SHSBADI at 10: Lessons Learned and the Path Forward
By the Stuyvesant High School Black Alumni Diversity Initiative
June, 2020
I.
Like many things these days, the Stuyvesant High School Black Alumni Diversity Initiative began with a Facebook post. Concerned about the disturbing decline in the number of Black and Hispanic students at Stuyvesant, Teri Graham, a member of the class of ‘77, posted a call to action to the members of the Stuyvesant Black Alumni Facebook group on September 26, 2009. Other members of the group echoed her concern and we began to organize to address the issue in February 2010, galvanized by the publication of an article in the New York Times on the continuing disappointing admissions numbers of Black and Hispanic students at New York City’s specialized high schools.
From that post, the Stuyvesant High School Black Alumni Diversity Initiative was formed. During the past ten years, this loose consortium of alumni has actively engaged in efforts to increase Black enrollment at our alma mater, which has fallen from a peak of 12% in 1975 to fewer than 1% today, as well as address the continuing underrepresentation of Latinx students despite their increased representation among the city’s student population. In addition to our advocacy and outreach to the Department of Education (“DOE”) and elected officials, we have engaged in outreach to parents and students at DOE recruitment events. In partnership with our school alumni association, we sponsored forums to educate alumni and the public on the issues contributing to the lack of Black and Latinx enrollment at the specialized high schools, and hosted a series of Open Houses at Stuyvesant, featuring insights from distinguished Black and Latinx alumni and tours of the school building.
In 2011, we hosted our own Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) Boot Camp for prospective test takers. That experience prompted a fundraising effort which through a partnership with the Kaplan company, allowed us to provide. commercial test prep to more than 100 talented students. Under the direction of one of our founding members, the well-informed parent of two specialized high school students, the final three years of our Kaplan partnership resulted in specialized high school offers to 2/3 of the participants, though few scored high enough to be admitted to Stuyvesant. Her knowledge of the importance of math to success on the SHSAT, confirmed by our math teacher members, helped us identify the students who would benefit the most from Kaplan’s tutorials. It also exposed the disadvantage faced by the vast majority of students who seek admissions to the City’s specialized schools, and highlighted the limitations of test prep as a solution.
Over the course of this past decade, our views on the problem and the best way to solve it have evolved. Most of us came to this effort believing that if we could help prepare Black and Latinx students for the test required to gain admission to these schools, we could help increase their enrollment numbers. Our test prep efforts revealed to us that the problem was multidimensional and wasn’t one that could be solved solely through test prep. We realized most public school students were not being taught the material on the SHSAT, and the reasons for that were systemic. Students from certain schools have an advantage. Preparation required more than a short course of test prep, and most successful students engaged in lengthy periods of supplemental education or tutoring before they sat for the test. Although thousands of Black and Latinx students sat for the SHSAT each year, most had no chance of scoring well enough on the test to be admitted to one of the eight schools which relied on the test because they didn’t have the educational background they needed to perform competitively on it.
We realized that both the admissions process and the school system had changed from the time of our attendance. Many of us came to Stuyvesant by way of gifted classes in our neighborhood public schools. Until the 90s, gifted education was decentralized, with accelerated SP (“special progress”) and IGC (“intellectually gifted”) classes in local schools giving academically talented kids in every city neighborhood an opportunity to receive instruction in the above-grade level material they would encounter on the SHSAT. Today, that opportunity is concentrated in just a handful of schools. These schools, known as “feeder schools,” send hundreds of their graduates to specialized high schools each year while most public middle schools send none, and more than half of the students admitted to a specialized high school come from just five percent of the City’s middle schools. Given an uneven educational system and such extreme differences in preparation, it is unreasonable to expect a single test to yield equitable results.
This admissions process, based solely on a student’s score on a single test, is a matter of New York State law. During a period when political power was shifting to Black and Latinx voters and these communities sought more control over the schools their children attended, parents, alumni and faculty at the Bronx High School of Science asked the state legislature to “protect” Bronx Science, Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech from charges that the schools’ admissions exams were culturally biased against Black and Puerto Rican students. The result was the passage of the Hecht-Calandra Act in 1971 which made the SHSAT a matter of state law, and put the admissions process for the Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech beyond the reach of both the chancellor, and the increasingly diverse city population.The bill passed despite an acknowledgement by the Superintendent of Schools that sole reliance on a test would have a negative effect on the City’s Black and Latinx students, and despite the fervent objections of the State’s Black and Latinx lawmakers.
Today, no other school system in the country uses a single test to determine who is admitted to their most competitive public schools. None uses the SHSAT, which is distinctive in its content and format, and mysterious in its scoring. It is not aligned with what most students are taught and includes question types which are unfamiliar to most test takers and give a significant advantage to students who have had prior exposure to the test, even with recent changes to its components. This speaks to the validity of the test, or whether it is actually measuring what it was designed to measure. New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza addressed this issue when he testified before the NYS Assembly Committee on Education last year. In his testimony, Chancellor Carranza explained that “a test is valid when it measures what it was designed to measure and it’s reliable when it gives you an accurate measurement over time…[a]s students go through their school day and they’re learning the state standards which the legislature has said this is what you need to know to be able to get a diploma from the State of New York, this test does not measure that. It does not measure that mastery. It’s a tricky test designed to rank order students. So in terms of reliability and validity for ranking students, it is. But the question is it the best methodology for measuring talent, for identifying talent, for identifying the grit, the tenacity, the dedication, the desire of students to be able to go a specialized public school in New York City. It is not valid, it is not reliable when it is used in that way.”
Although it would be logical to expect that the students who perform the best on the SHSAT to also be the students who perform the best on state tests, research indicates that is not necessarily the case. In 2015, Sean Corcoran, a researcher at NYU, examined data from 2005 to 2013 and determined that Black, Latinx and female students who score well on state tests are admitted to specialized high schools at a lower rate than White, Asian and male students. While the reasons for these differences are not fully understood, they were enough for Corcoran to conclude that the SHSAT acts as a BARRIER to admission for certain groups. This finding, standing alone, raises serious questions about the continued utilization of the SHSAT in the high school admissions process.
In a recent article published by the NYU Law Review, former NYC Deputy Mayor, current charter school leader and Stuyvesant alumnus Richard Buery, Jr. laid out some of the reasons why the testing process itself acts as a barrier to students without privilege. He noted that students have to proactively sign up for the SHSAT, and echoing the experience of many of our members and the parents we encountered through our outreach efforts, Black and Latinx students who attend struggling schools often receive little information about the specialized high schools or the admissions process for these schools. Buery also identified the test-prep industry as a barrier, because it advantages families with the means to invest heavily in expensive test preparation, and pressures others to spend thousands of dollars and hours preparing for the test. Referencing recent reporting, Buery also highlighted the fact that wealthier and white families are significantly more likely to seek and receive testing accommodations giving them twice the time to take the SHSAT. Finally, Buery noted that. “[t]he combination of residential segregation and extensive screening means New York City essentially operates two school systems. One is predominantly white and Asian, serves mainly middle-class families, and privileges those with resources or information. The other is predominantly Black and Latinx.” He described the lack of support for the de Blasio administration’s recent proposals intended to phase out so-called admissions screens, as “interesting“, without acknowledging how the administration’s failure to reach out to activists and constituents on all sides of the issue might have contributed to that absence of support. If more efforts had been made to engage the various parties concerned, perhaps the administration would have been able to craft workable reforms that had the support of people on both sides of the issue.
II.
To blunt the discriminatory impact of the SHSAT, Hecht-Calandra included an alternate path to admission for “disadvantaged“ students. Under this provision, disadvantaged students who scored below the cutoff on the test could be admitted to the specialized high schools after their successful completion of summer classes. While the legislative history indicates this measure (which would eventually be called the Discovery Program) was intended for Black and Latinx students, eligibility was based on economic and social factors, rather than race or ethnicity. However, despite its original intent, the Discovery Program never seems to have been utilized solely or even predominantly by Black and Latinx students. It fell completely out of use at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science during the early 2000s for reasons that were largely administrative, according to Stuyvesant’s principal at the time. Regardless of the reason, the cessation of the program at these schools represented the culmination of a long failure to utilize the program for the purpose it was originally intended.
In 2018, the Discovery Program was revived at Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, and last year, the DOE expanded both the size of the program and the criteria for eligibility.Though the revival of this program may provide access to these schools to an increased number of Black and Latinx students, utilization of this alternate path reinforces the SHSAT as the sole measure of academic merit, institutionalizes a bifurcated admissions system where Black and Latinx admissions are effectively capped at 20%, and guarantees protests from the parents of children who would have been admitted but for Discovery. Until Hecht-Calandra is repealed, however, and city residents are reinvested with the right to control their schools, the Discovery Program remains the best way to provide the talented Black and Latinx students currently underrepresented at these schools a path to opportunity. It is nevertheless disappointing to acknowledge that after nearly 50 years, the SHSAT continues to operate as a barrier, making Discovery just as necessary today as it was when it was created.
To the extent a special program like Discovery must be used, we see an opportunity to strengthen this alternate path. We have proposed combining the Discovery Program with the DOE’s DREAM middle school enrichment program as part of a larger, coordinated effort to identify academically talented students who are educationally disadvantaged as early as possible in their academic careers, and then provide them with accelerated instruction and other appropriate support, academic as well as social, both before and after their enrollment in high school. This would allow the City to move beyond the SHSAT as the sole way to identify talent, and target academically talented students from communities underrepresented at the City’s specialized high schools with a longer period of enrichment and support than the summer session currently offered through the Discovery Program. This would help compensate for our uneven educational system, and would assist admitted students with addressing the challenges they may face once they start high school.
III.
As we have pursued our goal of increasing the number of Black and Latinx students who attend Stuyvesant, we have come to the realization that an educational system which forces students to compete for an excellent education as if it were a scarce resource is inherently unfair. We believe that it is time for a new approach, one that is based on the concept that every child is entitled to an excellent public school education, and that it is the responsibility of public schools to nurture every child’s talent.
The problem will not be solved by the creation of more gifted programs in underresourced, underperforming schools. By design, the reach of these programs is limited, reserving an enriched educational experience only for those children fortunate enough to be labelled “gifted.” There is also an issue with access. In NYC, only a fraction of the children labelled “gifted” are placed in gifted programs. Currently, parents must recognize giftedness in their three and four year-olds and navigate through a testing process centered around expensive commercial test prep. With few seats in gifted programs available after first grade, the pressure to secure a seat in kindergarten is intense. The end result is a segregated academic track that benefits mostly the children of resource and information rich parents who happen to be predominantly White and Asian American. This school year, 70% of G&T students in New York City’s elementary G&T programs are White and Asian American and a mere 23% are Black and Latinx, despite the fact that nearly 70% of public school students are Black or Latinx.
If the goal is to maximize outcomes for every child, we need to be advocating for better schools, not just for the opportunity to provide a better education to certain children in existing schools. Therefore, instead of creating more gifted programs within schools, we would encourage the DOE to create schools where the gifts of every child are nurtured, and the goal is to provide every child with the highest quality educational experience. We are intrigued by the theory of schoolwide enrichment and the potential it offers to provide the type of. enriched, educational experiences typically reserved for students in G&T programs to a wider range of students. This was one of the key elements of last summer’s proposal by the mayor’s School Diversity Action Group (“SDAG”). This, along with the creation of magnet schools, another element of the SDAG proposal, would provide underserved communities with access to the enriched, innovative programs which are the object of intense competition by NYC parents.
We offer the following caveat with respect to schoolwide enrichment, however. Although schoolwide enrichment provides a framework to offer enriched educational experiences to a wider range of children, implementation is key. Parents shouldn’t be expected to enroll their children in schools based on this model unless the DOE can articulate what the model will look like and how students will benefit. The investment must be made to train teachers in the model and provide them with the resources and support they need inside the classroom to differentiate instruction based on the individual needs and abilities of their students. None of this works, and students will suffer, unless this model is properly implemented.
NYC students and parents deserve a tangible, measurable, attainable model that a NYC school will be able to implement and the DOE will fully fund. If there are no schools where schoolwide enrichment has been successfully implemented and benefited student achievement levels which can be used as a model for implementation in NYC, it would be better to simply replicate successful NYC programs in underserved communities. The ultimate goal is really quite simple: every NYC school should offer the kind of curriculum that will prepare talented students for a specialized high school. In other words, EVERY neighborhood public school should be a feeder school to the city’s specialized high schools.
The Anderson School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan happens to be one of the city’s feeder schools. Each year, 50 of 1,500 four year-olds certified as “gifted” by virtue of their scores on the city’s gifted and talented test are admitted to Anderson’s kindergarten. Most remain at the school through 8th grade, taking advantage of an accelerated math curriculum which prepares them to take the Algebra Regents’ exam before they begin high school. This is not an option for most public school students. With that educational foundation, it is no surprise that upon graduation, many Anderson students attend the City’s specialized high schools.
Recently, the DOE announced that the Anderson School will change its admissions policies to give students from northern Manhattan and the South Bronx preference for 30% of seats at the school in order to enroll a more diverse student body. In addition to failing to recognize that the demographics of the neighborhoods targeted for preference may not necessarily yield a more diverse student body, this policy simply intensifies competition for this school’s limited number of seats. Instead of increasing competition for Anderson’s 50 kindergarten seats, we would urge the DOE to replicate this and other successful schools to meet the City’s need, locate these new schools in the Black and Latinx communities currently deprived of these options, and then engage in intentional, deliberate efforts to ensure that these excellent schools are integrated. Clearly, Anderson works. Let’s respond to the intense competition for an Anderson education by creating more Andersons so that every child who would benefit can have an Anderson education.
Education should not be a zero-sum game, with winners and losers. We believe it is immoral not to provide every child with an excellent public school education. If a Stuyvesant education, like an Anderson education, is what the public demands, New York City should create enough Stuyvesant-caliber schools to meet demand. Consistent with the goals of expanding access and promoting equity, let’s commit to creating more Stuyvesant-caliber schools so that every student has access to an excellent education. Let’s use grades and state test scores to identify the top students in every school district, with the goal of screening children INTO opportunity, not as part of an effort to screen them OUT. Instead of asking the more than 27000 students who sat for the SHSAT to compete for one of the 900 seats available in the class of 2024 at Stuyvesant, the school system should be restructured so that every capable student who seeks a Stuyvesant-quality education will have access to one.
IV.
Like many specialized high school alumni, some of our members believe fiercely in the simplicity and objective fairness that a single test promises, and see our status of alumni as proof that it can work. But after ten years where the primary focus has been on preparing Black and Latinx students for the SHSAT only to see a continuing decline in Black and Latinx enrollment, the signatories to this document believe that it is time for a new approach to achieving equity. We can no longer defend the current SHSAT only process given what we know about its origins and its impact on the educational opportunity of generations of Black and Latinx students. We recognize this may not be a popular view among many alumni of the specialized high schools, but “it worked for us” rings hollow when we know the history and origins of the current system, and can so clearly see the system is not working for today’s Black and Latinx students. We are unwilling to watch another generation of New York City schoolchildren miss out on the opportunity from which we benefited so immensely. We do not think the reputation of our alma mater will suffer if it becomes the high school destination for the best students from each city neighborhood; in fact, we believe its reputation will be enhanced.
As a result of long-standing structural and institutional racism, most New York City schoolchildren simply don’t have the privilege of attending schools which provide them with the basic education they need, nor ready access to a network of supplemental education programs to compensate for deficiencies in their public school education. But as long as admissions are dependent on a single test, based on the fiction that children are competing on a level playing field, the vast majority of Black and Latinx students will not have access to these schools. Therefore, instead of a rank ordered system based on a single test which advantages students who have the privilege of attending certain schools or have the benefit of supplemental education, equity would be served by a geographic plan which provides access to the top students from every neighborhood, based on their grades and state test scores. Let’s identify academic talent wherever it exists, and commit to nurturing it. If students have academic deficits compared to their more educationally privileged peers, let‘s provide those talented, hardworking students with the support and enrichment they might need.
V.
Consistent with our desire to promote equity and create opportunity for students throughout the City, we endorse the creation of more specialized high schools, as State Senator Leroy Comrie has proposed in S. 6510, with a few modifications. Instead of limiting the number of new specialized high schools created to two per borough, we would tie the number created to demand. While locating the new schools in Manhattan would likely be the best way to ensure these schools attract a diverse student body from each of the five boroughs, we understand the need for high-quality schools in every borough. We insist, however, that any new high school be “intentionally integrated” to avoid reinforcing residential patterns of segregation, and to provide the children who attend with the benefit of a diverse learning environment, no matter where that new school is located.
This year, only 10 Black students and 20 Latinx students were admitted to Stuyvesant, compared to 7 Black and 33 Latinx students last year, despite significant investments in test prep by both the DOE and private philanthropists, most notably Ronald Lauder and his Educational Equity group. Even more shockingly, there were only 79 Black and 108 Latinx students and among the nearly 1500 invited to attend Brooklyn Tech, a school that was more than 50% Black and Latinx during the 70s and 80s. This year, we believe that 472 of the roughly 1,350 offers for specialized high admission via the expanded Discovery program went to Black and Latinx students, which at 35% is an increase of. 4.7 percentage points from the previous year. Although we have no information regarding the number of students admitted to each school via this alternate route, if we assume each of the schools will enroll an equal number of students from the program, the percentage of Black and Latinx students admitted to Stuyvesant will increase from 3 to just under 10 percent. This is a step in the right direction, but still far below the representation of these groups in the NYC public school system.
A group of elected officials responded to this year’s dismal admissions results with a plan to provide more test prep. In this instance,test prep needs to be distinguished from supplemental education, which refers to the types of long term, intensive programs associated with certain segments of the Asian American community, and what we propose through Dream to Discovery. While test prep is usually short term and focused on achieving a better score on a particular test, supplemental education programs are often multidisciplinary, involve above grade level instruction and include test prep only as a component.Though we know that many of the professionals who are devoted to providing test prep have the best intentions, just as we did nearly ten years ago when we offered our SHSAT boot camp, the inability of these efforts to alter overall admissions results forces the conclusion that test prep is not the vehicle to achieve equity in admissions for Black and Latinx students. Test prep simply reinforces a system that disadvantages low-income Black and Latinx students and, indeed, all students without access to quality education, by putting the onus on the students to fill in the gaps in their own education. As we we learned from our successful partnership with Kaplan, the highest quality programs will simply familiarize a child with the format and unique question types they will encounter on the SHSAT, and expose them to test-taking strategies, not teach them the algebra, geometry, reading, language arts and high level critical thinking skills they need to master in order to score competitively on the SHSAT. Test prep will never be available to all who might benefit from it, nor will it show marked benefit for more than a handful of students. And finally, the continued emphasis on test prep reinforces the idea that sole reliance on the SHSAT is a legitimate way to measure merit, taking the focus away from the institutional racism and systemic economic and educational inequality which make the idea that this system is a pure meritocracy farcical.
In this regard, former Deputy Mayor Buery offered this assessment of the value of standardized testing: “a standardized test may provide an admissions officer with a useful data point, but relying on that test to the exclusion of all other data may be an exercise of willful ignorance. Meeting the individualized needs of all students, including those who would benefit from accelerated learning in some disciplines, is good pedagogy. But thinking that some students are “gifted” in all domains and some are not, and separating those students into schools that challenge the former and fail the latter, is malpractice. When that malpractice leads to results that are plainly inconsistent with the distribution of intelligence and talent among all children, the continued reliance on those practices is racist.” We believe this analysis is worthy of consideration.
VI.
After decades of neglect followed by a decade without any substantive progress toward providing Black and Latinx students with equitable access to the City’s specialized high schools, it is time for a new approach to educating New York City students. The goal should be to ensure that students in every city neighborhood have access to an excellent education. We believe the current health crisis provides an opportunity to look beyond the brick and mortar of traditional schools and adopt new ways of educating students. At the high school level especially, we have an opportunity to expand educational opportunity through remote learning, and to rethink how students are taught. With access to technology, there is no limit to the number of children who can have access to a Stuyvesant education.
Remote learning undoubtedly has the potential to offer access, but it is no substitute for the social and emotional learning and engagement which occurs in a school setting. That engagement with a group of motivated peers from diverse backgrounds is what makes the Stuyvesant. education we received worth replicating. Without it, we are simply raising generation after generation of well-educated students with a limited worldview and unchallenged biases.
We are not sure how Governor Cuomo and Mr. Gates will be reimagining education, but we respect the sincerity of Mr. Gates’s “Giving Pledge” and anticipate his involvement in this process includes a willingness to invest generously in New York students and the schools they attend. Decisions about investment priorities should be driven by teachers, parents and students from all over the state, including those in New York City, so they need to be included in the reimagining process. If we were able to contribute with respect to our discrete area of knowledge and concern, we’d like to see a commitment made to ensuring every child has internet access at home. The next priority would be an investment in teachers. As we deal with the current health crisis, safety and health concerns means classes will be smaller, and school districts will need to hire more teachers and counselors. We need to incentivize young people to enter the field by subsidizing their training, and compensating them as valued professionals. Prioritize hiring Black teachers; their impact on outcomes for Black students in particular and on school communities in general can not be denied. It is likely that even when schools reopen, the need for homeschooling will continue. Let’s support parents in this effort by creating a new cadre of professional homeschool teachers who will support parents in carrying out their teaching duties at home. In terms of curriculum, while an investment in STEM education to make sure American students remain competitive in those fields is a given, we’d also like to see resources directed to arts and vocational programs with the goal of developing well rounded students and the honest recognition that every child is not interested in becoming a scientist or a mathematician. And finally, to increase the chance that students will develop a clear understanding of the world and the problems it faces, particularly in the area of race relations, we would urge an investment in a comprehensive history education focusing on the history of all of the groups which make up our multi-cultural city which would incorporate anti-bias training.
Our recommendation that the city’s most successful schools be replicated in underserved communities could also be a target of investment efforts. We believe in the value of brick and mortar schools and would like to make sure children have the opportunity to be educated in school buildings that are state of the art. We need a school infrastructure plan to replace crumbling school buildings with new ones.
If we are to maintain any semblance of a democratic society, schools must remain a public good, rather than a private enterprise. It is therefore imperative that any gifts to schools come without strings attached, and the state must retain absolute control over how these funds are used. While the generosity of individual billionaires may allow some reforms, achieving the goal of providing every child with an excellent education will require society, not just schools, to be reimagined. Broadband access and brand new start of the art schools won’t do much when students don’t have housing or adequate food, or chronic health issues. We call on Mr. Gates and the other wealthy Americans who have pledged to give to support a tax code which would address the inequality which allows homelessness, hunger, and lack of health care to persist in our society in the midst of tremendous wealth.
We urge the governor and the mayor to use the opportunity presented by this unprecedented crisis and period of awakening to come together for the benefit of NYC students. Let’s begin the process of creating a new school system undergirded by the goal of providing an excellent education to every child, by creating new schools which replicate what works and by removing the barriers at every educational level which prevent all students from accessing an excellent education.
Signed by:
Nicky Chin,’84
Sonia Cole, M.D., ‘80
Michael R. Clarke, Esq., ‘79
Pamela Davis-Clarke, Esq., ‘80
Linda DeHart, ‘88
Rebecca Graber, Ph.D., ‘01
Teri Graham, ‘77
Thomas Mela, Esq., ‘61
Heidi Reich, Ph.D., ‘85
Jon-Alf Dyrland-Weaver, ‘01
Kimberly Williams, ‘03
About Us:
The Stuyvesant High School Black Alumni Diversity Initiative was formed in 2010 to address the declining enrollment of Black and Latinx students at Stuyvesant and the city’s other specialized high schools. Our goal is to reverse this trend, and increase the number of Black and Latinx students who attend these schools. Our members who attended Stuyvesant in the 1970's and 80's were part of a student body that was 20% Black and Latinx (the percentage as of this writing is 3%). Most of us who attended public middle schools were participants in programs for academically talented students which no longer exist in our old schools.
Since the inception of our group, we have assisted the school and the Department of Education with outreach; hosted a series of successful “Why Stuy?” Open House events at the school for prospective applicants and their parents, featuring panel discussions by alumni from diverse backgrounds, school tours and test taking tips; organized informational forums for alumni and the public on issues related to the specialized high school admissions process; sponsored a free, test prep boot camp; and in 2012–15 we raised funds which allowed us to underwrite professional SHSAT prep for talented students provided by the Kaplan Company.
Two-thirds of the students we sponsored for test prep in 2014 and 2015 were admitted to specialized high schools, which far exceeded both the citywide admission rate and the admission rate for the underrepresented groups that we target.
Although the founding members of this group are Black alumni of Stuyvesant High School, we welcome partnerships with groups and individuals who support our goals and who are willing to work cooperatively. We have elected to remain the Stuyvesant High School Black Alumni Diversity Initiative, however, in recognition of the unique voice and perspective we have as Black alumni of the school.
References:
Buery, Richard R., Jr., “Public School Admissions and the Myth of Meritocracy: How and Why Screened Public School Admissions Promote Segregation”, 95 NYU Law Review Online 101, April 2020 https://www.nyulawreview.org/online-features/public-school-admissions-and-the-myth-of-meritocracy-how-and-why-screened-public-school-admissions-promote-segregation/
Clines, Francis X., Assembly Votes High School Curb, The New York Times May 20, (MOVE 1971) (1971 https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/20/archives/assembly-votes-high-school-curb-limits-city-boards-power-to-ease.html
Corcoran, Sean P. and Christine Baker-Smith, “Pathways to an Elite Education: Exploring Strategies to Diversify NYC’s Specialized High Schools(2015)”:
https://research.steinhardt.nyu.edu/research_alliance/publications/pathways_to_an_elite_education
Hallinan, Maureen T., “The Detracking Movement”, Education Next, Fall 2004 / Vol. 4, No.4,
https://www.educationnext.org/the-detracking-movement/
Hammack, Floyd M. “Paths to Legislation or Litigation for Educational Privilege: New York and San Francisco Compared” American Journal of Education, Vol. 116, No. 3 (May 2010), pp. 371–395
https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/kafka18/files/2018/03/hammack.pdf
Perry, Andre.“Black teachers matter, for students and communities” The Hechinger Report, September 17, 2019
https://hechingerreport.org/black-teachers-matter-for-students-and-communities/
Reis, Sally M. “Research That Supports Using the Schoolwide Enrichment Model and Extensions of Gifted Education Pedagogy to Meet the Needs of All Students“
https://gifted.uconn.edu/schoolwide-enrichment-model/semresearch/
Roda, Allison and Halley Potter “It’s time to stop putting kids in separate gifted education programs”Quartz, April 26, 2016
https://qz.com/666405/its-time-to-stop-putting-kids-in-separate-gifted-education-programs/amp/
