New York City has nine elite high schools which students are admitted to based on the results of a test called the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT). This test is similar to the SAT in that it has a section of math questions and one of English questions both of which have to be completed within the 3 hour time limit.
But the test for admissions has long been hated by people on the left because it results in disproportionate racial outcomes. And this year is no different.
A disproportionately small number of Black and Hispanic students received admission offers to New York City’s elite public high schools for the upcoming academic year, continuing a pattern of racial and ethnic gaps that has existed for years despite promises by elected officials to address the divide.
About 62 percent of the students in the city’s public schools are Black or Hispanic. But at its eight most prestigious high schools, about 10 percent of the students in the incoming freshman class are expected to be Black or Hispanic, roughly the same as last year. About 80 percent of the seats went to Asian and white students.
At Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, often considered the most selective of the city’s specialized high schools, three of the 777 offers were made to Black students, and 21 were for Hispanic students, together representing a nearly one-third decline from the previous freshman class. One Black student was admitted to Staten Island Technical High School.
So you can see how this is going to play in the media. The NY Times story is headlined, "An Elite N.Y.C. Public School Admitted 777 Students. Only 3 Were Black." And Gothamist wrote the same story a few days earlier under the headline, "Just 3 Black students admitted to NYC's elite Stuyvesant High School, data shows."
What the stories and the headlines don't tell you is the other side of the story. At Stuyvesant High School, 71% of admitted students are Asian. That's out of a population of NYC which is about 11% Asian. In other words, the reason there are so few black students at these schools is not white supremacy, it's because Asian students trounce all other races on these tests.
Former mayor Bill de Blasio attempted to get rid of the SHSAT back in 2019.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s proposal to overhaul admissions for New York City’s elite high schools has proved highly divisive, leaving some Asian-American students feeling that they are being pitted against their black and Hispanic neighbors.
His idea has also made the city a national focal point in the debate over race, class and fairness in education.
If his plan — which would scrap the admissions exam and instead reserve seats at the eight specialized high schools for the top students at every city middle school — is approved by the Legislature, the selective schools’ racial makeup would change practically overnight.
Offers to Asian-American students would fall by about half, according to a recent report, but would increase fivefold for black students.
The pushback on this testing winds up blaming Asian parents for having too much privilege. Here comes the "model minority" argument that Asians are just pawns of white supremacy.
“I think what people are missing when they say we are being punished, what they are neglecting to see is, the Asian-American community by and large has a lot of privilege that the black and Latinx community does not,” she said, referring to an “elaborate system of networks, test prep and social capital.”
“We aren’t dealing with the generational trauma of slavery, Jim Crow and redlining,” said Ms. Ahmad, noting that her father is a taxi driver and her family is far from wealthy. Still, she said, “People discount the fact that we have more resources, we are more privileged, and because of that, white Americans tend to hold us up as a model minority.”
The same arguments get made in town hall meetings on the issue.
Speaking before a packed room, Mary Alice Miller, a black alumna of Stuyvesant, said the arguments against change were filled with “racial coding.”
“It’s very offensive to hear all the racial coding: that African-Americans are not good enough, if more of us are accepted into the schools, the specialized schools will bring down their standards.”
But de Blasio's effort ultimately failed, in part because Asian groups pushed back.
Bernard Chow, a Queens activist, spoke against the mayor’s proposal.
“All the hard-working students, the students who are willing to give up basketball and stay home and study,” he said, speaking over “keep the test” chants and banging drums. “Those students who are willing to give up video games, and look at the book, it’s unfair to them.”
Wai Wah Chin, president of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York, likened Mr. de Blasio’s plan to the Chinese Exclusion Act, an 1800s law restricting Asian immigration.
A few minutes later, Dulce Marquez, a recent New York high school graduate, called the entrance exam “a product of institutional racism.”
So that's how this has gone for years. Asian students excel and other minority groups desperately want to accuse them of racism but struggle to make the argument because it's nonsensical.
What the left and the media want is to get rid of the tests and punish the outstanding Asian students who excelled on them so that more black students who did not excel can be admitted. They may hesitate to say it that plainly but that's the goal. And with another socialist mayor, the NY Times seems to be hoping to prod Mamdani into shutting down the tests.
The critics have included Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, a specialized school, and the two previous mayors. Bill de Blasio called the admissions process a “monumental injustice,” while his successor, Eric Adams, labeled it a “Jim Crow school system.”
Before his run for mayor, Mr. Mamdani had called for the high school exam to be abolished, but did not make that position central to his campaign. He softened his stance last year, describing the issue as a “struggle” for him.
After the latest release of admissions results from the city’s Department of Education, Mr. Mamdani’s administration said that it was “reviewing these results carefully.”
Mamdani surely wants to shut down the testing. It fits in with everything else he believes. But he also doesn't want to start a fight with Asian New Yorkers who are willing to fight back. Mamdani also has another problem. Last year, the Trump administration threatened the federal funding of three school districts including NYC.
The Trump administration said this week that it would withhold more than $65 million in federal grants from magnet schools in three large school districts after they refused to overhaul their policies regarding transgender and nonbinary students or to change their diversity and equity programs.
The three school districts — in New York City, Chicago and Fairfax, Va. — were accused by the federal Education Department last week of violating civil rights law.
If Mamdani were to attempt to scrap the tests, he'd not only get pushback from Asian parents, but also from the federal government. Cutting funding to these schools wouldn't make any of the parents happy.
we'll have to wait and see what Mamdani decides to do. But for now he's clearly been trying to avoid this battle, no matter how much the media prompts him to do it.
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