Greater Diversity Coming to Top Brooklyn Specialized Schools, City Says

• Pictured: Brooklyn Technical High School. Image via Google Maps

BROOKLYN, NY — City schools leader Carmen Fariña announced a plan Thursday to boost the number of minority students at top specialized public high schools.

Eight of the nine specialized schools, including Brooklyn Latin School in East Williamsburg and Brooklyn Technical High School in Fort Greene, base admissions eligibility on how students score on the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT).

According to the Department of Education (DoE), those eight schools are collectively just 11 percent black and Hispanic, even though black and Hispanic kids make up 68 percent of the city's student body.

What's more, the DoE said just 22 percent of black and Hispanic 8th graders took the test in 2015. By comparison, 52 percent of Asian and white students took the entrance exam.

To address those gaps, Fariña says the city will take a variety of actions, including:

• Hiring new outreach specialists to encourage test participation

• Five pilot schools will offer the test during the school day, making it more accessible to students

• Increasing the number of students receiving test prep from tutoring companies

• Offering free tutoring this summer to as many as 500 high-performing 8th graders through the city's existing DREAM program

• Bringing 100 more students into the city's summer Discovery Program, which already operates at Brooklyn Technical High School and will now also run at the High School of American Studies at Lehman College

• And requiring specialized schools to work on making their climates more accepting of black and Hispanic students, in order to encourage those accepted to attend

According to the city, the initiatives will be up and running before the fall, and will cost $15 million through 2020.

The eight specialized schools that base admissions on the SHSAT should all be impacted by the policies, the city said. They are: 

• The Bronx High School of Science
• Brooklyn Latin School
• Brooklyn Technical High School
• The High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at the City College of New York
• High School of American Studies at Lehman College
• Queens High School for the Sciences at York College
• Staten Island Technical High School
• Stuyvesant High School