Mayor Bloomberg yesterday defended the entrance test for the city’s top-tier high schools, even as the exam was challenged as discriminatory.
Hizzoner’s statements came in response to a federal complaint filed by a number of advocacy groups alleging that the city’s reliance on a sole measure of merit has been excluding qualified black and Hispanic students from the eight specialized schools.
“It’s strictly on merit, and it’s one of the bright lights in our school system,” Bloomberg said. “There’s nothing subjective about this. You pass the test with the higher score, you get into the school, no matter what your ethnicity, no matter what your economic background.”
Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and a half-dozen other elite high schools accept students based solely on a ranking of their scores on the Specialized High School Admissions Test.
Critics claim the test favors wealthy students whose parents can afford to provide them with extra tutoring.