In a Reversal, NYC Tightens Admissions to Some Top Schools - The New York Times

The city loosened selection criteria during the pandemic, policies some parents protested as unfair and others hoped would reduce racial disparities.

New York City’s selective middle schools can once again use grades to choose which students to admit, the school chancellor, David C. Banks, announced on Thursday, rolling back a pandemic-era moratorium that had opened the doors of some of the city’s most elite schools to more low-income students.

Selective high schools will also be able to prioritize top-performing students.

The sweeping move will end the random lottery for middle schools, a major shift after the previous administration ended the use of grades and test scores two years ago. At the city’s competitive high schools, where changes widened the pool of eligible applicants, priority for seats will be limited to top students whose grades are an A average.

The question of whether to base admissions on student performance prompted intense debate this fall. Many Asian American families were particularly vocal in arguing that the lotteries excluded their children from opportunities they had worked hard for. But Black and Latino students are significantly underrepresented at selective schools, and some parents had hoped the previous admissions changes would become permanent to boost racial integration in a system that has been labeled one of the most segregated in the nation.

“It’s critically important that if you’re working hard and making good grades, you should not be thrown into a lottery with just everybody,” Mr. Banks said, noting that the changes were based on family feedback.

New York City has used selective admissions for public schools more than any school district in the country. About a third of the city’s 900 or so middle and high schools had some kind of admissions requirement before the pandemic disrupted many measures to sort students by academic performance.

Students typically rank their top 12 preferences for schools in order. But last spring, some incoming high school students were not offered spots at any of their choices, and were directed to lesser-known programs.

The announcement came as New York City’s education officials are confronting multiple crises in the wake of the pandemic, complicating a dilemma that has bedeviled previous administrations: how to create more equitable schools, while trying to prevent middle-class families from abandoning the system.

State standardized test scores released Wednesday showed that many students fell behind, particularly in math, and that many Hispanic, Black and low-income students continue to lag far behind their white, Asian and higher-income peers. At the same time, the district is bleeding students: Roughly 120,000 families have left traditional public schools over the past five years. Some have left the system, and others have gone to charter schools.

Making the system more racially integrated has been a perennial challenge in a district where Black and Hispanic students make up about two-thirds of the student population, including charter schools. Selective programs often appeal to a broad set of families, but are easier to access for those who have the time and resources to navigate the city’s complex systems.

In the final stages of his term, Mayor Bill de Blasio eliminated or changed some exclusive programs that enrolled large numbers of white and Asian students, with the hope of promoting integration. But those plans often spurred significant resistance.

Mr. Adams often says that city schools have long “betrayed” Black and Latino students. But he has made a different calculation, saying he would keep selective programs while also making more room in them for the children who have long been left out.

The mayor added seats to the city’s gifted and talented classes for elementary students — about 100 for kindergartners and 1,000 for third grade students — rejecting his predecessor’s pledge to phase out the program. He has also expressed support for other steps like increasing the number of seats in specialized high schools or creating new schools.

“They’re perhaps seeing this as a way to shore up and reassure some families who might otherwise leave that the system will still serve their children well,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

Chancellor Banks said he was not imposing a blanket rule for school admissions. Rather, the decisions will be left up to the district superintendents who oversee various regions of the city, and who will work with school communities to make final rules. Diversity initiatives in places like District 15 in southwest Brooklyn, which eliminated middle school screening four years ago, will not be automatically reversed or canceled.

Applications to schools will open earlier this year — for high schools on Oct. 12 and middle schools on Oct. 26. Offers will be released in the early spring months. The timeline leaves less than four weeks for superintendents to make decisions about whether to bring back the use of grades and other metrics, such as attendance, in admissions in the schools they oversee.

Some advocates for integration in the city schools said that the change sent a worrying message.

“It’s just a resounding disappointment,” said Nyah Berg, the executive director of New York Appleseed, an organization that pushes for integrated schools. “To put it on such a short timeline with like no guardrails, I just can’t see and can’t fathom how there could be an equitable community engagement process.”

But Yiatin Chu, the co-founder of Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, a parent group that pushes for accelerated academic options, said that although she had long been invested in city public schools, some of that devotion would have been lost if admissions screening was not reinstated.

“We would be very loud in advocating for parents to look for other options,” Ms. Chu said, adding Thursday that she viewed the changes as “significant improvements.”

About a quarter of the city’s roughly 400 high schools use selective criteria, and they had still been allowed to consider metrics like grades through the pandemic. But state test results were not factored in, and other changes meant that students who made B’s were grouped in a single pool with those who made A’s. About 60 percent of all applicants received top priority, and each student’s lottery number became much more important.

Now, students with A averages in the top 15 percent of their school — or across the city — will be given priority for seats, but state tests will not be considered.

“This is a threshold of excellence,” Mr. Banks said, adding that he does “not accept the notion” that “Black and Latino students do not score above 90.”

Admissions policies at the city’s nine specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant High School, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School, were not changed during the pandemic, and will remain unaffected.

Mr. Banks said Thursday that three new schools for accelerated learning would also be opened — in the South Bronx, southeast Queens and in the Brownsville area of Brooklyn — by fall 2024 to give neighborhoods more local, high-quality options.

The changes would increase access for “communities who have been historically locked out of screened schools,” while rewarding students for high academic performance, Mr. Banks said.

In the first admissions cycle after middle schools adopted a lottery system, city officials said the most selective programs often saw modest rises in the number of seats offered to low-income and non-English speaking students. At the Christa McAuliffe School in Brooklyn, for example, 16 percent of offers went to children learning English as a new language — up from 5 percent.

But integrating selective schools has long been considered a third-rail in the system, and Mr. de Blasio’s changes to admissions in 2020 were rolled out without significant public comment. As the pandemic has eased, the policies became increasingly contentious.

In the lead-up to Thursday’s announcement, parent groups on both sides of the issue rallied en masse, some writing to Mr. Banks in favor of restoring the former system, and others pushing to permanently remove selective criteria.

John Liu, a Democratic state senator and defender of selective admissions, wrote in his own letter that 70 percent of Asian American students received an offer to one of their top five choices for high school — a lower rate than for white, Latino and Black students. Ninety percent of Black schoolchildren were given a top five selection.

Still, so far there has been little evidence that enrollment declines were linked to changes in middle and high school admissions policies.

“The history of desegregation shows the threat of leaving is always something that looms over these debates,” said Stefan Lallinger, a fellow at the left-leaning Century Foundation. “The current administration is going to have to weigh the degree to which that’s actually at play here — versus people trying to link the issues to further their own position.”

Thursday’s announcement prompted mixed reactions from parents across the city.

Linda Quarles, a parent of two high school students in Brooklyn, said she believes “equity is really critical” for the system. But she added that she sees value in her children attending schools where their peers have similar educational goals and ambitions.

“The pure lottery doesn’t achieve that,” she said.

Antonia Martinelli, whose daughter started sixth grade in District 15 this year, said that last year’s admissions process was significantly less stressful than when her oldest son went through it.

“It was absolutely devastating for him, and for me to watch,” Ms. Martinelli said, adding that her son was “in tears” after decisions had been released and he was not accepted at his top choice schools. “He internalized it and felt like a failure. I don’t want to go back to that.”

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