Race and Specialized NY High Schools

This story comes up every so often: there is a racial imbalance in specialized NY high schools, with Asian and white students taking up most of the spots.  The disparity was pretty big when I was high school age, and since then it has only grown bigger:

In this city of 1.1 million public school students, about 40 percent are Hispanic, 32 percent are black, 14 percent are Asian and 14 percent white. More than two-thirds of Stuyvesant High School’s 3,247 students are Asian (up from 48 percent in 1999). At Brooklyn Technical High School, 365 of the 4,669 students, or 8 percent, are Hispanic; at the Bronx High School of Science, there are 114 blacks, 4 percent of the 2,809-student body.

Two thirds.  That’s amazing, considering only 14 percent of public school students are Asian.  There’s a definite disparity.

From the article, it seems that no one is disputing that these schools ought to remain meritocracies.  In the case of the NY specialized schools, the schools work primarily off of tests, and so there is no bias on admission, except for the very remote possibility that the tests themselves are biased enough to cause these huge disparities.

The point of the article, and I agree with it, is that there’s a problem because talented kids from certain communities are not getting the same opportunities as other communities.  It reinforces racial problems when schools are not integrated, even if that lack of integration comes from a test.  There are obviously many bright kids of all different races, and I definitely think that more has to be done–not necessarily to kill the disparity but rather to ensure that all kids, regardless of where they come from, have a fair shot at doing well.

I think the parents and students know exactly what the problems are:

On a recent Saturday morning, as hundreds of anxious students lined up for the test outside the stately stone-gray facade of Brooklyn Tech, parents and students attributed the racial disparities to a lack of private tutoring, subpar middle schools that do not expose students to test material, transportation problems, cultural differences and a simple lack of motivation on the part of some students.

I don’t know exactly how many Bronx Science and Stuy kids get private tutoring, but the schools, transportation, cultural differences, and lack of motivation are problems.  The next step is to find the solutions.

This is where activism can come in.

Think about it this way: when we read articles about these disparities, we often hear about it in conjunction with affirmative action, a “solution” which most supporters agree should be temporary.  We’ve had these policies for years, but big problems still exist.  Affirmative action is also an easy fix because it requires no change on the part of individuals or cultures.  How often do we hear about activists trying to change transportation, schools in urban areas, or culture?

This goes back to my post long ago about basketball activism.  The best activists are the ones who can go into the schools and local government/institutions, touch the families, and tell them what they need to know or give them the resources they need to succeed.

Related posts:

1. PUA Schools and the Quest for Liberation
2. Making the Old Cool Again