Teachers, Alumni Support HS Tutoring Program Changes

Two weeks after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed to change the single-test admissions process that controls eight of the city's specialized high schools, attention has shifted to one of the changes that begins immediately, affecting admissions for September, 2019.

The Discovery program is a summer program for a very particular subset: students who took the specialized high school test but just missed the cut-off score, completed an application form, demonstrated academic skill and can show they came from a disadvantaged economic background. According to the June 3 announcement, Discovery will expand in size and focus more on the economic needs of students' middle schools rather than their families.

A group of three teachers at Brooklyn Technical High School told WNYC they looked forward to welcoming more Discovery kids to their school.                

"I have several kids who went through the Discovery program and are doing great,” said Rachel Germany, who teaches juniors and seniors at Brooklyn Technical High School, the largest of the specialized high schools.  

Her colleague Adam Stevens taught at several non-specialized high schools before coming to Brooklyn Tech. He said good students can be found everywhere. 

"I had plenty, plenty, plenty students at Paul Robeson and Erasmus who would have been just fine if they were in my classroom here at Brooklyn Tech," he said. 

With these changes education officials said they expected offers to black and Latino students to nearly double in 2019. Last year, two-thirds of offers to join the Discovery program went to Asian students.

In his op-ed published in Chalkbeat the mayor said changes to Discovery "will immediately bring a wider variety of high-performing students, from a wider number of middle schools, to the specialized high schools. For example, the percentage of black and Latino students receiving offers will almost double, to around 16 percent from around 9 percent. The number of middle schools represented will go from around 310 to around 400."

Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said the changes would support students from a wide range of communities, not just Black and Latino students.

“When we’re clear about the fact that we’re going to be targeting through the Discovery program high-poverty students, that’s really important, and high-poverty student exist across all ethnic groups,” he told WNYC.

Even the staunchest proponents of the single-test based admissions — specialized high school alumni groups — welcomed the changes to Discovery. What they didn't like was how they were rolled out.

“The mayor’s plan came as a surprise,” said Christina Alfonso, head of the Stuyvesant Alumni Association, adding that her group has long advocated for ways to “improve the pipeline” to bring in more underrepresented students to specialized schools.

Alfonso told WNYC that the association sent a letter to the Chancellor a few weeks before the announcement that outlined a proposal to offer academic test prep to middle school students in disadvantaged school districts through to the Discovery program. She said education officials never responded.

Larry Cary, president of the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation, said his organization has similarly advocated for proposals to shift who got admitted to the schools.

“We’re not just trying to keep the status quo,” he said. “The issue for us is how do you go about doing it and preserve these schools as the exceptional schools that they are without opening the doors to politics, favoritism, and discrimination.”