First the good news: SAT scores for the city’s high school students went up this past year — by seven points.
The not so good: The gains came from major increases made by white and Asian students. Black and Hispanic scores increased by only 1 point.
The bad news: The achievement gap has just widened.
At about the same time these scores were released, a letter from a distinguished group of black Stuyvesant HS alumni went public: It calls upon Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña to fix the middle schools so minority students have a better shot at being admitted to the city’s most elite public high schools.
We disagree with the Black Alumni Diversity Initiative’s bid to water down admissions tests. But its broader point about how bad middle schools make it hard for these kids to compete is spot on.
Because without schools that do a better job teaching, there’s little hope we will see higher black and Latino SAT scores or more blacks and Latinos meeting standards for admission to the elite high schools.
Unfortunately, the priorities Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Fariña are pushing, most notably, universal pre-K, will do nothing for the children now attending our middle schools.
Not only that, in their war on charters and their attack on elite-school admissions, Bill and Carmen have made their target the schools that actually teach.
Here’s a solution that would help close the gap on both SAT scores and admission to elite public high schools: Instead of lowering standards, why not increase parental choice — and give black and Latino kids the option of a good middle school?