HS diversity fail

Discovery plan didn’t help blacks, Latinos

A program meant to diversify the city’s infamously segregated specialized high schools failed to admit representative numbers of black and Hispanic kids in 2019, figures released by Education Department officials Wednesday show.

The Discovery program, hyped as a desegregation tool for elite schools including Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School, mostly benefited Asian students this year despite the fact that those students already account for a majority of enrollment.

In contrast, black and Hispanic kids who account for about 67% of all city students received about 30% of Discovery offers, which also include slots at other selective high schools including Brooklyn Technical High School and the Bronx High School of Science.

The city has set aside about 500 seats for students in the Discovery program who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds and nearly scored high enough on the schools’ controversial admissions test to gain entrance in the first round of offers.

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza admitted the heavily hyped program isn’t really moving the needle on racial integration and doubled down on his 2018 call to scrap single-test admissions for the top city schools — an effort that faces stiff headwinds in the city and Albany.

“We’re using every tool at our disposal to increase diversity at the specialized high schools, but despite the incremental progress we’re making through the Discovery program, the status quo remains the same,” Carranza (photo) said. “We need to eliminate the test now.”

In the first round of offers for the schools released in March, only 506 black and Hispanic students received seats, down from 527 black and Hispanic students who received offers in 2018, a drop of roughly 4%.

The total number of firstround offers also went down slightly, falling 5.3% — from 5,067 in 2018 to 4,798 in 2019.

Eight of the city’s specialized schools use the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) to admit students.

A ninth specialized school, the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, uses a talent audition and review of academic records to admit students.

The schools that use the SHSAT have become the center of a pitched debate on school segregation after Mayor de Blasio and Carranza backed a plan to eliminate the test in June.

That plan hasn’t gone into action, but de Blasio and Carranza are in the midst of expanding the Discovery program as a means to bring more students from diverse backgrounds to the elite schools.

Opponents launched a suit against the expansion that caused the city to delay the release of high school acceptance letters this year by about 10 days.