A summer prep program meant to improve racial diversity at the city’s elite specialized high schools is itself lacking, data from the education department shows.
Last week the department released statistics showing only three Black students were accepted to the incoming freshman class at Stuyvesant High School, the crown jewel in the specialized school system. The data revived calls for reform of the admissions process for specialized schools, which is determined by the Specialized High School Admissions Test exam. It also led some policymakers to criticize diversity initiatives for the prestigious schools, including the Discovery summer prep program, saying they have not fulfilled their purpose.
“We make changes around the margins, expanding the Discovery Program, expanding test prep, expanding outreach, yet the numbers don’t move,” Councilmember Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn said. “Our best schools should reflect the diversity of our city and our school system.”
The Discovery Program is intended for students whose scores on the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, fall just below the cutoff. The program offers coursework in several subjects designed to mirror the pace and rigor at the specialized schools. The classes are at the specialized schools, taught by faculty there over several weeks. Students who do well enough in the summer program can be admitted.
But like the specialized high schools, the Discovery Program does not reflect the demographics of the nation’s largest school system.
Data shows Asian students make up 62% of students in Discovery, but 19% of the entire system. Latinos make up 16% of students in Discovery, but 42% of the overall system. Similar disparities exist for white students (7.4% in Discovery, 16% overall) and Black students (11% in Discovery, 19% overall).
In an effort to expand access and address racial disparities, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio expanded Discovery in 2018 so that 20% of seats at the specialized schools are set aside for students, regardless of race, who meet a threshold for economic need and complete the program.
Reform to the Discovery program was a “helpful additive, but not transformative,” de Blasio said in an interview.
“Hearing those numbers is painful,” he said of the recent admissions data. “I still say the status quo is unacceptable.”
Some parents have said the Discovery program itself is discriminatory.
In April, mother Yi Fang Chen sued the city alleging Discovery discriminated against her son and other Asian applicants to the specialized schools.
“The city adopted and continues to enforce that policy in an effort to reduce the number of Asian-American students and increase the number of Black and Hispanic students admitted to specialized high schools,” the lawsuit states.
The suit focuses on the way the city weighs the “economic need” of a student’s school when determining eligibility for Discovery.
According to the suit, Chen’s son attended Mark Twain Intermediate School, a selective middle school for gifted students in Brooklyn that does not meet the economic need standard for admission into the Discovery Program.
In court filings, the city argued the reforms to the Discovery Program are “unequivocally race neutral.”
Some students have raised other concerns about Discovery.
In a school newspaper article, Stuyvesant students who participated in Discovery said a stigma of academic inferiority is associated with participation in the program.
Yiatin Chu, a Stuyvesant parent and outspoken proponent of the SHSAT admissions process, is among those who argue the racial demographics at the school are merely an indicator of deep-rooted inequities in the wider public school system.
She defended the test, calling it an “objective, transparent measure that doesn’t look at your last name, doesn’t look at your skin color, and doesn’t look at your income.”
Chu is co-president of Parents Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, which advocates for selective admissions.
Instead of eliminating the SHSAT, she said the city should focus on “fixing” elementary and middle schools so more students are eligible. “I don’t know what people are expecting when nothing in our K to 8 education has changed,” she said.
She pointed to a study that found the test is a good predictor of success at the school.
On Monday, Mamdani advocated investments in earlier grades to level the playing field.
“I will say that we know that a single test does not reflect the aptitude of students across the city. We know that Black and Latino students are excelling across the five boroughs as are students in a wide variety of schools. We have to ensure that we're doing everything we can to deliver for those students at the earliest ages,” he said.
Data shows that 56.5% of offers to all eight specialized high schools went to Asian students, 3.5% went to Black students, 6.5% to Hispanic students and 23.5% to white students.
