NYC Announces Elite Schools Can Once Again Consider Academic Merit For Admittance, Abandoning Pandemic-Era Lottery

According to The Washington Post, NYC is abandoning their pandemic-era “equity” plan that required “some of the city’s most sought-after [school] programs” to abandon merit-based admittance in favor of a lottery that entirely disregarded academic merit. The plan was “aimed at injecting racial and economic diversity into a segregated system.”

Under the new rules,

“A smaller group of top students will qualify for a lottery into the most sought-after high schools. And for middle school, the city’s 32 districts will have the option of bringing back admission criteria that advantage those with the best grades or other metrics. Each district will make its own decision after gathering input, though they have only a few weeks before final rules are put in place in late October.”

The Washington Post claims,

“Mayor Eric Adams and his schools chief, David C. Banks, have made clear they want to reward merit in admissions decisions, and backers say this is critical to retaining privileged families who will leave the public schools if their children are not placed on campuses they say are equipped to serve them best.”

Schools Chief David C. Banks said that hardworking students “deserve to be rewarded for that.”

“This process, I think, will ensure more top-tier students, students who achieve, will get into the schools of their choice.”

Opponents of the new rules that allow for merit-based criteria say it will “box out many Black, Latino and low-income students from top schools and drive segregation in the city schools.” New York Appleseed advocacy group said,

“Competitive admission methods that are built on the premise of exclusivity have no place in public school systems that are meant to serve all students.”

Basically, they’re all advertising for school choice. Fund students, not systems. Then all students can have access to the funding that can provide the educational tools that give them the greatest options for educational success. All the Black, Latino, and low-income students that the New York Appleseed group think will be excluded because they apparently think they aren’t smart enough to compete academically (can you say RACIST?) would have the funding to go to private schools or access private tutors to compete academically. Why relegate them to failing public schools when you could fund students and give them every possible opportunity for educational success?