Dear Commons Community,

The NAACP filed a lawsuit earlier this year against the New York City Department of Education claiming discrimination in how students are admitted into the top tier high schools.  Citing that the City relies on a single high-stakes exam, admission favors white and Asian students.  The New York Daily News has done an analysis that finds the discrimination starts in the City’s middle schools.  The article states:

“Across the city, the vast majority of middle school students — just over 70% — are black or Latino. But when The News looked at high-performing nonzoned middle schools, meaning magnet programs that draw kids from throughout the city, a borough or a school district, black and Latino kids were in the minority.  At the 10 nonzoned schools whose kids produced the city’s highest scores, just one in four students are black or Latino, according to city data.”

In some of these schools the percentages of minority students are dismal.

“For example, at the Anderson School in Manhattan, a gifted program that has the best test scores in the city, only 17% of the 569 students are black or Latino.  At Mark Twain Middle School in Brooklyn, which has its own admissions exam, again 17% of 1,281 students are black or Latino.”

One minority parent who has a child at the Anderson School put it succinctly:

“Richard Hyndes’ 7-year-old daughter just transferred into the second grade at the school.

“Where she was before” — PS 31 in the Bronx — “is all Latino and black,” Hyndes said. “That’s not the world. Where she is now is mostly white and Asian. That’s not the world either.”

Tony