Pols: Make test signup automatic
Elite schools take same low number of blacks & Latinos
A group of lawmakers wants all city eighth-graders to be automatically registered for the entrance exam for specialized high schools and get free afterschool test prep in order to boost the enrollment of black and Latino students at the prestigious schools, the Daily News has learned.
A bill co-authored by City Council Members Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan) and Justin Brannan (D-Brooklyn), and supported by Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, urges the Education Department to make the test opt-out rather than opt-in, and extend after-school test preparation to every eighthgrader planning to take the exam.
The proposal comes as city officials announced that only 11% of students admitted to specialized schools this year were black or Latino.
“For more students to have the opportunity I did at a specialized high school, the city should explore ways to make test prep accessible to all students,” said Williams, a graduate of Brooklyn Tech High School.
Just 11% of students admitted to the city’s elite specialized public high schools this year were black or Hispanic — a figure virtually unchanged from past years, officials announced Thursday.
At Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, the city’s most selective public high school, only 10 black students and 20 Latino students got admissions offers, out of nearly 800 students accepted, data show.
The numbers continue a long trend of low black and Latino enrollment at the city’s eight prestigious specialized high schools, where admission is determined by a single exam. Black and Latino students make up 70% of the city school population, and 45% of all students who took the specialized high school exam this year.
That pattern has ignited a fierce debate about fairness and race in the city schools, with critics including Mayor de Blasio
and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza contending that the schools should consider other factors, including grades.
“Diversity in our specialized high schools remains stagnant because we know a single test does not capture our students’ full potential,” Carranza said in a statement Thursday. “I am hopeful we’ll move toward a more year.”
But defenders of the specialized high schools argue a test is the only truly objective measure and that city officials should focus on boosting student preparation rather than changing entrance rules.
Officials expanded an afterschool and weekend tutoring equitable system next program for low-income students with good grades from about 2,300 students last year to 4,200 this year, but the expansion didn’t budge the overall share of black and Latino students admitted.
The specialized high schools also gave out about 500 fewer total offers this year than last year as part of a city plan to reserve an increasing number of seats for students in the “Discovery” program, which offers admission to low-income students who score just below the exam threshold. Twenty percent of all specialized high school seats are now reserved for students in that program, city officials said — a policy that could boost black and Latino enrollment to 16%.
De Blasio and Carranza have called for a sweeping overhaul of the specialized high school admissions system, proposing a new process that instead plucks the students with the top grades from each city middle school — a plan that would significantly increase the share of black and Latino students.