New Report: De Blasio's Plan to Racially Integrate Schools Overlooks NYC Demographics

NEW YORK, NY – Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza seek to change the racial makeup of New York City’s middle schools by altering admissions rules for those schools that screen students, hoping to improve educational opportunities for black and Hispanic students.

However, in his new report, “Closing the Racial Achievement Gap in NYC Schools – Integration Is Not Enough,” Manhattan Institute Director for Education Policy Raymond Domanico finds the racial and geographic mix of students attending city schools will naturally limit attempts to increase diversity.

There are many selective middle schools, largely black and Hispanic, whose students attain higher scores on exams than the citywide average scores, Domanico notes. These higher-achieving public schools show that academic improvement is possible regardless of a student body’s ethnic mix.

Domanico notes:

• Proponents of greater integration efforts point to the longstanding measurable differences in educational outcome across racial groups and the racial isolation of many schools in the system. Not only did black and Hispanic children start out behind their Asian and white peers on annual exams, but they lost ground as they moved through the grades. Atop that, of the city’s 262 middle schools, 192 have one race in the majority.
• However, only 16 percent of the city’s public middle school students are white. That is not a lot of slots to rearrange in order to attain greater racial integration. Even if efforts were made to benefit black and Hispanic students, these middle schools contain only a small handful of seats that can be made available to black or Hispanic students.
• Improving educational opportunities for black and Hispanic students on a large scale needs to move beyond racial integration efforts and will require improving the schools they now attend, as well as supporting high performing charter schools.

Click here to read the full report