Joe responds:
At most schools, the registrar doesn’t have final authority; the registrar may make recommendations, but ultimately it is up to the head of the school.
I am surprised by the suggestion that Shalhevet turns away many of its own students (attempting to move from its middle school to high school, several grads of Shalhevet’s eighth grade were refused admission to its high school and are now at Beverly Hills HS). When it is one or two kids, maybe you can say the school is a bad fit, but if it is more than a handful, that doesn’t speak well about the school. My understanding is that the whole reason for expanding into early education – 4th last year (and 5-8 a few years back) was a desperate need for more tuition dollars.
Rabbi David Rue took the Shalhevet entrance exam and gave it to a group of graduating Shalhevet seniors (around 25, 50% of the graduating class). He then gave it to a "control group" of a similar number from other Orthodox high schools. He also gave it to a group of public high school students whose only Jewish "education" was participation in NCSY/JSU. Apparently, the Shalhevet kids mostly scored below both groups (only the most advanced Shalhevet kids scored above the public high school kids). The same dismal performance is apparently borne out in the fact that Shalhevet kids are unprepared for most academic post-high school yeshivot.
