About the Film

Nabbing a spot in one of NYC's best public high schools can change kids' lives--but who gets in? Only the few who conquer the SHSAT.

The Story

The gap in opportunities for different races in America remains extreme. Nowhere is this more evident than our nation’s top public schools. In New York City, where blacks and Hispanics make up 70% of the city’s school-aged population, they represent less than 5% at the city’s most elite public high schools. Meanwhile Asian Americans make up as much as 73%. This documentary follows a dozen racially and socio-economically diverse 8th graders as they fight for a seat at one of these schools. Their only way in: to ace a single standardized test. Tested includes the voices of such education experts as Pedro Noguera and Diane Ravitch as it explores such issues as access to a high-quality public education, affirmative action, and the model-minority myth.

Meet the Crew

CURTIS CHIN

CURTIS CHIN

Writer/Producer/Director

Curtis has written for ABC, Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon, and won awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and the San Diego Asian American Film Foundation.

As a community activist, he co-founded the Asian American Writers Workshop and Asian Pacific Americans for Progress. His first film, Vincent Who? has screened at nearly 400 colleges, NGOs and corporations in four countries.

Curtis is currently a Visiting Scholar at NYU.

ADAM WOLMAN

ADAM WOLMAN

Writer/Producer

Drawing on his experience in television programming, Adam consults for companies and individuals creating content for all media.

As the #2 exec at HBO Digital, Adam developed short-form series for HBO’s digital platforms. As Executive Consultant, Disney|ABC Television Group, he was brought on to help launch ABC’s award-winning Micro-Mini Series; the position was expanded to include sharing oversight of the Disney|ABC Writing Fellowship and other programs. Previously, Adam was VP, Original Series, Current and Development for MTV, covering comedy, drama, and reality and serving as exec in charge of production on several shows.

Before MTV, Adam was Director, Comedy Series Programming at ABC Entertainment and Program Analyst at CBS Productions.

SAM HENRIQUES

SAM HENRIQUES

Director of Photography

A product of New York's public schools (with two daughters currently in the system), Sam has experience shooting in the schools through the Media Locker Project (Big Years Productions) funded by the Gates Foundation and directed by Academy Award-winner Vanessa Roth. He also regularly shoots the Learning Matters segment for the PBS News Hour.

Sam's recent works include The Good Soldier, which won him an Emmy as Producer in Documentary & Historical Programming; Portrait of Wally; Nursery University; The Klezmatics; My Architect; Harlem Diaries; and Burning the Future: Coal in America. Sam recently DPed MTV's Failosophy as well as SlingShot, which won third place at Sundance 2013 in the Focus Forward: Short Films/Big Ideas series.

Henriques is perhaps best known for shooting Academy Award-nominee The Farm: Angola, USA, produced and directed by Liz Garbus and Jonathan Stack, about inmates at the notorious Angola State Penitentiary, for which he won a Primetime Emmy for Non-Fiction Cinematography.

KENNETH ENG

KENNETH ENG

Editor

After graduating from Boston Latin, America’s first public school, Ken left for NY in 1994 to study film at the School of Visual Arts. His thesis, Scratching Windows, a short documentary about graffiti writers, was broadcast on WNET as part of Reel NY’s 4th Season.

In 2001, Ken directed and edited Take Me to The River, a feature-length documentary about the Maha Kumbh Mela festival, shot in Allahabad, India. In 2006, Ken’s Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball (director/editor), a film about the famous Koshien Tournament in Japan, was nationally broadcast as part of PBS’s POV.

In 2007, Ken was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to launch My Life In China, a film that retraces his father’s epic journey to America in search of a better life. The film was just accepted into the Florida Film Festival.

Ken also edits promos, trailers, and shorts for various clients, including the Disney Channel and ABC.

KRESIMIR PENAVIC

KRESIMIR PENAVIC

Executive Producer

MICHAEL YI

MICHAEL YI

Executive Producer

JUDY WHITE

JUDY WHITE

Co-Executive Producer

GEORGE WU

GEORGE WU

Co-Executive Producer

  • Peter Lee, associate producer
  • Ellen Martinez, associate producer
  • Calvin Prashad, associate producer
  • Jerry Weinstein, associate producer
  • Jeff Yang, consulting producer
  • Jonathan Alvarado, 2nd unit cinematographer

 

  • Jeremy Batchelor, camera
  • Derrick Dawkins, camera
  • Tine Dilucia, camera
  • Julian Gerena-Quinones, camera
  • Maurice Keyes, camera
  • Phil Thompson, camera
  • Robert Winn, camera
  • Sawrab Karim, sound
  • Andrei Radovsky, sound
  • Mielle Ezra, sound
  • David Kvachadze, assistant editor
  • Marissa Kitzawa, assistant editor
  • Moises Garcia, composer
  • Terah “Bishop” Woodley, sound mix
  • Sean Fitzpatrick, color correction
  • Ada Mau, research associate
  • Ricky Leung, web consultant
  • William Hopper, Tested logo design
  • Stanley Ng, senior advisor
  • Holly Kim, advisor
  • Adam Leipzig, advisor
  • Chrystina Russell, advisor

The Cast

To be announced.