A program meant to diversify New York City’s infamously segregated specialized high schools failed to admit representative numbers of black and Hispanic students this school year, figures released last week by district officials show.
The Discovery program, hyped as a desegregation tool for elite schools, mostly benefited Asian students despite the fact that those students already account for a majority of enrollment.
In contrast, black and Hispanic children, who account for about 67 percent of all city students, received about 30 percent of Discovery offers, which include slots at such selective high schools as Brooklyn Technical High School and the Bronx High School of Science.
Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza admitted the program isn’t really moving the needle on racial integration and doubled down on his 2018 call to scrap single-test admissions for the top city schools—an effort that faces stiff headwinds in the city and Albany.
