This week, officials said the percentage of black and Hispanic students at the school would increase — though only by a tiny amount — as the city makes use of a program that exploits a loophole in the admissions process for the elite schools.
But even the modest change has ignited a new debate, with the program turning into an unexpected flashpoint in the discussion over affirmative action.
Admissions into the city’s eight specialized high schools are dictated by a standardized test protected by state law. The fate of that exam has become one of the most divisive issues in city politics, making it difficult for Mayor Bill de Blasio to adopt even minor changes to the admissions process.
The battle now includes the program Discovery, which was designed in the 1970s to help funnel more low-income students, including black and Hispanic children, into elite schools.
The fight over Discovery has thrust New York City into the middle of a debate that is playing out at private universities across the country, including Harvard, over whether admissions policies aimed at enrolling more black and Hispanic students in elite schools discriminate against Asian-Americans.
Opponents, led by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a prominent libertarian law firm that has challenged affirmative action policies, claim that the expansion of Discovery violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause because it could prevent some Asian-American students from being admitted into the specialized schools.
John C. Yoo, a member of Pacific Legal Foundation’s board and a former official in the George W. Bush administration, said in February that an expanded Discovery program could be a tipping point for efforts to boost diversity in admissions across the country.
“If the courts allow New York to get away with this, it will be open season on the use of race in every school district in the country,” he said at an event at the Harvard Club of New York City.
“The bureaucrats who run these school districts have swallowed hook, line and sinker the idea of racial diversity” as an essential part of education in America, added Yoo, who is best known as the legal architect of Bush’s so-called torture memos.
De Blasio’s administration and critics of the admissions process have pointed out how minimally the program changes demographics at schools, even though the city expanded Discovery this year as part of a broader plan to diversify them. Under Discovery, students from low-income families who barely miss the cutoff score for admission take summer classes to prepare for the schools.
“We’re using every tool at our disposal to increase diversity at the specialized high schools, but despite the incremental progress we’re making through the Discovery program, the status quo remains the same,” schools chancellor Richard A. Carranza said.
Now that opponents of affirmative action have set their sights on Discovery, civil rights groups, including the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union, have joined the city’s legal fight to defend the program on behalf of black and Hispanic students.
“The city’s new policies are not nearly enough to dismantle the unacceptably stark racial disparities in these schools,” said Rachel Kleinman, a senior counsel at the Legal Defense Fund. “But it’s a first step that must be first fiercely defended and then further expanded upon.”
New data released Wednesday laid bare how little an expanded Discovery program will diversify the specialized schools.
The number of seats reserved for students who gain entry through Discovery doubled to 500 this year, from about 250 seats last year, across the eight specialized schools. Black and Hispanic students received about 100 more Discovery offers compared to last year.
Under the expanded Discovery program, the total number of offers for black and Hispanic students for the eight specialized schools will creep up to 14 percent from about 10 percent, and will increase to about 16 percent next year when the growth of the program is complete.
Asian-American students are benefiting most from Discovery, which makes the program a curious target for those who believe it discriminates against Asian-Americans, who now make up a majority of the student body at the schools. Asian-American students received about 54 percent of total Discovery offers this year, up from 43 percent last year.
Roughly 6 percent of the schools’ freshman classes were filled by Discovery students last year; under the mayor’s plan, each school will be required to reserve 20 percent of its seats for students in Discovery by next year.
Discovery’s numbers will likely change before July, when students enter classes, because some may accept offers at other public and private high schools or move out of the city.
The program is one of the few parts of the specialized school admissions process that the city actually controls, which is likely why the decades-old program has gotten recent attention.
De Blasio’s plan to scrap the admissions exam, which must be approved by the state Legislature, and create a new system that enrolls the top performers at each city middle school into elite high schools has been met with a fierce backlash. Alumni say it would water down the schools’ quality, and Asian-American parents argue the plan is biased against their children.
The city has projected that eliminating the exam would transform the specialized schools’ demographics from about 10 percent black and Hispanic to about 45 percent, and an independent analysis found that offers to Asian-American students would drop from about 60 percent to 30 percent.
The schools’ alumni organizations, which have strong ties to state politicians, generally support Discovery as a way to integrate the schools without eliminating the exam.
While the mayor’s plan to eliminate the test appears all but dead in Albany, the battle over Discovery is ongoing.
Earlier this year, a federal judge in Manhattan denied Pacific Legal’s request for a preliminary injunction against the expansion of Discovery, setting up a longer battle over the program.
“It is not likely that the Discovery program changes were motivated by discrimination,” the judge wrote in his opinion, and the plaintiffs were therefore “not likely to succeed on their equal protection claim.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.