Blaz: Scrap top-HS test
MAYOR DE BLASIO wants a do-over on a controversial admissions test that blocked black and Hispanic students from the city’s best high schools for years.
In an op-ed published on the education blog Chalkbeat on Saturday, de Blasio called for a complete scrapping of the city’s Specialized High School Aptitude Test that elite high schools use for admissions.
The mayor vowed to replace the test with other admissions factors in a plan to combat extreme racial segregation in the group of world-famous schools including Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Technical High School and Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan.
But in the op-ed, de Blasio wrote that he wasn’t seeing the city’s brightest students in those schools, where only 172 black students and 298 Latino students were offered seats this year out of 5,000 kids given the opportunity.
“This happened in a city where two out of every three eighth-graders in our public schools are Latino or black,” the mayor wrote.
“Can anyone look the parent of a Latino or black child in the eye and tell them their precious daughter or son has an equal chance to get into one of their city’s best high schools?” he asked.
The city’s specialized high schools are considered among the most prestigious public schools in the world. Yet they have been the subject of scrutiny for years for failing to admit many black and Hispanic students.
In April, lawmakers proposed legislation to diversify the city’s elite public schools. One bill would expand a program to gain entrance to specialized schools, while another proposed to create a special commission to study diversity issues in the city’s top schools.
Larry Carry, president of the Brooklyn Tech Alumni foundation, said he agreed with the mayor’s efforts.
“The appalling lack of diversity at test-in schools are a symptom of an unequal school system where the zip code you live in is too often correlated to your access to the kind of enhanced academics that provide the opportunity for success on the test and in the schools,” he said.
At the beginning of the 2019 school year, de Blasio will set quotas to offer 20% of specialized high school seats to economically disadvantaged students and those who nearly made the test cut-off score.
The mayor’s strongly worded op-ed came after critics pressured him for years to scrap the single-test admissions at the schools.
He will also work on new legislation to replace state laws that require the use of the single test at some of the schools.
On Sunday, de Blasio is meeting with Brooklyn state assemblyman Charles Barron at a Brooklyn school to announce his support Barron’s Assembly bill to replace the test with multiple measures.