically diverse 8th graders in New York City as they fight for a seat at one of the city’s top test schools. Their only way in: to ace a single, 95-question, standardized test called the SSHAT—the Specialized High School Achievement Test—that is administered annually in October.
Exploring such issues as access to a high-quality public education, affirmative action, and the model-minority myth, the film reflects the extreme gap in opportunities for different races in America, particularly at the nation’s top public schools. In New York City, where blacks and Hispanics make up 70% of the city’s school-aged population, less than 5% of this group attend the city’s most elite public high schools, as compared to as many as 73% Asian-Americans.