Opinion

Top schools need top kids — and race is irrelevant

The Issue: Claims that entrance exams for the city’s elite high schools discriminate against minorities.

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Michael Benjamin’s column about the criteria for admission to the city’s toughest high schools is dead on (“Don’t Dare Mess With Bronx Science,” PostOpinion, Oct. 3).

You cannot dumb down the caliber of the students or reduce the difficulty of the test. You either know the answers to the toughest questions or you don’t.

I knew students in the 1960s who came every day from Staten Island and Far Rockaway to attend Bronx Science.

Knowledge has to be gained by applying oneself in the hardest way to the necessary courses, which should be taught by the best teachers.

Ray Hackinson

Ozone Park

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in crying racism in our elite public schools, such as Brooklyn Tech and Bronx Science.

The entrance exam is designed to select those individuals who are qualified and who will do the best job and succeed.

It has nothing to do with race, as the tests are racially neutral. It is our politicians and so-called community leaders who are crying racism at every turn.

If you can pass the test, then you are selected, based on that grade. If you push unqualified students into one of our elite high schools, then they will surely fail.

Edward Carey

Staten Island

Government-mandated equal opportunity should be our goal, not government-mandated equal outcomes. The latter destroys the concept of merit and is corrosive to the idea of exemplary individual effort.

The LDF is correct to be concerned about low minority representation in merit-based city high schools but is wrong to revert to the charge of racist exams to explain this.

Bottom-up reclamation of minority educational opportunity is far preferable to top-down destruction of a time-honored equal-opportunity meritocracy.

Paul Bloustein

Cincinnati