BLAS-PHEMY
‘Blessed’ Bill: My ed. critics are like Jesus’ doubters
Is de Blasio deVine? He sure seems to think so, making repeated biblical references yesterday as he told churchgoers of his plan to scrap the admissions test for the city’s top high schools. “Blessed are those whoho act justly,” he said, likening critics to the apostle who questioned the resurrection of Jesus: “Scripture . . . tells us about the naysayers and the doubting Thomases.”
Mayor de Blasio implied on Sunday that he’s on a mission from God with his controversial plan to scrap the admissions test for the city’s top high schools — and he just can’t fathom why everyone isn’t singing from the same hymnal.
The mayor repeatedly referenced the Bible in a visit to a predominantly black church in East Harlem, where he preached that his proposal would increase racial and ethnic diversity at the eight selective schools.
“Blessed are those who act justly,” he told worshippers at the Bethel Gospel Assembly, referring to his plan.
In addition to quoting Psalm 106:3, the mayor even likened his opponents to the apostle who questioned the resurrection of Jesus.
“I think Scripture also tells us about the naysayers and the doubting Thomases,” said de Blasio, who has described himself as “spiritual” while discussing his own beliefs.
The congregation drowned out the mayor with applause and a shaking tambourine when he said he would immediately boost the number of spots set aside for poor students who narrowly miss the test cutoff — even though 45 percent at the elite eight currently qualify for free lunches.
“Twenty percent of the seats will now be reserved for disadvantaged students to give them a chance to — ” de Blasio said before being muffled.
Currently, about 5 percent of students at the city’s eight specialized high schools get in through the Discovery Program, based on their test scores and family income, but de Blasio wants to boost that to 20 percent and add the requirement that they come from “high-poverty” middle schools.
The mayor continued his pious allusions during an afternoon news conference in Brooklyn, where he was joined by about 50 elected offi- cials and community leaders.
De Blasio — who teased his plan in a Saturday op-ed for the Chalkbeat education-news Web site — said not enough students were taking the Department of Education’s Specialized High School Admission Test because few parents knew about it.
“I have never accused the DOE of communicating well with parents. Can I get an amen?” de Blasio said, still feeling the spirit.
De Blasio — whose son, Dante, graduated from Brooklyn Tech, one of the top three specialized schools, and is now attending Yale University — also claimed he was pushing this plank in his progressive agenda because “the stars have now aligned” following his re-election last year.
“I’ve got a new mandate from the voters. I have a new chancellor who is focused on social justice,” he said, referring to recently installed Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza.
Under the proposal, which would
require approval of state lawmakers, the admissions test would be phased out altogether over three years, with 90 to 95 percent of seats in the elite schools eventually reserved for the top 7 percent of seventh-graders from each middle school based on a “composite score” of their grades and standardized test scores.
The remaining spots would go, via lottery, to students from religious and private schools, students who just moved to the city and students “with a minimum grade-point average who are not in the top 7 percent pool.”
Officials predicted it would raise the total proportion of black and Hispanic students from 9 percent to 45 percent.
But there are competing bills in Albany to either do away with the test or create a “pre-specialized high-schools admissions test and preparation program” to get more students ready for the test.
Critics attacked de Blasio’s plan for seeking to raise up disadvantaged students by lowering the bar instead of improving educational opportunities in lower grades.
“The mayor is mistaken in his approach. Lowering the standards is not the way to go,” said state Sen. Diane Savino (D-SI, Brooklyn).
She noted that the state has given the city millions of dollars to offer free tutoring and test prep for the admissions exam, and accused de Blasio of failing to aggressively market the program.
State Sen. Toby Stavisky (DQueens), a former Brooklyn Tech teacher, accused de Blasio of “assuming that young people who are black or Latino cannot pass the exam — and that is just not the case.”
“The answer is better training for kids. You have to do it at an earlier age. That will improve the end result,” said Stavisky, who is sponsoring a bill for the test-prep program.
Eric Nadelstern, who served as deputy schools chancellor under Mayor Mike Bloomberg, predicted de Blasio’s proposal was too divisive to win approval.
“It isn’t a very clever idea. It sounds like a quota,” he said.
In a joint statement, the Stuyvesant HS and Brooklyn Tech alumni associations called de Blasio’s proposal “absolutely not the answer to this very complicated issue” and said it would give “unprecedented, subjective control of admissions through the inclusion of new ‘multiple measures’ of achievement.”
Soo Kim, president of the Stuyvesant association, said de Blasio would unfairly disenfranchise many poor Asian kids, who account for a disproportionate number of the city’s top students.
“We are absolutely on the side of equity,” he said.
“But we don’t believe that the solution is taking from one needy community and giving to another needy community.”
Larry Cary, the Brooklyn Tech foundation president, said de Blasio’s plan would unfairly limit the number of students who gain admissions from parochial and private schools.
“We have no place for antiCatholic, anti-Jewish and antiMuslim prejudice in our society or city, and we should not want to discriminate against parents who chose a religious or private education for their children but wish to return to the public system,” he said.
The Albany legislation to do away with the test was introduced late Friday by Assemblyman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn).
“About the bill, you know, I know we talked about bootstraps, and I understand that concept, but it’s about all of us rising — so when an individual makes it, you have not made it until all of us have made it,” Barron said at the de Blasio press conference.
Gov. Cuomo ducked the issue when questioned about it at the annual Celebrate Israel parade in Manhattan, pivoting to the subject of education funding.
“I think the question on admissions and how schools are segregated, desegregated, is a very important issue,” he said. “I also think funding equity is very important and how much we are funding each school.”
F acing a long-known and genuine problem — the tiny percentage of black and Hispanic city public-school students who can pass the race-blind exam for entry into one of the specialized high schools — Mayor de Blasio opted on Saturday mostly for symbolism over substance.
And even the substantial change that he’s making is just redistribution — sending some kids to top schools at the expense of others — when he has a far better option: creating more good high schools to meet the demand.
The central complaint is that black and Hispanic kids make up nearly 70 percent of the public-school population, yet only 10 percent of the student bodies at the eight elite high schools. And girls outnumber boys in the larger system, while boys are a slight majority at the schools. De Blasio also notes that just 21 of the city’s 600 middle schools produced half the kids admitted to the “elite eight.”
One big thing he doesn’t say is exactly how the test is to blame — that is, how it unfairly discriminates.
In fact, the exam is just the messenger, pretty accurately determining which eighthgraders are actually prepared for the tough courses at Stuyvesant HS and the other elite schools. For the reasons so few black and Latino children do well on the test, you need to look elsewhere: to the K-8 schools, and to the level of family and community support for academic excellence.
Nor does he note that the big “winners” under the current system are East and South Asian-American children: Far more than whites, they are “over-represented” at the top schools. They’d inevitably be the big losers under his reforms.
Except that his big idea is a nonstarter, at least for now: He’s calling on the Legislature to eliminate the test, something it’s shown little appetite for to date. With just two weeks left in this year’s session, it’s not going to happen this year. (Is the mayor really just putting the issue on the table now to try to help Democrats win control of the state Senate this fall?)
Then, too, state law compels only the top three schools (Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech) to rely on the exam: The mayor and his schools chancellor could kill the use of the test for the five other elite schools, yet that doesn’t seem to be in his plan. B ut he does aim to take one big step immediately: expanding the Discovery program to reserve roughly 1,000 seats (a fifth of the total) at these schools for affirmative-action placement.
Loopholes in the law may let him do this at the “top three,” but expect some court fight — alumni of the schools are furious at what they see as “reforms” that threaten to destroy their alma maters.
The mayor pretends that his Discovery expansion will benefit kids who are perfectly able to do well at Stuyvesant, etc.: “economically disadvantaged” children who fall just below the cutoff scores. This ignores the fact that, for example, a kid who falls just below the overall cutoff (one who might’ve made it into, say, Staten Island Tech with another three points on the exam) may be 50 points or more below the Stuyvesant cutoff.
By sending that child to a school that’s too tough for him, de Blasio is setting him up for failure — unless Stuyvesant puts him into some new, less demanding program. How does this help anyone?
Worst of all, if the mayor truly wanted to expand opportunity — rather than racially redistribute high-school seats — he has an obvious option: Simply create more elite high schools.
It’s not remotely impossible: Mayor Michael Bloomberg added five to supplement the “big three.” De Blasio could get his thousand seats by adding just two more — and he’d harm no one by setting up whatever quotas or other rules he wanted for entry to them.
In the meantime, he could start seriously addressing the failure of the K-8 system to adequately prepare black and Hispanic children for success.