From 1976 to 2014, black + Hispanic enrollment:
Stuyvesant: 14% to 4%
Brooklyn Tech: 50% to 14%
Bronx Science: 23% to 9%
The following suggests possible causes:
“At the same time, many accelerated academic programs in mostly black and Hispanic neighborhoods have closed as Asian immigrants have embraced the specialized high schools as tickets out of poverty.”
So NYT is now blaming Asian immigrants for closure of accelerated academic programs in mostly minority neighborhoods?
That’s a poorly worded sentence. Actually, the New York Times seems to be blaming charter schools for soaking up the Black and Hispanic kids who used to populate accelerated academic programs. But the charter schools are not configured to get their students into specialized high schools to the same extent that the former accelerated academic programs were. Meanwhile, Asian students are laser-focused on getting admitted to the specialized high schools.
Naturally gifted and generally hardworking students are no match under a score only admission policy for other gifted students whose culture is built around doing whatever is necessary to get a top score. The influx of Asian immigrants utterly changed the calculus because they often came from cultures built around obtaining admission to school. . There was a story a few years ago in the times about when NYC started offering free test prep weekend classes. Asian students showed up in droves. Not so much other groups. A change in policy seems warranted but is a very complicated issue. The Asian students are for the most part just as poor as the other students and it seems unfair to punish them for their hard work and success. it’s hard to know what system woukd be fairer.
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I thought I read in the article that part of the problem was that they got rid of the gifted programs in the middle schools, and they didn’t really publicize (or at least didn’t chat-up) the test dates and what a great opportunity this is. If no one from your community goes to these schools, how are you going to know what a great opportunity it is, and therefore worth your time preparing for the test? Bring back the lower and middle school gifted programs.
This is a very hot topic right now in NYC. The non-Asian minorities are just not getting the elementary education they need to make it into these elite level high schools. The city needs to improve the elementary schools which these kids attend. The answer is not to change the admissions criteria (which is what the mayor is looking to do) but to fix the elementary schools. Just throwing money at these other schools isn’t the answer (Newark proved this).
Nothing will ever change this, those that work the hardest will simply have the highest success rate.
It’s not just URM’s who have been displaced by Asians. In 1970, 79% of the enrolled students at Stuyvesant were Caucasian. Today it’s around 21%.
Yes - super hot topic in NYC. At one point Brooklyn tech was 60% African-American and Hispanic.
Lots of moving parts to this situation.
Back in the day (1980’s) when I went to high school in NYC, you had very few options. 1) Go to your zoned high school, which varied from good to war zones (crime in NYC was through the roof then) 2) Go to private school, 3) Take the SHSAT which only fed you into 3 schools: Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech 4) Audition and interview to get into High School for the Performing Arts (school from FAME), which is now called Laguardia. So for those of us who didn’t have rich parents and couldn’t act, sing, play an instrument or draw, the SHSAT was a ticket out for us who didn’t want to have to get into fights every day at school. Also keep in mind there were basically 4 public schools ALL the smart kids could go to.
There was no test prep or tutoring for the SHSAT
There were few if any charter schools.
There were no country-club, publicly-funded high schools that accept students on “holistic” grounds…see below.
There were some specialized Junior High Schools, but most Junior High Schools had accelerated or honors programs.
What happened?
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The Dept of Education moved away from specialized programs (honors, accelerated) in most middle schools because they felt it encouraged tracking and labeling non gifted students. These programs enabled smart or hard-working kids in almost any middle school a shot a decent education. Being on an honors track prepared you for the SHSAT. Once that was gone, lots of smart kids were thrown in the general population, where the teaching was geared to the lowest performing students, and of course, the social situation of being a smart kid among not-so-smart kids, dropped performance to say the least… It’s found that having smart peers in a safe environment is what really helps kids excel.
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Simultaneously the Dept of Education, to try and reverse suburban, white-flight, allowed parents to get their kids in non-zoned schools without tests. This reconfigured the middle school and HS ecosystem for white parents who still wanted a public education for their kids. There were now “good” middle school and HS for kids to attend without having to take the SHSHAT, This siphoned off a lot of white kids who would have had no other choices than the Specialized high schools. So, removing the universal access to special programs, it simultaneously moved to give more affluent/white parents an option to send their kids to better performing schools. Theoretically, this all existed for parents of African-American and Hispanic students, but the higher performing schools were often not in their neighborhoods. This led to the next point…
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Public “country-day” schools began to crop up in the city (Bard, Beacon, etc). You didn’t test-in to these schools, but you interviewed for them and often had to show “personality” and “well-rounded-ness”. This means white admissions committees interview applicants and show preference to white students. They are they are also siphoning off talented White, African-American, and Hispanic students who might have ended up at Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech. These schools have much higher hispanic and African-American representation than do the SHSAT schools. Note, these schools don’t have as large Asian populations and they are clearly white-dominant. Desirable schools in NYC that are not test dependent are white dominant, Desirable schools in NYC that are test-only are Asian dominant. These public white country day schools are the NYC equivalent of what Harvard is doing in looking for “well-rounded” applicants.
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Charter Schools are much more prevalent. At the middle school level they are not trying to prep for the SHSAT, and there are some acceptable options for public HS level charters…
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Private schools increasingly are offering scholarships to very bright and promising African American and Hispanic students who might have ended up at a specialized high school.
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There are many more specialized non test high schools open to all kids throughout the city like Humanities Prep, the Museum School, City As School which have higher minority enrollments.
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Large Asian immigration into NYC from the late 80’s on. This isn’t necessarily a high-income group. In many cases they are in low income districts. They have replaced, for the most the part, the low to middle income whites in the test-only schools.
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Test-prep is a reality. This has generally raised the bar in most cases. In the 80’s generally smart kids with a good education got in to the Specialized high schools. Now it’s the students that prepare insanely well that have an advantage. It might not be too controversial to say that in NYC at the JHS level, Asian culture tends to encourage test-prep to a greater degree than White, African-American or Hispanics.
It seems that, in general, regarding public education, Asians have found their niche in test-only schools, and Whites their niche in interview-based and “portfolio based/ well-rounded- profile” schools. African-American and Hispanic students are still, largely, neighborhood-based public schools, but also dispersed among charter, country-day white-dominant public schools and some specialized diverse schools.
The best thing, it seems to me to increase African-American/Hispanic presence in the test-only schools is to reinstate the honors-track educational options at all public middle schools.
As a side-note, It’s funny the mayor is going after the SHAT and NOT the white public country day schools. It seems the white lobby is to be more feared than the asian lobby.
@kiddie is right on point. DeBlasio is taking the politically expedient route by trying to force equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity, which would require fundamental and difficult changes in how NYC educates kids, especially in the lowest performing districts, starting in elementary school. Easy to declare victory when the outcome that is measured is preordained!
And a great proportion of those 79% were Jewish. The specialized high schools used to be almost the exclusive realm of the Jews. Now, not so much. As you said, that demographic is found in schools like Beacon and ElRo.
You forgot Music & Art (before it merged with Performing Arts into LaGuardia) and Hunter College HS, which is public but not part of the DOE.
“So for those of us who didn’t have rich parents, the SHSAT was a ticket out for us who didn’t want to have to get into fights every day at school.”
There was also the Catholic school option. These schools weren’t free (except for Regis), but were much more affordable than places like Horace Mann and Dalton.
Also, private NYC schools in the 1970s (IDK about '80s; I graduated in 1977) were not that expensive as a percentage of income. Regular, prosperous-but-not-wealthy people sent their kids to private schools like Dalton, Walden, Ethical Culture, Calhoun, Fieldston, etc. A two-teacher family could send their kids to private school.
@brantly Yes I forgot Hunter Junior College High School and HS! Indeed, I applied to the JHS but didn’t get in. Went to Mark Twain and then Stuy 
@TheBigChef Yeah - I’m not factoring in the affordable Catholic Schools. I had friends who went there. (St. Athanasius and Bishop Kearney near my elementary school)
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Theoden, I’m a parent of three kids who went to school in NYC, one of whom was a “one-percenter” in her year and was admitted to Stuyvesant and Bard. I agree with everything you said except the part about Bard not having a test. It does. It’s not like the SHSAT test, but there is an assessment given that is part of the admission process, and it is a serious exam.
One thing I think you missed is the rise of amazing programs in the individual high schools, which are allowed to choose their own admissions criteria. There are some that admit based on a test, as well. Some of those programs, which are often very unique and specialized, attract students of all races who would otherwise have applied to SHSAT schools. As I said on the other thread, for many talented students, the SHSAT schools are not anywhere near the best options available.
Yes. I’ve said this before and someone responded, in effect, that this was crazy-talk. But I think it’s obvious that any economically disadvantaged AA or Hispanic or other URM who has the chops to score high enough on the SHSAT to make Stuy et al. would be in the running to get a full ride at any of a number of elite NYC independents and east coast boarding schools – most of which are way more diverse than Stuy and offer greater opportunities.
This was absolutely the case in my son’s prep school, which was much more diverse than the SHSAT schools, and the alumni went on to wonderful colleges. It was our experience that the prep school community was much more welcoming and inclusive than the SHSAT schools.
@zoosermom I disagree that it is a good system. It is COMPLICATED, with some schools giving preference by borough, some by local school district within the NYC school system, some by individual tests, some by a distribution (“Educational Option schools use the English Language Arts (ELA) state test scores from 7th grade and identify the top 16% of scores, the middle 68%, and the lowest 16%. Half of the students who gain admission to an Ed Opt school will be matched based on their rank of that school, while the other half will be selected randomly”), a zillion little schools with fewer than 500 students, a zillion smaller programs within bigger schools that have to be listed individually, some parts of the city with zoned schools, some without. In the fall, parents in the know sit at their computers waiting for the opportunity to sign up for oversubscribed tours of different schools. Sure, I navigated the system for my daughter, but I know many, many kids whose parents could not begin to figure it out and had guidance counselors who were overwhelmed.
I posted a flow chart to my Facebook page in 2014 (after my daughter graduated) that spells it out. Unfortunately I can’t find the source to post here.
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I would be careful of calling the most of the east coast boarding schools more diverse than Stuy. Perhaps geographically, but almost certainly not socioeconomically. Racially, it could be a toss up depending on how one quantifies racial diversity.
Of course, data for all this is incredibly limited since Private (independent) schools have much lower reporting obligations.
@oldmom4896 I don’t think I’ve ever called it a good system. I’ve called it all sorts of names, but never good.
The system is wretched. Monstrous is the word I believe I usually use.
I do, however, believe we have wonderful options that are lost in the fuss about the SHSAT schools, which I don’t believe to be any better than many other programs.