Black Enrollments Plummet at Elite New York City High Schools

Last month JBHE broke the story that black enrollments at some of the most prestigious campuses of the City University of New York had dropped by more than 25 percent. This occurred after the university’s announcement that remedial education courses would be eliminated and stricter admissions requirements would be instituted. Now The New York Times, which reported the JBHE research on CUNY, has followed up with a report on black enrollments at selective New York City public high schools.

Students are admitted to these elite high schools based on their verbal and mathematics scores on a standardized admissions test. The Times study found that black enrollments at the Bronx High School of Science had dropped from 11.8 percent in 1995 to 4.8 percent in the 2005-06 school year. At Brooklyn Technical High School, the percentage of blacks in the student body dropped from 37.3 percent to 14.9 percent in the same period. At the highly regarded Stuyvesant High School in downtown Manhattan, blacks made up only 2.2 percent of the student body, about half the percentage that existed 11 years ago.

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