This fall, Providence’s Classical High School began offering its entrance exam in Spanish for the first time in the public school’s 182-year history.
Providence public school administrators made the change to ensure all students “have equal access to the same opportunities, regardless of what their primary language may be,” according to school district spokeswoman Alex Torres-Perez.
To get into Classical, students must live in Providence and score well on a rigorous entrance exam. In recent years, students could take that exam with a Spanish dictionary and additional time, according to Torres-Perez.
But this week, for the first time ever, over 30 students received a fully bilingual version of Classical’s entrance exam. Close to 1,000 students take the exam each year, competing for roughly 300 spots in each incoming class.
Classical is the standout high school in a district that often struggles to meet state and federal education standards. Founded as a college preparatory school in 1843, Classical’s top students consistently go on to attend elite colleges.
The high school is diverse — more than 80 percent of its students are non-white, according to school district data — but Hispanic students remain underrepresented there relative to the overall Providence Public Schools District.
Nearly 68% of public school students in Providence are Hispanic, according to the district’s data. At Classical, 51% of students are Hispanic. Just 2% of students there currently identify as English language learners.
Tricia Kelly, an assistant teaching professor of education at Brown University, said Rhode Island experienced the largest percent increase of students learning English of any state in the U.S. between 2010 and 2020.
Kelly said Classical’s new exam policy shows Providence is doing more than just signaling that new Hispanic students are welcome at the city’s top school.
“We’re really trying to raise the bar and allow students who are brilliant in Spanish to have access to the same rigorous curriculum as other students who are brilliant in English,” Kelly said.
Some public high schools with selective admissions have moved in similar directions as Classical. Christopher Cleveland, an assistant professor of education policy at Brown University, said comparable high schools in New York and Chicago have translated their entrance exams into Spanish.
Other school districts, though, have explored the change and opted against it for now. In Boston, the admissions test for the city’s three selective public high schools, including the Boston Latin School, remains available in English only.
Cleveland said rigorous high schools with selective admissions don’t always have robust systems to support students still learning English.
“I do think that there are very important implementation issues that need to be considered as you’re looking to expand the students who are in these schools,” Cleveland said. “I’m not sure it benefits the school or the student to not be able to support them when they are in the exam school.”
The next test is whether the new crop of students that gets into Classical finds a hospitable learning environment there.
“Are there supports for them if they need extra support for their English language development?” asked Kelly, the Brown professor. “Can they, for example, take a science class in Spanish that would allow them to maintain that level of academic rigor in a language other than English?”
Torres-Perez, the Providence Public Schools District spokeswoman, said the school has a “multi-tiered system of supports” for all students, including “targeted interventions” and “supplemental instruction in small groups.”
A citywide administrator for multi-language learners did not respond to a further request for information on programming and support specific to Spanish speakers at Classical.
