This fact, first reported by Chalkbeat, provides a damning lesson about the state of admissions to the city’s specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant Tech in Lower Manhattan, Brooklyn Tech, and the Bronx High School of Science. It also includes Staten Island Tech, which had sent an offer letter to just one Black student this year, according to the report.
The admissions process, which generally relies on the Specialized High School Standardized Test (SHSAT) that students take to qualify, has been the subject of debate for years, as many education advocates feel it unintentionally discriminates against children of color.
The Chalkbeat report only strengthens that belief, and the push among some elected officials and education advocates to eliminate the standardized tests for qualification in favor of a broader set of criteria, such as overall student grades and diversifying the student body based on geography.
But abandoning the tests is not the answer. When so few students of any one community make up a sliver of the total student body accepted to specialized high schools, that is an indictment of the public school system itself.
It is clear that, from an early age, not nearly enough is being done to prepare every New York City public school student, of every background, in every neighborhood, to qualify for the city’s best high schools. The disparities in education in this city are well-documented; it is no secret that not every public school has equal access to necessary resources, and as a result, educational inequality remains an obstacle for too many children and families.
In recent years, the city’s Department of Education has offered some help to try and close the disparity in specialized high school admissions.
Around 800 students were given access to the Discovery program, which gives disadvantaged students who just missed the SHSAT score cutoff another path into specialized high schools. But Discovery is essentially a summertime test prep course for the SHSAT; it does not solve the deeper-rooted problem of preparing every student to take it — and that preparation must take place far earlier than a child’s eighth- or ninth-grade year.
The late civil rights leader Malcolm X famously said, “Education is our passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it today.” The racial disparities in specialized high school admissions prove that not every student has equal access to a passport to the future, and it will deny them their opportunity to lead in the years to come.
We cannot let this continue, and the Mamdani administration must step up to act.
Do not just reform how students are admitted to specialized high schools; improve the standards of elementary and middle school education so all students are truly prepared for high school.
They must make darn sure that every school district in the city gets every resource it needs to provide equal opportunity for its children. Only by providing that equal level of opportunity will we shatter the inequality gripping our educational system for good.