Amidst charges of sexually abusive teachers, depressing teacher evaluations and high student arrest numbers, the Department of Education finally had some good news to report yesterday. After years of decline, the number of black and Latino students accepted into the city's top specialized high schools went up 14 percent this year!
5,997 students were offered spots in the city's specialized high schools this year (out of 28,000 applicants) and the number of black and Latinos in that group rose to 730. So there is still room for improvement. For example, at the department's "crown jewel" Stuyvesant—which has 3,300 students, 72.5 percent of whom are Asian—this year 51 black and Latino students were accepted, up 42 percent from 2009's dismal 36 student showing (1.2 percent of the school's population is black). Luckily, kids who didn't get in to the specialized schools needn't worry: Some economists say that getting into the specialized high schools doesn't really make a difference.
Meanwhile, there was one other bit of good admissions news for the DOE. After failing to match 10.5 percent of eighth graders to a high school last year, this year the Department managed to get that number down to 9.6 percent. In other words, 7,391 poor kids will now have to go through the high school selection process again before they start high school in the fall.
