Mayor de Blasio unveiled a plan Saturday to boost black and Latino enrollment at the city’s eight specialized high schools — and he wants to scrap admissions tests outright.
In an op-ed for education-news site Chalkbeat, de Blasio announced that 20 percent of seats at those eight schools would be reserved for low-income applicants.
Kids in the Department of Education’s Discovery Program who score just below the admissions cut-off would be given one of those saved seats, according to the plan.
De Blasio said he will fight to eventually replace the single-test system with new admissions criteria based on middle-school class rank and state test scores.
“The Specialized High School Admissions Test isn’t just flawed — it’s a roadblock to justice, progress and academic excellence,” he wrote. Hizzoner said his proposals, if fully realized, would eventually induce a massive demographic shift at the specialized high schools.
“With these reforms, we expect our premier public high schools to start looking like New York City,” he wrote. “Approximately 45 percent of students would be Latino or black.”
Under the current system, Asian kids predominate at the city’s top high schools. They make up 74 percent of the population at Stuyvesant, 66 percent at Bronx Science and 61 percent at Brooklyn Tech. At Queens HS for Science at York College, 82 percent are Asian.
Alumni have long argued that the current merit system guarantees academic rigor. But de Blasio undercut that notion in his op-ed.
De Blasio has attributed racial disparities to the accessibility of test-prep classes and tutors to economically advantaged families.
“A single, high-stakes exam is also unfair to students whose families cannot afford, or may not even know about, the availability of test-preparation tutors and courses,” de Blasio wrote.
But Brooklyn Tech Alumni President Larry Cary has said, “The solution isn’t to kill the test. It’s to improve the quality of education offered in African-American and Latino communities.”
State Sen. Toby Ann Stavisky, a former Brooklyn Tech teacher, ripped de Blasio’s plan.
“To assume African-American and Latino students cannot pass the test is insulting to everyone and educationally unsound,” she said. “Many Asian-American students come from families who live in poverty.”
At least 60 percent of kids at three of the specialized schools are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, according to DOE data.