Harvard Gates

The Economist Reports School Policy “The dignity of all the talents” The Economist January 11th, 2020 pp18-19

New York [City] “A battle over educating gifted children is brewing in America”.

As the leading example, the article starts with Stuyvesant High School (SHS) the “crown jewel of the public schools” in NYC. Alumni include Nobel laureates and the school is a major feeder to Harvard so getting into this magnet school spells financial success regardless of origins and current economic circumstance. Being admitted is consequently highly competitive with the basis being performance on a single “high-stakes exam and little else”. Being able to boot-strap to financial success, moving out of the lowest earning quartiles, is the “Horatio Alger” stuff for which America is admired worldwide. How does the current SHS student body align? The enrollment composition at SHS is 62% Asian, 24% White, 6% Hispanic, 4.2% Black and 3.5% other versus unscreened schools not requiring the test at 47% Hispanic, 35% Black, 7.2% White, 8.1% Asian and 2.5% other. According to Richard Buery, a SHS grad and a policy chief at KIPP (A Charter School Network), “You have to believe either that there are only seven black kids capable of doing the work of Stuyvesant or there is something horribly wrong”. Understanding “Root Cause” and deriving solutions is extremely complicated. What are the principle drivers? Housing, family economics, equitable education pre-school forward, access to test preparation etc. Read the article for details. See Center for New York City Affairs to grasp data that are likely played-out across urban America https://www.centernyc.org