Johnny vs. Tony

From City Limits:

The two men agree on most policy issues. They both disagree, for instance, with Mayor de Blasio’s bid to change the entrance process for the city’s specialized high schools. Voters will, of course, decide what the race is about, but if the candidates have anything to say about it, the contest will come down to whether the supposed practical benefits of Avella’s having joined the IDC outweigh the allege damage that did to the chances for a Democratic senate.

Both men appeared on Max & Murphy on WBAI this Wednesday. Below are each of their interviews:

A public service announcement

BDB proposes change to admissions procedures for specialized schools

From the NY Times:

In the face of growing pressure to tackle New York City’s widespread school segregation, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Saturday a proposal that would change how students are admitted to eight of the city’s specialized high schools, a group of highly sought-after institutions where students gain entry based on a single test.

Black and Hispanic students, who make up 67 percent of the public school population, are grossly underrepresented at the specialized high schools, which include Stuyvesant High School and the Bronx High School of Science.

Mr. de Blasio campaigned on the issue when he first ran for mayor in 2013, saying the specialized schools should “reflect the city better,” but he has yet to make a dent in the problem. This year, black and Latino students received just 10 percent of the offered seats at specialized high schools, a percentage that has held essentially flat for years.

The most significant change Mr. de Blasio proposed was replacing the test, called the SHSAT, with a new method that would admit students based on their class rank at their middle school and their scores on statewide standardized tests. That change would require approval from the State Legislature, which has shown little appetite for such a move. A bill outlining those changes was introduced in the Assembly on Friday.

Mr. de Blasio announced another, smaller change on Saturday, one the city can do on its own. Beginning in the fall of 2019, the city would set aside 20 percent of seats in each specialized school for low-income students who score just below the cutoff; those students would be able to earn their spot by attending a summer session called the Discovery program. Five percent of seats for this year’s ninth graders were awarded this way, the city said.

A spokesman for the city’s Education Department said the way students were chosen for the Discovery program would also change. Currently, poor students with certain scores from all over the city qualify, but under the new plan, the city would target students from high-poverty schools instead. Those schools tend to have a higher proportion of black or Hispanic students.

Danny Dromm makes up rules to silence opposition

From City and State:

After waiting for more than eight hours to testify at a New York City Council hearing on Dec. 11, a former state assemblyman was not allowed to speak—because he would not bend his knee and pledge his troth to the committee chair.

Chair of the Education Committee Daniel Dromm told former Assemblyman Michael Benjamin that “the rules of the Council” dictate all members of the public swear or affirm that they are telling the truth before they testify at a Council hearing—even though the rules only specify that government officials be sworn in.

Benjamin, who represented a district in the Bronx for four terms in the Assembly and is now a columnist for City & State, waited in City Hall all day to speak in opposition to a resolution calling on the state Legislature to impose racial diversity on the city’s elite high schools by changing their rigid admission standards. Benjamin, an African-American who attended the top-rated Bronx High School of Science, and who favors the current system, was ordered by Dromm to raise his right hand and swear that his testimony would be truthful, or else he would not be allowed to testify.

“You are not a court of law, and you have no oversight over me,” said Benjamin to Dromm in a heated exchange. “The fact that I am here proves that I want to give testimony, period.”

“The rules of the Council,” responded Dromm, after consulting with his colleague Brad Lander, chairman of the Rules Committee, “require that you be sworn in.” He then dismissed the panel without allowing Benjamin to voice his perspective.

Though Dromm spoke as though he were respecting ancient standards of protocol, the Council’s rules regarding swearing in have been around only since May of 2014, and explicitly do not “require” members of the public to be sworn in.

Council Rule 7.50.e, adopted as part of a package of progressive rules reform earlier this year, states, “The chairperson of each committee shall ensure that representatives of [c]ity governmental entities affirm prior to testifying at a committee meeting that their testimony is truthful to the best of their knowledge, information and belief.”

People who line up to give testimony have not been summoned before the Council: They come forward on their own volition to petition their government or to air a grievance. The barriers to do so are high enough: finding out when a committee meets, attending during the workday, and waiting, sometimes for hours. All this to get the floor for two or three minutes to speak—usually only to the committee chair and some staffers, because the rest of the Council members have left—and then to be waved off for the next panel. These concerned citizens, unlike the cynics and hacks they face, actually believe that their opinions matter, and that these hearings are not just a showcase for elected egos.

DeBlasio planning to destroy something that actually works

From Huffington Post:

Even though nearly 70 percent of New York City's public school students are black or Hispanic, very few will be attending the city's most elite public schools when the doors open next week. According to some alumni of these specialized high schools, that doesn't mean their admissions systems are necessarily unfair.

The chance to attend one of the eight exam-based institutions -- like Stuyvesant High School -- depends on the student's score on the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT). These schools are considered among the city's best, and competition to get in can be fierce.

"In my opinion, the test system is purely on the basis of merit. There's no room for discrimination or bias," Larry Cary, president of the Brooklyn Tech Alumni Foundation, told The Huffington Post.

Cary is part of the newly formed Coalition of the Specialized High School Alumni Organizations, which represents over 100,000 graduates of those New York City schools. This week, the group announced that it believes the admissions process based on a single exam should remain unchanged.

According to data from the NYC Department of Education, black and Hispanic students last year made up only 12 percent of incoming ninth-graders offered spots at the exam-based high schools. This year, the numbers are basically the same: The share of black and Hispanic students accepted to the prestigious schools adds up to 11.5 percent.

The New York state legislature established the entrance exam system in the early 1970s for Stuyvesant, Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Technical High School. As more specialized schools opened, they adopted the same system for the most part. (The city has a ninth specialized school, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, that chooses its students based on a combination of auditions and academics.)

Over the years, there have been attempts to reform the admissions process to ensure that the benefits of attending the best public high schools reach all communities in the city. Just this June, state legislators introduced a bill that would require the specialized high schools to factor multiple measures, such as GPA, into their admission decisions, as opposed to relying only on the SHSAT.

The Coalition of the Specialized High School Alumni Organizations disagrees with that approach. The group argues instead for a new initiative to give underrepresented communities access to better SHSAT test preparation and for a policy of letting students on the cusp of admittance apply again.

There are bright children of all races. The reason why there are fewer Black and Hispanic students accepted into prestigious schools is mainly because they tend to be stuck going to shitty middle schools which don't prepare them adequately for test taking of this caliber. So instead of fixing the middle schools, DeBlasio wants to dumb down the admissions process. Of course, the graduates of these schools are smarter than DeBlasio.