Ok I think all comments have a little fact in them, yes there are kids that are smart such as Asian kids and whites, and others that work hard for their grades(hispanic, african americans) The question is why should theses kids have to take the test to be able to benefit from the great education that Stuyvesant and Bronx offer, after all they are public schools.I mean a lot of the students that attend theses schools their parent can afford private schools and even universities tuiton now about about us that cannot. social stratification dont u think?

just accept it...some races are more superior to others...that's just what it is...time and time again it's been proven true

THe argument that the shsat discriminates against black culture is total BS. Well maybe not total bs but I'm very sorry if your culture focuses on gangsterness and bling bling, and turns a blind eye to studying there's nothing we can do about it. Blacks scream about how they don't have access to test prep material, but those test prep books are right in the public libraries. Maybe instead of spendin 500$ on a nice ipod or a pair of sneakers that money could be spent on a tutor. And that whole shebang about ebonics being part of black culture, and therefore relevant to being taught in school is bullshit. Well why don't immigrants ask to be taught in their own languages, or in english with their accents? It's part of their culture isn't it? Because the national language of america is english, plain normal english, and ebonics and redneck english are supposed to be spoken on the street and dropped in school.

There are 3 common arguments that are repeated over and over about why the specialized high schools are actually institutional racism. And all of them are total piles BS and I will prove it with my inside knowledge of Stuyvesant.

1. somewhere along the lines of "blacks and hispanics are not told about the entrance test"

I'd estimate that 30% of the kids at stuy come from "prestigious" schools like mark twain where according to all these "activists" everyone is rich and privileged and has access to test taking materials. So what about the other 70%? Are you telling me that the administrators at these schools are informing the asians and whites when the blacks and hispanics aren't looking? I personally found out about the test a week after i moved to NYC and my mother did some quick research about the education system. Anyone who is willing can do it, not knowing about the test is not a valid excuse.

2. blacks and hispanics dont have access to test prep

All these prep courses are really overhyped, all they do is spit out the stuff thats in the prep book, which you can find in the library. A private one on one tutor might make a difference, but i'd say less than 5% of the kids at Stuy have gotten one. To study for the test, go to the library, check out a book on SHSAT, and read through it a couple times. If black and hispanic parents really cared about their children's education, then tutor them yourself, like asian parents do.

Kayan Clarke posted a sentence above

"I have been to Asia, in fact, working as an English teacher in China. Although I am no expert, Chinese students whose families are immigrating here generally received a superior education in math and sciences than the kids in New York City's public schools as well as English as a core subject as early as kindergarten."

Damn right you aren't an expert. The parents of the kids getting into stuy didn't get this great education that you're talking about. When the parents in question were in school, China was going through the "great leap forward" really a huge gigantic leap backwards where food not education was the main concern. Korea was rebuilding from the Korean war, and Japan was recovering from the massive WWII bombing. In China they were still going by the 2 kingdom system where fungi were classified as plants and bacteria were classified as animals.

3. Oh this is my favorite argument "the test is biased against the poor, which are mostly black/hispanic"

The most common argument here is that the test has stuff like sailing and golf or something that only the rich have experienced, so only they can answer questions about it.

The major nationalities are chinese, korean, russian/ukrainian, and bengali. 70%+ of these kids are immigrants or their parents are immigrants. And most of them have never gone sailing or golfing, because we live in NYC where there are no places to do that, and because most people don't have that much leisure time to do that. Questions about camping or golf give you information about them, outside information won't help you, because it's not an essay! And there are just as many questions about basketball and many more about civil rights (all these racist white people setting up these racist tests for themselves clearly know nothing about that) than golfing, camping and sailing.

The second argument for this is that the test is scored wierd, where getting one section very well and doing mediocre on the other will get you in, whiel doing well on both will not.

This refutes the first argument, because then you can now afford to get the camping/golf/sailing questions wrong, and just do the math. Don't tell me that only the rich are exposed to math too.

Remember CCNY? How it used to be one of the best, with names like public harvard, poor man's harvard... What happened? Now it's just a slightly above average CUNY with a tiny honors program as it's last shred of prestige. Oh i remember, all these "activists" screamed and kicked and bit until CCNY installed an affirmative action program. They claimed that the program would be there until the city could prove that CCNY was admitting students fairly, but after it was installed it was forgotten about and is still there today. Why are the UC (in california) schools so much better than the CUNY and SUNY schools? Because the UC schools never endorsed affirmative action, and have now done away with it completely. There are 4 or 5 UC schools in the top 40, i'd be surprised if even one CUNY or SUNY was in the top 80.

Even if Stuyvesant maintained it's standards after affirmative action was installed, what makes you think these kids getting in the easy way would succeed? If you lure a wolf into a dog training school, I'd bet my life it would just start attacking the dogs (similar to getting into fights at school) or run away (drop out) before it learned to fetch, rollover and beg.

Education and the approach to education begins at home. Asians understand that in order to get ahead in this country, education needs to be a priority. Blacks try to "work the system" to their advantage. The "system" allows blacks to be lazy and still survive. Blacks are still waiting for their "40 acres and a mule" from the US government.

You can blame successful blacks (athletes, rappers, etc...) for playing a part in black youth shunning education. After all, you don't need an education to dunk a basketball or drop some "ryhmes."

Black athletes and entertainers glorify their lifestyles - "bling bling" - "th-thong th-thong thong thong" - any of that sound familiar?

Ask a little black kid what he wants to be when he grows up. I bet 10 out of 10 times it will either be a rapper or professional athlete. Ask an Asian kid what he wants to be. "Doctor", "lawyer", those are some of the answers you'll hear.

Brainwashed by their parents? Maybe, but that just shows you the kind of emphasis that Asians, both young and old, put on education.

Blacks are lucky if they even know who their real parents are.

Go ahead, call me racist. The truth hurts. The first step to the cure is admitting that there is a problem. The more Al Sharpton talks, the further back he sets the black people.

Listen to what Bill Cosby said about blacks. He knows what's up and isn't afraid to say what is on the minds of all people.

Black people need to start helping themselves before they look to the "system" to help them. "Ebonics" "Black English" That's bullshit. Explain to me how a non-English speaking immigrant can come to this country and learn to speak English properly, but blacks that are born and raised here speak like imbeciles? Why do blacks from Africa hate American Blacks? American Blacks are lazy and give recent African immigrants a bad name.

I vote to do away with affirmative action and do as the NYC specialized schools do. Only the qualified get to move ahead in life. If blacks want to move up in the world, go to school and get an education like the rest of us.

Keep minimum wage where it is. Why give people a free $2 raise? I say if you don't like making minimum wage, then go to school and better yourself. Give people a reason to want to get out of a bad situation. The government shouldn't have to bail out lazy people. If you can't make ends meet making minimum wage, then get a second job that pays minimum wage. Got kids to support? Well, you probably should have thought of that before you got pregnant or impregnated a girl.

Some people are reading this saying, "We all make mistakes..." Whatever... deal with your situation the best you can. If that involves taking 2 jobs to put yourself through community college, then do it. Stop making excuses.

I, too, made minimum wage once. In high school. That's when I realized that if I didn't want to make minimum wage the rest of my life, I'd have to get edumucated. Sadly, black people never come to that realization. They just want everything handed to them. I heard this black person on the streets of NYC proclaiming that "in order to get ahead in this country, you need to lie, cheat, and steal." THIS my friends is the black way of thinking.

Until blacks take care of their business at home, there's no use in blaming "institutional racism" or whatever. Just hit the books, work hard, and move up in life just like the rest of us.

I'm an African American graduate of Brooklyn Tech. To the Hunter College HS grad who said, "Brooklyn Tech is not even a good regular HS, much less one of the 3 best in the city", you don't know what the hell you're taking about. Read the NYS Department of Ed High School Report Card for Tech and then try to support your weak argument. Even a snob like you can learn to think more intelligently by backing your argument with sound statistics. Also, other than your association with Hunter, it is indeed a great school.

As for why less blacks and hispanics are attending specialized high schools has to do with the lack of seriousness about education within our respective communities in general as well as the emphasis on minority role models in sports and music who are "getting paid" (especially in rap/hip hop). Many of us are more interested in what we're wearing, what sneakers we have on and our street cred and social respectability than in getting a good education. Unfortunately there is no street-based esteem points given based on hitting the books in many of our neighborhoods. Those kids who do hit the books are treated as different and often feel isolated as a result.

I agree. I'm in Stuyvesant and it's true that it's 50% Asians, about 30% Caucasian, with a pretty small amount of Black/Hispanics. But really, is it because our school is racist? No one here cares about ethnicity or anything else. We accept each other, we'll be friends with anyone, and that's it. A lot of the Asians get into the school because their parents are crazy. Many of them have gone to Saturday schools for prep, or their parents make them study extra hard. They get a lot of pressure from their parents to do well and get into the school. It's not about racism. There's no way the test is racist.

I am here to say hello and you have a great site! nokia6630

Er, let's quit beating around the bush here - we see this racial stratification all over the world...because the IQ ladder goes like:

East Asians

Whites

Latinos

Blacks

We can no longer afford to deny this reality and sandbag all the smart kids with intellectual Communism. Right now, we are already outsourcing all our high-IQ work to Asians...who are smarter and work harder. That's the facts as shown by our free market economy - not a bunch of liberal BS artists. Let's just let water seek its own damn level for once...cuz it will anyways no matter how you try to manipulate it.

To Kayan: Most Asian kids at those schools are Asian American, not immigrants or 'parachute kids'. I don't even think non-citizens are eligible to apply to those schools. Therefore they would not have been exposed to the education system in Asia. The average Chinese American (for example) per capita income is $10,000, and a lot of Asian kids grow up in the slums. Stereotype threat, cultural differences, racism, and such-and-such are the cause of ethnic disparities BUT........

Sensationalization of educational statistics is not going to get us anywhere unless we deal with the REAL problem i.e. racism. I don't know why the heck some Asian kids do well, I know I sure didn't and I grew up respectably working class. I knew plenty of Black and Latino kids who went to those schools. Maybe But I do know no matter what educational level we have, Asian people (and African Americans, and Latinos, and Native Americans) earn SIGNIFICANTLY less than whites in the same positions. (Especially Asian American men, as some believe civil rights only extend to other groups.) I believe that THIS is a more insidious disparity than some bullshit with high schools (especially since high school and undergraduate degrees don't count for jack. My crappy state university is jam-packed with Bronxies/Stuy people as well as those of us who attended the School of Hard Knocks, Inebriated Street-Racing, Aerosol Inhalation, and Racially-Based Gang Warfare.

Today's assignment: go read about the Model Minority myth, stereotype threat, white flight (about the declining amount of whites at these schools), and the increasing underrepresentation of Asian Americans in REAL life- not high school- situations (as professors, celebrities, writers, creators of cultural capital, capitalists...)

> maybe because racism is not a white vs * thing.

True, but the key word is "institutionalized" racism. And until minorities are the ones in power, institutionalized racism is a white vs * thing.

btw, biggups to my former sixth grade student, melanie tirado, quoted in the article. i knew you'd make it into stuy. wasn't that hard, was it, sweetheart? kick their asses, and hope to see you at some bryn mawr or yale alumni dinners. you go girlfriend!!!

P.S. Samantha T. A thinking stuy graduate and a legal mind would have appreciated that a minority kid from a poor neighborhood felt compelled to count the number of words he couldn't understand in the first pages of To Kill a Mockingbird, but then again, nuance and subtlety don't seem to be your forte. Maybe you should return to take some classes with Frank McCourt and brush up on your skills with language and empathy?

As an African-American and graduate of Bronx Science class of '98, it is interesting to me that some of our so-called "high-achievers" have such a difficult time understanding the insidious ways insitutionalized racism works in practically all aspects of education. In turn, they seem to suggest the simplistic racist argument that Asians and Whites are just smarter and work harder. First of all, immigrants who come here are hardly ever so poor that they were not receiving an adequate education in their home countries. I have been to Asia, in fact, working as an English teacher in China. Although I am no expert, Chinese students whose families are immigrating here generally received a superior education in math and sciences than the kids in New York City's public schools as well as English as a core subject as early as kindergarten. The question is: Why are we educating Black and Latino children so poorly at home? Black and Latinos do make up the vast majority of New York City's public school students. Demographics at schools like Bronx Science and Stuyvesant are a testament to the failure of the city and the nation as a whole to educate students who can compete in a globalized market in the 21st century. Furthermore, the fact that these schools are dominated by students from certain neighborhoods (i.e. Riverdale in the Bronx)testifies to the economic desparities that continue to disenfranchise kids who should be benefitting from this so-called meritocracy. The solution? Well, not as simple as the lazy-ass-it's-just-these-kids-and their-families-are-stupid approach. It means that people care enough about this nation and our city's school in particular to get involved. It seems that most of us look the cold hard truth in the face: Racism is alive and well in America big time, and it is going to cost us. Very soon these Chinese kids won't be coming to the U.S. for an education and opportunities, and we (blacks, Latinos, Asians, and whites who are the product of American schooling) won't be prepped to compete. Believe me, Black and Latino kids won't be the only ones getting the short end of the stick in American education. Soon enough we'll discover that, oh yeah, I knew we should have done something about that education problem.

As a junior high school teacher and a Brooklyn Tech Alum, the fact that less minority students attend the specialized high schools is a product of institutionalized racism. The students in the poorer neighborhoods and school districts are left unaware of the exam unless it is pursued by individual teachers like myself. Accordingly, these exams are structured in a manner of which the essays are culturally structured for students whom have experienced things that many inner city students are not fortuned to have experienced as well i.e camping, fishing, tennis. This may seem simple to some but reading a 500-word essay about someone going camping instead of an essay about someone going to the park to play basketball is a big difference, and it is reflected in the results of the exams.

Couple of things:

Blacks and Hispanics in the poorer nabes don't apply to the specialized high schools because they don't know about the test (see ACORN's Educational Apartheid from a few years back)

The test itself is weirdly scored. As documented in earlier Times articles, someone who scores in the 99 percentile in math, but in the 65 percentile in English will get in over someone who scores in the 97 percentile in both. Explain that.

Asians and Russians--for whatever reasons--are better at math. Just as many Asian kids go to Chinese school on Saturday (instilling a certain academic ethic, I believe), many Russian kids go to math school on week nights.

Black kids, for various reasons, don't want to go to highly academic schools with a miniscule black population. See black Harvard economist Roland G. Fryer's studies.

just for reference, at hunter everything is based on a test, but there are lower requirements for acceptance if you come from an underprivileged background (which i believe is not actually based on race, but economic background). in addition, since it is a lab school, the elementary school enrollment follows strict racial quotas, i.e. 25 girls, 25 boys, 5 black, 5 asian, etc, and they all get in to the high school automatically.

I think a lot has to do with whether students are pushed to take the entrance exams, or even know that options for high school exist.

Though ABC is a good program, you cannot compare those schools to the likes of Stuy and Bx Sci.

Those schools do not need an exam to get it. Those schools are full of blue bloods and foreign students where daddy can afford to send their kids to the USA for schooling.

As the poster mentioned above, STuy, bx sci are the only schools where everyone is equal. The exam makes it that way.

It's not like the ABC schools where daddy can write a check to the alumni assoc and get buffy in.

NO way ABC school students are as smart as Stuy or Bx Sci. How many westinghouse winners do they have? you know I speak the truth.

look it up.

umm.. do

all asians have this so called super duper work ethic?

has anyone posting actually been to asia?

And is anyone posting a parent of a kid considering NY high schools, specialized or not?

I would love to hear from other parents in places like Morningside Heights, Brownsville, Queens Village, East New York, Mott Haven, Co-op City, Roslyn, Park Slope, Washington Heights or Bay Ridge about their different methods of preparing their kids for choosing a high school.

I'm sure there will be varying degrees of preparation in their stories that can be attributed to more than race.

Also organizations such as A Better Chance which recruit, identify and develop leaders among young people of color and assist them with placement in prep schools may be pulling a lot of students away from Stuy, BHS and Brooklyn Tech.

Just my thoughts.

studying more doesn't mean smarter - i can certainly see asians as people who work harder, most of the parents seem to be the ones running those 24 hour delis or dry cleaners in the city