A lawsuit filed against New York City’s public school system alleges that the city discriminates against African-American and Latino students.
The suit, filed Tuesday, takes aim at the city’s gifted programs, which it alleges create a caste system pitting white and Asian students against African-American and Latino students. The plaintiffs are demanding that New York City schools eliminate entrance tests to gifted programs.
Breaking News: A major lawsuit accused New York City of maintaining a segregated school system through admissions to gifted programs and selective schools.https://t.co/Qk2X6s99bf
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 9, 2021
“This is the first case in the nation to seek a constitutional right to an anti-racist education,” lead attorney Mark Rosenbaum told the New York Times.
“This would be the ugliest trial in New York history if the city and state insist on trying” its education and admissions practices, Rosenbaum promised.
The plaintiffs on the new suit, Integrate NYC, want to prohibit the use of “competitive screens” that “operate in a racially discriminatory manner” when determining admission to New York’s top schools. Screens may consist of grades, test scores, “student interviews, attendance and punctuality records, and essays or auditions.” New York City previously announced in Dec. 2020 that it would no longer use standardized tests to determine entry to its top middle schools.
New York City’s elementary school level gifted classes are 75% white and Asian-American, according to the New York Times, despite the fact that New York City public schools are about 70% black and Latino.
The Integrate NYC plaintiffs further allege that New York City schools are so “suffused with… various forms of racism” that they constitute a “state-sanctioned demeaning of children based on their race.” They point to “a Eurocentric curriculum that centers white experience, marginalizing the experiences and contributions of people of color” as particularly damaging to non-white students, because it contributes to an understanding of “marginalized communities” as “victims.”
Progressive activists are increasingly taking aim at standardized tests, which they allege produce racial inequities. (RELATED: University Of California Drops SAT And ACT Requirements, Claims Tests Are Discriminatory)
Standardized testing is a pillar of systemic racism.
— Jamaal Bowman (@JamaalBowmanNY) March 2, 2021
The San Francisco Board of Education voted on Feb. 9 to end admission based on test scores and grades to Lowell High School, one of the nation’s top public high schools. Proponents of the lottery-based admissions process that the Board instituted complained that Lowell is not diverse enough. That school is currently 50.6% Asian-American.