Racial, economic disparities persist in NYC school placements in spite of policy changes
More NYC students and families received offers to their top-choice public schools and programs for this fall, though racial and economic disparities remained, city data released Thursday show.
After a series of policy changes last year, the top-performing applicants from each middle school were given priority for the programs they listed. Students with comparable marks were grouped together and matched with schools based on a lottery.
Overall, three-quarters of eighth graders who applied to public high schools got an offer at one of their top three choices, the same rate as last year, the data show. Roughly 5,800 eighth graders were matched with a high school they did not apply to, impacting several hundred fewer families than last year.
“These students tended to list fewer application choices,” Education Department spokesman Nathaniel Styer said of the families who were not matched.
The share of offers for many of the most competitive high schools — where students are screened for top marks in core subjects — going to Black students and low-income families decreased slightly from last year.
Styer said the figures were “slightly more racially representative of the city” compared to fall 2021.
Admissions policies did not change at eight specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Technical, which still admit students solely based on how they perform on one standardized test. (Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, the city’s ninth specialized high school requires auditions.)
Following a years-long trend, a small proportion of spots went to Black and Latino students for next fall.
Close to 10% of seats at the specialized schools went to Black and Hispanic students, the report showed — even though they make up close to two thirds of the overall student population. At Stuyvesant, just seven out of 760 offers went to Black applicants.
Among the city’s youngest learners, more applicants — seven in 10 — received their top choice preschool program for 3-year-olds than last year. Still, 14% of applicants didn’t receive an offer to any choice on their application, data showed.
The share of families consistently shut out of their programs of choice — whether they are close to home or places of work, or offer hours best suited to their jobs — has led to bitter disagreement between Mayor Adams and the City Council.
Adams decided to scale back a planned expansion of 3-K as 30,000 spots continue to sit empty, according to a new report from the consulting firm Accenture released Thursday.
“Empty seats … are often not in the communities where demand is highest — resulting in some families being placed on a waitlist while other parts of the city have thousands of empty seats,” Styer said.
But Council members have pushed the Education Department to bolster recruitment for the program, citing the needs of working families.
“The Council, alongside advocates and parents has pushed the administration to make these adjustments for months and letters, hearings and other efforts,” Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) said at a recent press conference.
“We’re continuing to sound the alarm because our early childhood education system is in full crisis mode,” she added.
