He was hurriedly hired, after the mayor’s first choice, Alberto M. Carvalho, Miami superintendent, refused the position on national television. Mr. Carranza was appointed a few days later.
In his first press conference as chancellor, it was clear that he was much more willing to speak out about school segregation than his boss. And a few months after his inauguration, it seemed that his oratory could be translated into action. In June 2018, the mayor and chancellor announced a plan to get rid of the selective entrance exam that determines admission to the city’s elite high schools, including Stuyvesant High School and Bronx High School of Science.
Black and Latino students are extremely underrepresented in these schools, and low-income Asian American children are overrepresented. Some Asian-American politicians and families were insulted that they had not been consulted about the plan, and many were offended by Carranza’s clumsy defense of the proposal. “I just don’t believe the narrative that any ethnic group owns admission to these schools,” he said shortly after the announcement.
A major reaction to the plan, led by Asian Americans, quickly killed the mayor’s and chancellor’s hopes of replacing the specialized school entrance exam. Parents who have struggled to keep the exam in place since then have become Carranza’s toughest and most consistent critics. Before the pandemic, a group of families accompanied the chancellor in all his public appearances, shouting “Fire Carranza!” and accusing him of prejudice against his children.
De Blasio’s government has not created major new integration policies since that humiliating political defeat in 2018. The pandemic, however, forced the mayor to announce some changes to selective admission policies at the end of last year, including the abolition of a rule that gave students in some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city begin to study there in selective high schools. Carranza and his senior advisers have pressed the mayor for years to get rid of this geographical preference, which applied to students who lived on the Upper East Side, West Village and Tribeca.
Carranza’s language on integration often directly contradicts de Blasio’s position, which has systematically angered the mayor and his press team. The chancellor is in the habit of publicly contradicting the mayor on a number of issues.
A few days after starting work, Carranza called the idea behind the mayor’s nearly $ 800 million school improvement program, called Renovation, “diffuse”. The chancellor later had to defend the program, even after the city canceled it after disappointing results. This trend continued until the last days of Mr. Carranza’s term.