The Most Segregated School System in the Country
New York City has changed significantly over the past 50 years. From its increased racial diversity and gay tolerance, to the changes in wealth disparity, the city has definitely moved forward in many aspects. Although, one aspect has yet to advance: the city’s public school system remains one of the most segregated in the nation.
Every year, sometime in March, eighth grade students in all corners of New York City receive a letter. For some, this letter could enter them into a realm of opportunity: an acceptance to one of the highly coveted specialized public high schools (SHS). The rest? Those who are not accepted into one of the elite specialized high schools are relegated to the lower performing schools of the city. For years, the specialized high schools have been glaringly racially disproportionate, with Asian Americans making up 62% of specialized high schools despite being 16% of all NYC public high school students and white students, who made up 24% of these SHS while being 15% of the NYC public school student body. These skewed numbers have raised questions as to whether the tests are racially biased and discriminatory toward black and Hispanic students who make up the overwhelming majority of NYC students at 40.5% and 26% respectively while combined, only make up 9% of all students enrolled in SHS. At Stuyvesant High School, one of the top SHS in NYC (and according to some reports, the top public high school in New York State), nearly 75% of all students are Asian American while Black students make up 1% of the student body.
Have the specialized New York City public schools always been this segregated? Let’s go back in time 50 years. In 1971, New York State passed the Calandra-Hecht Act which stated that “admissions to [these specialized high schools] shall be solely and exclusively by taking a competitive, objective and scholastic achievement examination.” In his article “The New York City school controversy shows why standardized testing is broken” Jose Vilson dives into the issue with the system and explains, “Essentially, these schools enshrined into law the right to ignore school performance, grades, interviews, standardized state exams, or any other qualification in favor of a test that rarely aligns with the standards they learn in school, tacitly keeping these schools out of reach for under-resourced students and schools. The specialized high schools continue to exemplify why New York City has the most segregated school system in the country.” This single test that determines the futures of so many young, low income students of the city is a major contributor to the grotesque racial inequality that exists within the NYC specialized school system. “Everything from expensive test prep centers concentrated in specific neighborhoods to private tutors who spend hours with students across the city helps exacerbate admissions, and with it racial disparity” (Vilson).
“A single test determines the future of our children. That is unacceptable.” — Jose Vilson of Vox
So, why have Mayor Bill De Blasio and his fellow elected officials not acted upon the significant racial inequality that plagues the specialized schools? Well, they’ve tried. In 2018, Mayor Bill De Blasio and his schools chancellor, Richard Carranza, proposed a plan that would set aside 20% of ninth-grade slots for low-income students who just miss the test-score cutoff for entry to these schools. These students participate in a summer program called Discovery. This went into effect for the first time last year. However, this past March, education officials announced that, one year later, almost nothing had changed: Ten black students got into Stuyvesant, out of a freshman class of roughly 760, up from seven black students last year. And only 20 Hispanic students gained entry, down from 33 last year. The overall percentage of black and Hispanic students in New York’s eight specialized high schools was essentially flat compared to last year, at around 11 percent even though the city’s school system as a whole is about 70 percent black and Hispanic. Recently, Mayor de Blasio has advocated for a plan to eliminate the schools’ entrance exam and replace it with a system that automatically offers seats to top performers at every city middle school. However, Eliza Shapiro of the New York Times reports, “that proposal would likely cut the number of seats for Asian-American students by about half, projections show.”
These attempts to alter the SHS admissions system have caused uproar among the Asian American community. Soo Kim, president of the Stuyvesant High School Alumni Association, said in an email that his organization values diversity and believes something should be done to improve access, but “we don’t believe that equity can be created by doing an inequity to another group.” The mayor’s changes, he added, are “so forced that they risk harming needy immigrant communities.” Many alumni groups at the schools have spoken out and said that the test was the most objective admissions method and that it gave generations of talented, low-income immigrants a path to success. In her article “Is New York City’s Plan to Diversify Specialized High Schools Racist toward Asian Americans?” Hui-Ling Sunshine Malone states, “Asian American students are as poor and disadvantaged as other non-White students, yet get into SHS based solely on merit. It is on these grounds that opponents have attacked the plan as unconstitutional and racist toward Asian Americans.” The CACAGNY (Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York) states on their website, “We call on Bill de Blasio to respect students who achieve, no matter their ethnicity, to stop pitting one disadvantaged minority against another, and to do something constructive instead: improve education for all communities, starting from the lowest grades!”
Initially, I agreed with the CACAGNY’s statement. I didn’t think any of de Blasio’s plans for diversity would lead to increased diversity without unjustly affecting other minorities, such as Asian Americans. And so, that pointed me to educational reform in elementary and middle schools because it was at those levels that underprivileged black and Hispanic students were falling behind. However, my understanding changed when I realized that most Asian American immigrants were not recognizing the deep history and harmful structures deeply embedded into American education that have hurt (and continue to hurt) black and Hispanic students (Malone). They don’t easily recognize how their argument is fundamentally invested in Whiteness — a construction created to put Whites at the top of the hierarchy and Blacks at the bottom.
However, not all Asian Americans are on the same page regarding these racial issues with education. While many hold opinions similar to that of the CACAGNY, Asians are actually divided on the issue. Supporters argue that the general idea of affirmative action is necessary in order to address past discrimination toward African Americans and to create diverse schools that reflect the demographic of New York City. In their opinion piece “How Harvard admissions can be a barometer of our deepest divides” professors Jennifer Lee and Van C. Tran report, “Our new research shows that the divide among Asians is generational. Based on the 2016 National Asian American Survey, we found that Asian immigrants are least likely to support affirmative action. By contrast, Asians born in the US with parents who were also born here — the so-called later generation — are most likely to do so. In fact, later-generation Asians are more likely to support affirmative action than Asian immigrants by a factor of three.” This generational divide in opinion points to cultural differences and assimilation of later-generation Asian Americans. First generation Asian Americans and even second generation immigrants come from countries that lack affirmative action-like policies, so they are not able to understand the historical origins of principles that were designed to rectify past discrimination against blacks. Chinese Americans OiYan Poon and Janelle Wong explain in their piece “The Generational Divide on Affirmative Action” that “Young Chinese Americans have witnessed firsthand the rise of Black Lives Matter and the development of an immigrant rights movement led by their undocumented peers who came to the U.S. as young children. As such, they may be unwilling to get behind admissions criteria that perpetuate the massive racial and ethnic inequalities in our K-12 system.” Later-generation Asian Americans who have grown up in the United States are more likely to have a wider education and understanding of the historical discrimination against blacks as well as an overview of American history. The varied stances regarding the New York City public school admissions are widely shaped by global forces that extend to different cultural backgrounds and levels of understanding.
The discussion surrounding the racial segregation within the specialized high schools of NYC is destined to be of relevance for a while. But, at the end of the day, are the Mayor’s plans racist against Asian Americans?
No.
What is racist is the narrative that has been parroted by white conservatives and now Asian Americans to keep unjust structures in tact by denying historical and contemporary systemic anti-black racial oppression. In simpler terms, this argument tells us that black, Hispanic, and other vulnerable students are just not good enough.
The only thing that “isn’t good enough” is the schooling system. And given the large disparities that exist today, it has never been good enough. Black and Hispanic children in the city of New York face an unbelievable disadvantage because of their inferior K-8 education. The only way these children receive admission into the top public city high schools is to perform well on the SHSAT. But these children never had a chance to do well on the SHSAT because of the “mind-crippling” K-8 education they received. The system is fundamentally broken at its core but has been consistently protected and preserved by dangerous narratives like the one that denounces black and other vulnerable students as “not good enough”.
Asian American parents want the best for their children. But young Asian Americans, those most likely to be affected directly by college admissions policies, seem to get that the real secret to success does not rest on ending affirmative action.
Bibliography:
Brody, Leslie. “New York City Mayor Alters Exam-School Admissions.” The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Company, 4 June 2018, www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-mayor-moves-to-diversify-citys-specialized-high-schools-1527971146.
Kieser, Chris. “Parents Sue to Stop Mayor De Blasio’s Racial Discrimination in NYC Schools.” Pacific Legal Foundation, Pacific Legal Foundation, 7 Feb. 2019, pacificlegal.org/plf-sues-to-stop-racial-discrimination-in-new-york-city-magnet-school-admissions/.
Malone, Hui-Ling Sunshine. “Is New York City’s Plan to Diversify Specialized High Schools Racist toward Asian Americans?” NYU Steinhardt, 17 June 2020, steinhardt.nyu.edu/metrocenter/perspectives/new-york-citys-plan-diversify-specialized-high-schools-racist-toward-asian.
Shapiro, Eliza. “Big Money Enters Debate Over Race and Admissions at Stuyvesant.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 27 Apr. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/04/27/nyregion/specialized-high-schools-lobbying.html.
Shapiro, Eliza. “Racist? Fair? Biased? Asian-American Alumni Debate Elite High School Admissions.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 6 Feb. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/nyregion/nyc-specialized-high-school-test.html.
Shapiro, Eliza. “This Year, Only 10 Black Students Got Into N.Y.C.’s Top High School.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 19 Mar. 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/03/19/nyregion/nyc-schools-numbers-black-students-diversity-specialized.html.
Vilson, Jose. “The New York City School Controversy Shows Why Standardized Testing Is Broken.” Vox, Vox, 22 Mar. 2019, www.vox.com/first-person/2019/3/22/18276408/new-york-city-stuyvesant-high-school-brooklyn-tech-science.
Wong, Alia. “4 Myths Fueling the Fight Over NYC’s Exclusive High Schools.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 21 Mar. 2019, www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/03/stuyvesant-admissions-controversy-fact-or-fiction/585460/.
