Due to declining enrollment rates of blacks and Hispanics at the eight prestigious high schools in NYC—among them Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx School of Science—there is a growing push to change the admissions process from one based exclusively on test scores to more “holistic” and subjective standards.

The NAACP and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio (whose son attends one of these eight schools) along with many members of New York’s state legislature are behind the push to amend the admissions process.

Dennis Saffran of the New York Post reported:

Why NYC’s push to change school admissions will punish poor Asians

New York’s specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant and the equally storied Bronx High School of Science, along with Brooklyn Technical High School and five smaller schools, have produced 14 Nobel laureates — more than most countries.

For more than 70 years, admission to these schools has been based upon a competitive examination of math, verbal and logical reasoning skills. In 1971, the state legislature, heading off city efforts to scrap the merit selection test as culturally biased against minorities, reaffirmed that admission to the schools be based on the competitive exam.

But now, troubled by declining black and Hispanic enrollment at the schools, opponents of the exam have resurfaced.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has filed a civil-rights complaint challenging the admissions process. A bill in Albany to eliminate the test requirement has garnered the support of Sheldon Silver, the powerful Assembly speaker.

And new mayor Bill de Blasio, whose son, Dante, attends Brooklyn Tech, has called for changing the admissions criteria. The mayor argues that relying solely on the test creates a “rich-get-richer” dynamic that benefits the wealthy, who can afford expensive test preparation.