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Claiming not enough black and Latino students are gaining admission to New York City’s nine specialized high schools, civil rights advocates recently filed a federal complaint questioning the use of the specialized high school admissions test (SHSAT) as the sole criterion for entry.
They called the exam a “grave injustice” that contributes to persistent racial disparities.
The complaint said the demographics at Stuyvesant High School and Bronx High School of Science were particularly glaring. Last school year, out of Stuyvesant’s 3,300 students, 1.2 percent were black and 2.4 percent were Latino, according to the city’s Department of Education. At Bronx Science, which had just over 3,000 students last year, 3.5 percent were black and 7.2 percent Latino.
Students at Brooklyn Latin, where almost 27 percent percent of students were black and 18 percent were Latino, told SchoolBook their mixed student body benefited from diversity, inside and outside the classroom.
What do you think about the single test approach to entry? How should race and diversity play into the admissions process, if at all?
Jump in. Join our conversation.
I think diversity is very important at any school level. As a latino parent with a child struggling in a supposedly great elementary school I have learned how easy is for children in "bad neighborhoods" to fall behind from early grades. I think educating minorities and immigrant parents about schooling options and resources from early school is fundamental. So yes to encouraging diversity in high schools and colleges but we need to start this conversation from the early years.
As a alum of BTHS, I think that racial diversity plays a very crucial role in the learning experience. While the school's academics are intense and rigorous, the lessons I learned from my peers outside the classroom were the ones that stuck with me, even after I graduated. My interactions in high school opened my eyes, provided me with the ability to empathize, think critically, and motivated me to travel and learn about other cultures.
There really isn't such thing as "Race" ; it's a social construct-a flawed one at that we've deviced to identity and classify individuals and groups in society for a variety "good", "well intended" and "malintended" purposes.
The so-called " Specialized High Schools" should consider "Race" as a prerequisite for admittance just as "Affirmative Action" has been used---though periodically under threat, especially in our perpetual election cycles, it seems ---for inclusion.
USDJ Nicholas Garafis' recent ruling against the FDNY discrimination case points a way to deal with diversity.
We can continue to pretend that we live in a homogenopus society or heteregenous one.
For my part, I created Peace and Diversity Academy, a struggling small HS in South Bronx, with the Anti-Defamation League[ ADL] as lead Partner several years ago, as contrbution to helping youngsters, inter alia, understand and respect their differences, and extentuate the common core values they have as human beings.
Admissions to SpecializedHigh Schools should be merit-based and equitable; "Race" can, should be but just one factor.
I think all schools, from elementary to college should admit based on merit. That being said, people should be made aware of the opportunity to enter these schools and special programs. My daughter's school handed out the application for the Gifted & Talented program. A friend of mine, however, has a brother in the same public school system and he was never offered the application. He's in the 5th grade and also very smart. The difference is they are in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood and we are in a predominantly white neighborhood. My daughter is currently in the G&T program and if not for that they wouldn't have known to test him for middle school this fall. I'm sure that plays out similarly throughout different racial and economic demographics.
As the father of a son who attended BxSci (without test prep) and who recently graduated, I say absolutely not. Intellectual excellence and achievement is and should remain the only goal. The specialized test intensely focused and objective -- grammar, logic, math. Not knowing an answer does not indicate bias. It reveals not knowing. The true fatal flaw of the ACLU argument is obvious when you flip their argument around. To say the admissions process excludes black and hispanic students is to say that it favors Asians, many of whom (in the case of BxSci) come from English-as-a-second-language households - a claim that in my (admittedly brief) reading of the history of bias in education has never before been made. That's a hard claim of bias to swallow.
By the way, the same process also significantly underrepresents whites at BxSci - so any argument the ACLU makes for the black and hispanic population will have to be made on behalf of white kids. And that claim gets even harder to swallow.
There is no doubt that our educational system is broken, and that many neighborhoods have sub-standard schools. Re-jiggering the admissions process of elite schools to make up for those terrible short-comings only dilutes the entire system. BxSci inspired 8 Nobel Prize winners, the most, I believe, of any high public school in the country. Despite its well publicized flaws, BxSci is a true public education gem. We should be proud, and do everything possible to maintain it as a vibrant learning haven for exceptional young men and women. Let's take the millions that ACLU will undoubtedly sink into the lawsuit and pay for test prep in underserved neighborhoods so that more kids of all backgrounds gain the knowledge to get in. Who knows, we may someday need to open more schools just like it!
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