No Plan for More Diversity at Stuy

By Megan Finnegan

Last Sunday, a group of Stuyvesant High School alumni gathered to address the severe lack of diversity at the school, which has only 5 percent black and Hispanic students. An offshoot of the alumni association, the Black Alumni Diversity Initiative, organized a panel to discuss ways in which the esteemed school could bolster its reputation as a place with fair access, while still maintaining its elite status and rigorous academic standards.

Stanley Teitel, principal of Stuyvesant, used his time to explain why he had discontinued the Discovery program at the school about eight years ago (he could not recall the exact year). The program was created in 1971 as a way to ensure that minority and disadvantaged students had access to specialized high schools. When these students scored a few points below the cutoff on the admissions test, they could be selected to attend a summer Discovery course that would bring them up a few notches and allow them to be offered a seat at that high school in the fall.

“In the old days, when there were only three schools, when I wanted to have a Discovery program, I would select students who already had a seat at Bronx Science, but if they went to the summer program here at Stuyvesant, they might have a chance to attend Stuyvesant in the fall, said Teitel. “So I was basically stealing from Bronx Science, Bronx Science was stealing from Brooklyn Tech.

Teitel said that after the Department of Education created five additional specialized high schools under Chancellor Harold Levy, the parameters of Discovery changed. Whereas previously he had been able to select participants who scored just below the 560 cutoff for Stuyvesant, Teitel said, the DOE told him that he would have to choose students for Discovery from those who had missed entry to all specialized schools's those who scored below the lowest cutoff score, generally less than 470.

This 100-plus point disparity, he said, would make it impossible for Discovery students to get up to par academically with their peers by the time the fall semester began.

“I can"t pick students who just missed the cutoff [for Discovery]. If I could, I would be happy to still have it, said Teitel.

Several people in the audience and on the panel questioned whether the admissions test itself is the best method of determining who are the best students in New York.

Several alumni in the audience spoke to say that they went through the Discovery program and it provided the preparation they needed to exceed at Stuyvesant, but also that the program simply succeeded where their middle schools had failed, in making them aware of and prepared for opportunities presented by the specialized high schools.

“If it weren"t for that [Discovery] program, I wouldn"t have been as successful as I am, said Colin Mapp, who graduated in 1983. He missed the Stuyvesant cut off by three points's after not receiving any support from his middle school in preparing for the test's and went through Discovery.

Recent graduate Xevion Baptiste-Hall also spoke about the difficulties she faced to get to Stuyvesant.

“I was one of those students who suffered from information deficit, said Baptiste-Hall, who took the test's and got in's with only a month"s notice. “Just saying the problem is with the test does a disservice to black and Latino students. There"s a problem with the preparation they receive and there"s a problem with the information.

Tom Allon (president of Manhattan Media, which publishes this paper), who graduated from and once taught English at Stuyvesant, echoed that sentiment as he recalled his time teaching Asian students at the Elite Academy in Flushing, Queens, how to take the test, beginning in 3rd grade. He said the rigorous preparation by some demographic groups sharply contrasts with the lack of information given to other minority populations, and called on Teitel to immediately reinstate Discovery as one means to address the racial disparity that results.

“We"re cheating every single one of [the students] by not making this school more diverse, Allon said.

Joshua Feinman, an alumnus and economist who wrote a case study about the effectiveness of the admissions test, said that while it may be an excellent predictor of student ability, no one can say that for sure.

“There"s never been a study done vetting the system, said Feinman. “That is an enormous violation of pyschometric standards. It"s done everywhere else.

He said that he"s a fan of the specialized high schools and is not out to demonize the test, but called the DOE"s failure to measure its efficacy “unconscionable.

Teitel said that he would not consider including other criteria, such as teacher recommendations or essays, in the admissions process, but did acknowledge that there needs to be more communication from the DOE to middle schools throughout the city about the specialized high schools. The panel concluded with a call to further the discussion, but many potential solutions lie in the hands of Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott and the DOE.