Top High Schools Don't Resemble City's Ethnic Breakdowns

Hey shocker! Blacks crying racism because they're too stupid/lazy to try to get into a good school.

I know how blacks can get into these school. Improve their home life. Fathers should stick around. Mothers shouldn't sleep around. Take care of your damn kids. Then black kids can study and not worry about other shit.

that second line "white and asian students are OFFERED admission at nearly five times the rate..." is pretty flimsy. yes, they are offered admission, but they also earned it on a test which is purely number based. does this raise concerns? yes, but there's nothing wrong with the admission process. there's something wrong in other places- prior education, family awareness of tests, social value places on education, etc.

baby steps, obama already told these kids to pull their pants up, turn off the TV, lay off the video games.
he's going to put money back into foodstamps and medicaid, yay! and to those unemployed, he's going to extend benefits and to those greedy bastids, he's raising your taxes.
and to help the economy now, gun sales are up up up.

What fishfryin said. The only criterion they use when accepting people to Bronx Science/Stuy/etc. is the score on the admission test. It's not at all selective.

If everyone takes the same test and everyone is offered the same prep courses for the test, I'm not sure what else they can do. Of course one could argue that the K-8 preparation kids receive in problematic schools sets them up for failure, but that's the fault of the lower schools--not the Bronx Science/Stuy admission process. And regardless of that, admitting them to a school if they would not be academically prepared to handle the work would neither help them nor the other students there.

When I was a kid at public school, the Asian kids did fantastic because they came from families that VALUE AN EDUCATION. The black kids simply didn't give a crap and denigrated academic excellence as some sort of "white thing."

I'm so sick and tired of people blaming racism for their own damned failures.

Strange thing. When I went to school it was the Jewish kids that did great in school. I wonder why.

"not knowing where the admission testing sites even are?"

nice wording. it implies that the testing site was kept secret from these poor disadvantaged kids.

read the article, and you'll learn that the one kid showed up minutes before the test because he and his mom had trouble finding the school.

hmm.

ok, assuming that neither one of them has ever heard of google maps or yahoo maps: how about calling the school to get directions?

doesn't sound like Bronx Science material to me. sorry.

and another thing: this one kid said he'd been studying for the test for a few days.

wow.

my son is among the very few hispanic kids at Bronx Science, and i can tell you that he was studying for the october test all summer long.

buckle down, do the work, and stop whining. these schools are considered "elite" for a good reason.

the lack of black and hispanic representation at these schools is, indeed, cause for concern.

but it seems obvious to me that, if you want to know why, you should begin by looking into the study habits and home lives of those few black and hispanic kids who DID pass the test and made it in.

or is it just me?

I'd argue most kids of color don't know the schools exist. Many of the best kids are sent off to parochial schools if they don't get into, or aren't near a good middle school (very rare). The parochial schools don't push specialized high schools, they push parochial high schools. With kids of immigrants this is especially true.

My parents had no idea what Bx Sci was. I found out by accident--when a friend was joking around about the TV show Head of the Class and we decided to see if Bx Sci was real, it was a month before the deadline to take the test. Stuy & Tech were out of the question for being too far away.

Even worse is Hunter High -- only a connected few parents even know it exists.

In many cases teachers and administrators think black and hispanic kids are just a bunch of animals and will not bother to tell them what opportunities are available. Somehow, the ones with sport skills are rarely overlooked. And the armed forces recruiters are always near.
However, they were born into the Internet Age and could find this out on their own instead of downloading ringtones.

Gothamist noted a Times article about this over two years ago. Even then, the trends were startling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/18/education/18schools.html

If you look at the graph, even at Tech, the percentage of blacks had plummeted in only a decade from the high 30s to the mid teens. If the rate of change continued, that's likely to be around 12% now. Hispanics had been declining at all three schools as well, according to that graph and even whites were trending downward.

Rfive. Now that is what's called "thinking outside the box."

I teach. I spent today w/12 kids visiting 6 galleries in chelsea and one in soho. it was a grand day, one of the best of this early year.

and now this nytimes article. and quotes from the educational and sociological experts here on gothamist. paves the way for a wonderful weekend!

oh yeah, fuck bxscience & hunterhs. we get so many of those kids who say those places are racist and teach kids only how to pass tests, not to think.

carry on gents!

As a Stuyvesant alum, I am strongly opposed to weakening the standards for admittance to the school.

At the same time I am horrified by the lower and middle school environments that create this lopsided situation. It is impossible to believe that if black and latino students were given the same opportunities early on as white and asian students that they would not be better represented in our magnet schools.

If all students in all schools were made aware of the test (and properly prepped for it) the demographics would be very different.

It should also be noted that there is a subtle "legacy" effect-- parents who went to Stuyvesant often want their kids to go there too.

Finally, I am completely disgusted by the racist shitheads who continually grace Gothamist's comment section. Really, go get some therapy and then get back to us. Your ugliness is a blight on our city. And do not try and pass your spite off as honesty-- you are not "telling it like it is."

Since cult leader Obama is the new president why not spread the educational wealth and let these black kids into Stuyvesant and Bronx Science regardless of test scores. Education now days is all about feeling good so it would be the rational thing to do.

Is this Gothamist or the Aryan Nation?

This is what we are up against in this discussion. You can't make the most simple assertions without exiting victim based knee jerk reaction. I am black. I was picked during the uber-liberal NYC early 70's to attend an exclusive private school in NYC that many WHITE people would give their right arms to send their kids to. The process alienated me from the black kids around me who had NO interest for the most part in the simplest components of an education. In Social Studies you can't make absolute pronouncements, not every individual in a classification of people acts exactly like another but conventional wisdom and simple observation is on my side.

"coonage" sells, "ghetto" sells, "negritude" sells...Could you imagine if Eddie Murphy , Snoop Dogg or Dave Chappelle went "oreo"? They'd be broke.