The civil rights complaint filed last week against the city’s Department of Education by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund creates an opportunity for long overdue changes in how students are admitted to New York’s best public high schools.
But racial disparities aren’t the only reason the admissions process at these elite schools should be dismantled as soon as possible. A colleague and I recently conducted a one-of-a-kind study of 165 selective public high schools across the country that also reveals just how archaic — and educationally counterproductive — New York’s test-driven model is.
