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Prestigious, most selective NYC high school admits 7 black students—out of 895

...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 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...

...The question of how to racially integrate the city’s elite high schools underscores how hard it is to tackle educational inequality and discrimination...

...And this past weekend, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez did not take a position on the admissions proposal when she spoke about the specialized high schools at an event in her Queens district.

Instead, she argued for broad school improvement, noting that her father traveled across three boroughs from the Bronx to Brooklyn Technical High School.

“My question is, why isn’t every public school in New York City a Brooklyn Tech-caliber school?” she asked, to applause from the audience. “Every one should be.”
 
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