Sabotaging Elite Schools: Blas’ Flawed Equity Plan
THE ISSUE: Mayor de Blasio’s proposed quota system for specialized high schools in New York City.
I’m a liberal Democrat, but I strongly oppose loosening the admissions standards for specialized high schools (“Blas’ War on Excellence,” Editorial, Oct. 22).
For decades, they have been a golden stairway for inner-city kids who excel in the arts and sciences. Changing this will not help the students who don’t have the ability to do the work, and it will destroy the opportunity for those who do.
Specialized high schools are special for a reason. Keep them special, and they will continue to achieve the purpose for which they were created.
Kenneth Drexler North Woodmere
If Mayor de Blasio truly wants equity in city schools, all he has to do is allow teachers to suspend students who disrupt classes and temporarily transfer them to a school of other bullies.
Having toured middle schools in search of one for my daughter, I have met many fine and wellintentioned teachers, who I’m sure would do a great job if they weren’t hamstrung by regulations that make it impossible to discipline the disrupters in their classes.
Gamaliel Isaac Manhattan
Imagine for a moment that the LSAT exam was canceled and the top graduates from undergraduate school were admitted to law school, even though they did not demonstrate the probability of success.
It is criminal that the limited number of children of color passing the specialized high-school entrance exam does not prompt an overhaul of the elementary and middle schools.
Examine the achievement results of city mid- dle schools. Do we really believe that the top 7 percent of the graduates can be successful in specialized high schools? The great majority of middleschool students are significantly below grade level. The top 7 percent are most probably only approaching grade level.
With this policy, the mayor and the chancellor would effectively wipe out any measure of accountability. The message of “study hard and focus on school work” is nonexistent. The clock has been turned back.
Jeff Litt Superintendent Icahn Charter Schools The Bronx
Throughout my 35-year career in the city publicschool system, I have always known that far too many of our best and brightest students are being denied access to specialized high schools.
But the mayor and his antagonist chancellor’s plan to solve this problem defies logic.
In each and every borough, there are many buildings and properties owned by the city. In every borough, there are children from all of our communities being passed over due to lack of seats. Why not start a Bronx HS of Science North? South? East? West? And the same with the other specialized high schools.
Curriculum in these satellite schools would be parallel. No ethnicity would be squeezed out, and several thousand more minority students will get the type of enriched education they deserve.
Ken Karcinell Hewlett
My political mentor, Ed Koch, used to say, “You don’t bring some people up by bringing other people down.”
The obsessive desire for faux egalitarianism by Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza will not help the unprepared students he’s planning on forcing into a difficult curriculum.
Rather, it will take away the rare islands of civility and academic achievement remaining in the city school system for poor, gifted kids.
The as-yet-unseen consequence of this will be the decimation of the alumni associations these great schools have spawned. They will not underwrite this foolishness.
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld Great Neck