New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says he will push to diversify the city’s elite specialized high schools by setting aside seats for low-income students who just missed the test-score cutoff.
De Blasio announced on the education website Chalkbeat that starting in fall 2019, 20 percent of the seats at the high schools will be set aside. State legislative approval is required.
About 10 percent of the students in the specialty schools are black or Hispanic, although black and Hispanic students make up two-thirds of the city’s public school population.
