patrick.net

Obesity, irresponsible fathers, thug glorification. Whose fault? Why is this racist admissions policy favoring Asians? Is it time for the black community to take responsibility and change?

Only 7 Black Students Got Into N.Y.’s Most Selective High School, Out of 895 Spots

Only a tiny number of black students were offered admission to the highly selective public high schools in New York City on Monday, raising the pressure on officials to confront the decades-old challenge of integrating New York’s elite public schools.

At Stuyvesant High School, out of 895 slots in the freshman class, only seven were offered to black students. And the number of black students is shrinking: There were 10 black students admitted into Stuyvesant last year, and 13 the year before.

Another highly selective specialized school, the Bronx High School of Science, made 12 offers to black students this year, down from 25 last year.

These numbers come despite Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vow to diversify the specialized high schools, which have long been seen as a ticket for low-income and immigrant students to enter the nation’s best colleges and embark on successful careers.

But Mr. de Blasio’s proposal to scrap the entrance exam for the schools and overhaul the admissions process has proved so divisive that the state’s most prominent politicians, from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have mostly avoided taking a definitive position — even as black and Hispanic students are grappling with increasingly steep odds of admission into the city’s eight most selective public schools.

Students gain entry into the specialized schools by acing a single high-stakes exam that tests their mastery of math and English. Some students spend months or even years preparing for the exam. Stuyvesant, the most selective of the schools, has the highest cutoff score for admission, and now has the lowest percentage of black and Hispanic students of any of New York City’s roughly 600 public high schools.

Lawmakers considering Mr. de Blasio’s proposal have faced a backlash from the specialized schools’ alumni organizations and from Asian-American groups who believe discarding the test would water down the schools’ rigorous academics and discriminate against the mostly low-income Asian students who make up the majority of the schools’ student bodies. (At Stuyvesant, 74 percent of current students are Asian-American.) The push to get rid of the test, which requires approval from the State Legislature, appears all but dead.

Attempts to diversify the schools without touching the test have failed. Neither the expansion of free test prep for minority students nor a new plan to offer the specialized high school exam during the school day made a dent in the admissions numbers.

The mayor and other supporters of the effort to overhaul the admissions system cited the statistics released Monday as the clearest evidence yet that the system is broken.

“These numbers are even more proof that dramatic reform is necessary to open the doors of opportunity at specialized high schools,” Mr. de Blasio said.

But at the same time, a slew of prominent Democrats in Albany and downstate, ranging from the city’s public advocate to the Democratic leaders of the Assembly and Senate, either declined to comment or issued statements that indicated the latest numbers are unlikely to change their positions.

Dani Lever, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cuomo, pointed to the governor’s previous comments on the proposal, saying, “It’s a legitimate issue that there are two sides to, and that should be looked at in the wider discussion of education in New York.”

The president of Stuyvesant’s alumni organization did not reply to requests for comment. Larry Cary, president of the Brooklyn Technical High School alumni foundation, said the numbers did not highlight a flaw in the admissions system, but rather the general lack of high-quality education for black and Hispanic students.

Jumaane Williams, the city’s newly elected public advocate and a graduate of Brooklyn Tech, said his opposition to completely scrapping the test remains unchanged. “The numbers are abysmal, we knew that,” said Mr. Williams, who is black. “The question is what do we do about it, how do we do it without needlessly pitting communities against each other?”

John Liu, the state senator from Queens who chairs the Senate’s New York City education committee, said any proposal should consider the needs of the Asian-American community. “A desegregation plan can only be effective if the problem is viewed as a whole, and one that is not formulated to the total exclusion of Asian-Americans,” he said. "And fuck whitey," added Mr. Liu.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/nyregion/black-students-nyc-high-schools.html