Sarah Ford | October 31, 2013
Declining black, Latino admissions to NYC鈥檚 specialized schools could be reversed
Admissions to the city鈥檚 elite schools could become more broad-based than a single test under Bill de Blasio, according to a report by Community Service Society, which filed a civil rights complaint over the test rule.
The number of black and Latino students at the city鈥檚 elite specialized high schools has dropped over the last five years, but the next mayor could start to reverse that trend, a says.
State law requires Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech to admit students based on the specialized admissions test, which was given over the weekend, but the report argues the law doesn鈥檛 cover the five additional schools Mayor Bloomberg pushed to require the exam.
Admission for those schools 鈥 High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College; High School of 精东影业n Studies at Lehman College; Brooklyn Latin School; Queens High School for Sciences at York College; and Staten Island Technical High School 鈥 could change if Democratic candidate Bill de Blasio is elected mayor, the authors of the report released Monday say.
鈥淚 think what he鈥檚 searching for is how,鈥 said Lazar Treschan, youth policy director for Community Service Society. 鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to offer a real road map for what to do.鈥
The organization and the , which released the , last fall filed a still-unsettled civil rights complaint over the test rule with the U.S. Department of Education.
Their report documents that elite schools across the country consider at least a student鈥檚 middle school grades in addition to an exam for admission.
In the view of City Department of Education officials, applicants for all eight elite schools are legally required to take the special test for admissions.
Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott has supported a program to provide better preparation for the elite exams to kids whose families can鈥檛 afford test prep.
Last spring, Stuyvesant admitted just nine black students and 24 Latino students out of a class of more than 800.
鈥淚t鈥檚 mind-boggling that we鈥檙e okay with it as a city,鈥 said Zakiyah Ansari, whose eighth-grade son took the specialized high school exam Sunday. 鈥淐hildren of color in this city have not fared well. We know other states use multiple measures. Why don鈥檛 we do that?
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