“We cannot just keep on saying, ‘This problem is too big — there’s nothing we can do about it,’” Justice Sallie Manzanet-Daniels, of the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court in Manhattan, told a lawyer for the city at the time.
“Meanwhile, thousands and thousands and thousands of children keep on being graduated from a system that’s not teaching them,” she said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/02/nyregion/nyc-schools-segregation.html
the National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) submitted an amicus brief to the First Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Boston Parent Coalition for Academic Excellence Corp. v. School Committee of the City of Boston. In its brief, the Association presented published position statements, articles, and policy positions in support of the Boston School Committee’s efforts to remove barriers of access and ensure greater equity for all students in the admissions process for its three exam schools.
Appellee appears to recognize that controlling precedent foreclosed a finding
NAACPLDF Amicus
of discriminatory intent, but nevertheless invited the district court to misapply the
law in furtherance of its attempt to change the law to prevent schools across the
country from removing known barriers to opportunity and adopting race-neutral,
research-based reforms to promote equality.
Using past results as a baseline is not only improper, it is woefully misleading.
As the district court in Boston Parent correctly noted, when a racial group has been
significantly overrepresented in the prior system, “nearly any changes to the
admissions process will likely result in some reduction, if only from the law of
averages.”
“The system reproduced by the New York City public schools is fundamentally one of caste: an artificial, graded ‘ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups on the basis of,’ in the United States, race,” the suit says.
This system, the complaint says, is accomplished by effectively setting groups apart at an early age and perpetuating those divisions.
“Consequently, the demographics of the City’s G&T programs reflect disparate familial resources, enrolling predominantly white and certain Asian students,” the suit says. The system culminates in admissions to specialized high schools, which it says cements the notion that certain groups are privileged while others are not.
“The City and State intentionally maintain and sanction this system despite their knowledge — acquired through decades of experience and reflected in their own admissions — of its racist character and outcomes,” the complaint says.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/suit-challenging-alleged-racist-education-system-nyc/story?id=79410312
The points made in this article cannot be overstated. The Hecht-Calandra Act may be an unknown, obscure law to many Americans, including New Yorkers. But this law may be the small crack in the armor that allows conservative legal groups to defeat all race-conscious equity schemes.
McAuliffe PTO is just the latest federal case involving Asian American plaintiffs (though funded and orchestrated by conservative legal strategists Edward Blum and the Pacific Legal Foundation) alleging that racial diversity efforts in admissions discriminate against them, and we can expect more such cases to be filed in the future. (See also Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.)
If the case makes its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and if the Court strikes down New York’s effort to tinker with its elite schools’ admissions process (even though the new policy is race-neutral and has only negligible effects on the racial composition of those schools; Mader, 2020), the implications could be far-reaching. For instance, it could lead to further litigation in other cities, like Boston and Chicago, whose elite public schools are more representative of the districts’ student population. It could further limit schools’ ability to adopt race-conscious measures to integrate K-12 schools (a practice that was already on life support after Parents Involved). It could even prompt further limits to or the end of affirmative action in higher education (if the Harvard case doesn’t get the犀利士 re first).
https://kappanonline.org/legal-battle-high-school-entrance-exams-kim/
In an attempt to appeal an earlier district court preliminary injunction decision plaintiff lawyers argue that the Discovery Program is somehow racist.
It should be noted that…
Here is the MP3 Audio: Christa McAuliffe Intermediate School et al
v. Bill de Blasio, Richard A Carranza
Below is the unofficial transcript. Circuit 2, Docket 19-550
19-550-cv_Christa_McAuliffe_Intermediate_School_et_al_v_Bill_de_Blasio_Richard_A_CarranzaBRIEF FOR AMICI CURIAE NYC LAB MIDDLE SCHOOL PARENTS’ ASSOCIATION; THE PTA OF PS/IS 119, THE GLENDALE; EAST SIDE MIDDLE SCHOOL PARENTS TEACHERS ASSOCIATION; PS 130M PARENTS ASSOCIATION and MNS/PTA, INC. IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFFS-APPELLANTS – Dennis Saffron
brief_for_amici_curiae_nyc_lab_middle_school_PSIS_119_Glendale_east_sidePanel affirms lower court ruling.
mandate01NYC LAB MIDDLE SCHOOL PARENTS’ ASSOCIATION
https://www.labmiddleschool.com/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=185511&type=d&pREC_ID=371966
Screened D2 school
THE PTA OF PS/IS 119, THE GLENDALE
https://www.facebook.com/PSIS119PTA
EAST SIDE MIDDLE SCHOOL PARENTS TEACHERS ASSOCIATION
https://www.esms.org/
PS 130M PARENTS ASSOCIATION
http://ps130pa.blogspot.com/
This point of fact is very misleading.
But in recent years before this current expansion, it was quite small and schools with high cutoff such as Stuyvesant and Bronx Science did not participate at all. As a means to accomplish these racial goals, the mayor and the chancellor required each specialized school to set aside 20% of their seats in each incoming class for Discovery students
Plaintiff Keiser
This is very misleading, but not technically inaccurate. Stuyvesant did set aside as high as 15% of its offers for discovery program students in 1970.
This means, 15% of Stuyvesant offers went to students who just missed Stuyvesant’s own student score cutoff. This is exactly what the discovery program was designed to do. And also, these Discovery offer numbers were set for some unknown span of time in New York City’s history. The Department of Education alone knows exactly how long though.
But we do know that Past Mayor Bloomberg ( and maybe others before him ) reduced these Discovery Program offer numbers. In the case of Stuyvesant, to ZERO. Personally, I believe mayor Bloomberg and his Chancellor did not want underrepresented minorities at these schools.
The discovery program has always been under the direct stewardship of the mayor. In fact, that was a sticking point during Hecht-Calandra’s negotiations. Assemblymember Hecht hinted at their legislative intent when he mentioned to the governor that the law would not pass until legislatures felt that the mayor had 100% control of the Discovery program.
I doubt the legislature would imagine that the 50 years later the mayor of New York City would be defending the city from a lawsuit for doing just that. Returning discovery program levels to historic levels.
Obrian was devastated when he found out he didn’t score high enough on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) to attend Brooklyn Technical High School, one of New York City’s most selective high schools. Unlike many of the students who gain admission to the city’s specialized high schools, his family didn’t have the resources to spend thousands of dollars on test prep.
His score on the SHSAT put him just below the cutoff mark for Brooklyn Technical High School. But because of the Discovery Program – which allows students from low-income communities who score just below the standardized test cutoff to earn admission to the specialized high schools – Obrian was able to attend a summer program and then start at Brooklyn Tech his freshman year.
Now, he’s thriving. He has a sky-high GPA and he helped his school win the city championship in track and field.
It’s clear Obrian is exactly the kind of student who excels when given the opportunity to attend a specialized high school.
https://www.nyclu.org/en/news/new-yorks-specialized-high-schools-need-more-students-obrian
Another attack on NYC’s specialized high school diversity efforts. This is representing attorney Claude M. Millman’s ( Bronx Science ’81 Alumni ) second legal action against the SHSAT reform that I know of.
Previously he represented a coalition of anti-reform protesters in another SHSAT related matter in 2014.
I believe but haven’t confirmed that this filing was done through the state education department’s appeals process: Appeals or Petitions to Commissioner of Education. Maybe SHSAT reform supporters should have been filing petitions all along?
From the WSJ article…
The petitioners’ unusual move comes at a time of intense debate over Mayor Bill de Blasio’s effort to overhaul the admissions system. While lobbying legislators to change the state law, he vastly expanded the Discovery program for the coming school year, in hopes that doing so would better integrate schools that are predominantly Asian.
“The absurdity of the implementation of the mayor’s Discovery program is that it is supposed to be directed towards getting African-American and Hispanic kids into these specialized high schools, and it is so arbitrarily drawn that even those kids are adversely affected,” the students’ lawyer, Claude Millman, said Friday.
The petitions say the city ignored language in the 1971 law requiring that Discovery operate “without in any manner interfering with the academic level” of these eight schools. The petitions include signed statements from three former principals of Stuyvesant High School and Bronx High School of Science, saying the current version of Discovery admits many students whose test scores are too low for them to keep up.
It will be interesting to see how Mr. Millman plans to establish that letting students in who scored a few multiple-choice questions lower on a single test “interferes with the academic level” of the schools.
In the past students accepted via the discovery program scored identically to students who aced the SHSAT and scored up to 300 points higher…
Stuyvesant’s current principal, Eric Contreras, didn’t comment on the petitions but expressed confidence in the Discovery program. “Current ninth-graders who participated in Discovery last summer are doing well and participating fully in the Stuyvesant experience,” he said by email. “I have no doubt that the students who complete the program this coming summer will also be successful here.”
WSJ article
March 7th, 2019
McAuliffeVsNYC-01With all the discussion of “disparate impact” I don’t understand why Sandoval Decision doesn’t apply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_v._Sandoval