Mayor Blames Albany For Lack Of Diversity In Top NYC High Schools

NEW YORK, NY — Mayor Bill de Blasio thinks it's Albany's fault that the city's top high schools are failing when it comes to diversity. The mayor on Friday chastised state lawmakers for stonewalling attempts to revamp the admissions process for the city's specialized high schools — which the mayor said should be in the city's hands anyway.

"I think that’s idiotic to begin with that the way we test our students for our schools here in New York City needs to be approved by the Legislature in Albany," de Blasio, a Democrat, said on his weekly "Ask the Mayor" segment on WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer Show."

City students seeking a coveted spot at eight of the city's nine specialized high schools have to take a rigorous three-hour exam that determines who gets in. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts requires an audition and an academic review rather than a test.

Admission results released this week show that just 10.4 percent of students offered seats for this fall at those eight schools are black or Latino. Only 10 of the 902 students admitted to the elite Stuyvesant High School are black.

The city has tried to convince more black and Latino students to take the test and expand access to test-prep courses, among other initiatives to improve diversity. But de Blasio said the ultimate solution is to base admission on students' entire academic backgrounds instead of a single "high-stakes" exam. That's a change only the state Legislature can make, he said.

"We’ve got to get rid of that test," de Blasio said. "Let’s choose young people who get into Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech and Bronx Science based on the totality of their talent and ability and potential, which is not determined just by a single test."

De Blasio said the city has lobbied for the changes in Albany. But he blamed the Republican-controlled state Senate, saying the chamber lacks the will to pass the necessary legislation.

The Senate forced a standoff with de Blasio over his control of the city's school system last year. The Senate and Assembly agreed to a two-year extension on mayoral control in June just days before it was set to expire, The New York Times reported at the time.

"This one is more the political reality," de Blasio said Friday. "We’ve understood the unwillingness of the state Senate to act on things like this. And that doesn’t mean we don’t keep trying."

A spokesman for the Senate's Republican conference didn't respond to an email seeking comment Friday afternoon. Neither did Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office.

The proportion of black and Latino students taking the specialized high schools test has stayed relatively flat in recent years despite the city's efforts to draw a more diverse pool of test-takers, city figures show.

Some 44.4 percent of the eighth-graders who took the test for the 2016-17 school year were black and Latino. That number rose slightly to 44.7 percent for the 2017-18 year, but fell to 43.1 percent for 2018-19.

There's also a big disparity when it comes to admissions. Just over 10 percent of students offered spots at the eight testing schools this year were black and Latino, despite students from those groups representing nearly 67 percent of the city's 1.1 million students in the 2016-17 school year.

(Lead image: Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan is seen in April 2005. Photo by Peter Kramer/Getty Images)