A new court case opened on Tuesday could force fundamental changes in the way New York public school students are admitted to selective schools, and marked the last front of a growing political, activist and now legal movement to tackle inequality in the largest school system in the country.
Even if the lawsuit, filed by civil rights lawyers and student plaintiffs at the Manhattan State Supreme Court, does not alter the city’s admissions system, it will likely lead to scrutiny of the New York school system, considered to be one of the most racially and socioeconomically segregated from the country .
The suit argues that the city’s school system replicated and worsened racial inequality by classifying children in different academic segments already in kindergarten, and therefore denied many of its approximately one million students the right to a solid basic education. . Defendants include Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the school’s new chancellor, Meisha Porter.
If claimants are successful, the city may be forced to restructure or even eliminate current admission policies for hundreds of selective schools, including programs for the gifted and talented and high school with academic selection.
The process can also accelerate pressure on Ms. Porter to articulate a school integration plan. The chancellor who is leaving office, Richard A. Carranza, resigned because of disagreements with the mayor over the aggressiveness of seeking desegregation.
And the crowded field of Democrats who are competing to become the next mayor will likely have to deal with the lawsuit’s claims about the school system. The primary election that will almost certainly determine the next mayor is less than four months away.
“This is the first case in the country to pursue the constitutional right to anti-racist education,” said Mark Rosenbaum, one of the lawyers who is suing the city and the state.
Mr. Rosenbaum, director of Public Counsel Opportunity Under Law, a pro bono law firm based in Los Angeles, is accompanied in the case by prominent civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, along with law firm Sidley Austin and IntegrateNYC, a young led integration group.
Danielle Filson, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education, defended the city’s record on school desegregation. “This government has taken bold and unprecedented steps to promote equity in our admission policies,” she said in a statement. “Our persistent work to boost equity for families in New York City is underway and we are going to review the process.”
Rosenbaum’s group has sued several states and school systems in recent years, mainly Detroit public schools, for failing to provide students with a basic education guaranteed by the Constitution. The law firm also sued the state of California last year for failing to provide solid basic education through distance learning.
In the Detroit case, a federal court concluded last year that the district had been so negligent of students’ educational needs that children were “deprived of access to literacy.” The court then declared that public school students had a constitutional right to adequate education. The claimants later reached an agreement with Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer to fund more literacy programs in Detroit public schools.
The New York process highlights the lack of non-white teachers in relation to the student population, which is almost 70% black and Latino, and the disproportionately high suspension rates for non-white students compared to their white colleagues.
But he focuses mainly on the issue that pushed New York’s divided school district into the national spotlight: the classification of students as young as 4 years old for selective classes. New York depends more on academic prerequisites, such as test scores, grades and attendance to place students in public schools than any other school district in America.
The city’s gifted and talented classes for elementary school students are about 75% white and Asian-American, and there are relatively few gifted programs located in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods. White students, who represent only 15 percent of the general district, are heavily represented in selective elementary and high schools.
About 40 percent of the city’s high schools use academic screens as grades and test scores to determine which students should be admitted, and many high schools, including elite schools like Stuyvesant High School, rank students by skill or require students to take a high-risk admission entrance exam.
In 2019, about three-quarters of black and Latino students went to schools with a student population of less than 10% white, and more than a third of white students attended schools with a mostly white population, according to data collected by the City Council.
Although New York is unique among school districts in large cities for its dependence on high-risk admissions in all grades, the process may be relevant in other districts. Some systems, including those in San Francisco, Boston and Fairfax County, Va., Have recently changed admission processes for some of their selective high schools, but racial and socioeconomic segregation is still common in many school districts across the country.
The New York State Constitution guarantees all students the right to a solid basic education, and other states have equivalent clauses, said Amanda Savage, a lawyer for the Public Council, during a news conference on Tuesday.
“We absolutely believe that all students across the country are entitled to anti-racist education,” said Savage, noting that the extent of New York’s segregation has made it a “particularly powerful place” to open the process.
Decades of research have shown that integration can improve academic outcomes for non-white students, in particular because desegregation causes money and other resources to be distributed more evenly across schools.
“Almost every facet of New York City’s public education system operates not only to sustain, but also to affirmatively reproduce the artificial racial hierarchies that have subordinated people of color for centuries in the United States,” says the complaint.
Mr. de Blasio announced some changes in selective admissions in recent months, largely driven by the pandemic. He suspended competitive high school admissions for one year, with a permanent decision to attend before leaving office.
The mayor also created a new temporary admission system for 4-year-olds vying for a place in gifted classrooms. Instead of having these children take a highly criticized exam, they will be referred to programs for gifted by their preschool teachers or for an interview.
Integration activists see this as a palliative measure that will do little to diversify schools. It is not yet clear how the city will admit students in gifted classes starting next year.
In 2018, the mayor tried and failed to put pressure on the state legislature to eliminate the entrance exam for the city’s so-called specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant High School. The entrance exam for these schools is largely controlled by Albany.
The plaintiff’s request for relief includes the elimination of selective admission processes for all levels of education, which would represent the most dramatic change in the city’s school system in decades.
“This would be the ugliest trial in New York history if the city and state insisted on trying these practices,” said Rosenbaum, adding that he hopes the city will change its admission policies quickly.
While a complete restructuring of the city’s selective admission policies seems unlikely, a judge may require the city to change some of its admission protocols or find other ways to ensure that selective schools are more representative of the city’s student population.
But even the educational decisions of reference do not always bring about clear changes.
A New York judge ruled in 2001 that the state’s public school funding system was deficient and violated students’ rights to basic education. This decision, handed down more than a decade after the process was first opened, soon became a public awareness campaign on school funding issues. It is often cited by politicians and activists, but much of the money owed to schools has yet to be distributed.