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I would take such stats with a grain of salt. I attended Brooklyn Tech and personally some students who got into these specialized schools due to the proctor allowing cheating and even giving out answers. The friends in question were from Spanish Harlem and Ozone Park.
Also, don;t forget to take into consideration special programs like Discovery designed to help certain students gain admission. I think it had to do with socio-economic factors which would nonetheless include blacks and hispanics.
My OP is about students offered a seat who scored high enough on the SHSAT to earn their seat outright. No one was part of the Discovery Program. No special admissions here. I want to also reiterate that there was a time when there was more diversity in these schools. My graduating class was about 40 percent black. Same test. No one can say that black people are not capable of gaining entry into a specialized hs. We've already done it. By the way, Stuy was 10 percent black during my brother's tenure there. A few students get admitted after successfully completing the Discovery Program (which now only Tech and Latin offer) but those offers won't be determined until after the program concludes in the summer.
Did I hurt your feelings? My cuz got into Stuy and he went thru the Discovery program? And guess what, he is Asian. Actually, he recently immigrated to the US and his father was the sole bread winner in the family. I didn't say the Discovery program was exclusive. There are a variety of factors that are used to gain admission to such a program. I merely pointed out my experience and my friends, who told me how they were able to get and how lax the procters were. Just because you don;t know anyone personally who has such experiences doesn;t mean it never happened. Some made the best out of it, while others didn;t.
Sorry if the truth hurts but it is what it is.
Why would the truth hurt? I got in based on my score on that test. I just don't like the insinuation that some blacks/latinos get in because of cheating. Besides, you pointing out that your friends were from East Harlem/Ozone Park is irrelevant because the test is taken at the specialized high schools, not their neighborhood high school.
Like I said it an online forum and I don't really care. The funny thing is that you and others think it's an elite academic hs but I beg to differ.
What is the basis for your opinion? Perhaps a few people cheated and got in but it is by no means pervasive. I went to Stuy, did very well and got into an Ivy League school like a bunch of my peers and we weren't even the top students. Of course you will have slackers like anywhere else but they were in the minority and did not drag down the entire school with their presence. Most of the students there were driven to succeed and we had very capable teachers to help us along. I don't know how you want to define "elite" but for students who didn't have families with the money to send them to esteemed private high schools, these specialized high schools were the best launchpad to a great education and career.
My OP is about students offered a seat who scored high enough on the SHSAT to earn their seat outright. No one was part of the Discovery Program. No special admissions here. I want to also reiterate that there was a time when there was more diversity in these schools. My graduating class was about 40 percent black. Same test. No one can say that black people are not capable of gaining entry into a specialized hs. We've already done it. By the way, Stuy was 10 percent black during my brother's tenure there. A few students get admitted after successfully completing the Discovery Program (which now only Tech and Latin offer) but those offers won't be determined until after the program concludes in the summer.
ignore mistertee's comments... Not only does he not know how to speak proper english, but his comments seemed to be laced with prejudice... I agree with the other poster that said his comments should be taken with a grain of salt...
@ Mistertee if you were to provide anything to support such a notion other than "I've heard", "I've seen", "My friend told me"... then maybe your post would have even some remote credibility, but since it doesn't your post is just random nonsense and should be taken as such...
I point out race because that change downward was so dramatic and even we who are alumni didn't realize. We started doing advocacy and suddenly the needle moved. Maybe just slightly but it is a cause for us to rejoice. We want every kid in NYC to get a top notch education, and our teams of alums spoke with every parent or child who came to our table at the HS fair regardless of their race.
This is a beautiful thing.
I dislike how some posts seem to imply that Black and Latin people born into lower economic circumstances, stay in those circumstances. Maybe some people are in denial that the parents of some of these teens have moved into the middle class, or that the teen could be a 2nd, 3rd or 4th generation middle class NYer. Not all NYers left the 5 boros. Some families have been here for 80 or more years now, even from the Caribbean and Latin countries, as well as decendents of southern migrants.
While some middle class NYer's of all races have left the city. Some lower incomes families have left for better opportunities elsewhere as well. Some have made it into the middle classes, and their children are in honors programs in their new cities and towns. This article is about local schools so it doesn't address this.
Also what about the excellent students that we have in the city that happen to be Black or Latino, and are born into lower income families that are accepted into these schools. Do only lower income Asians have a monopoly on this? Some of these posts tend to imply that if you are not Asian you cannot be poor and get accepted into these schools.
Also implied: There are of course no poor White NYer's, so therefore all White teens accepted into these schools must be at least middle class.
This is still America and it is possible for people to go up and down the economic ladder several times in a lifetime.
This is good follow up thread to the one that stated that Black and Latin students are rarely accepted into these schools, and that their parents don't care about education.
The post quoted above shows that maybe more information and outreach is the solution.
I don't think so. I think it is because people found out about the schools and knew they had to prepare for the exam. Actually, in the case of African American/blacks, the reverse of what you've stated above has happened.
This is not as true as one would hope and as some of us still hope. Early cultural training is quite difficult to reverse or even impact, for better or worse.
The observations of the above two posters are far closer to the reality.
People should exercise caution about over-optimism. We would like to reach those at the bottom regardless of race, therefore, race per se is not the best indicator of, well, anything. We should ask, how many born into what would be termed "generational poverty" are we reaching ?
The answer to that would be, again and unfortunately, not nearly as many as has been hoped.
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ignore mistertee's comments... Not only does he not know how to speak proper english, but his comments seemed to be laced with prejudice... I agree with the other poster that said his comments should be taken with a grain of salt... 
