Metro

Testy over exam

The city’s process for selecting students for admission into its eight elite high schools discriminates against qualified black and Hispanic applicants, according to a federal complaint that’s expected to be filed today.

A coalition of parent and advocacy groups is asking the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to investigate its claim that the city’s reliance on a single, 2.5-hour exam for entrance into top-tier schools such as Stuyvesant and Bronx Science has created unfair racial and ethnic disparities.

In 2011, 35 percent of Asian-American test-takers and 31 percent of white test-takers qualified for one of the city’s selective high schools that require the exam, called the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, for admission.

That same year, just 5 percent of black test-takers and 6.7 percent of Hispanic test-takers were offered slots at one of those schools — a pattern that goes back years, according to the Coalition for Educational Justice, New York Communities for Change (formerly ACORN) and other groups.

“We’re not making claims that there’s intentional discrimination by the [city’s] Department of Education or that the test itself is biased,” said Rachel Kleinman, assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

“This is a claim based on discriminatory impact.”

The groups say the city should be using multiple criteria for admissions — including attendance, middle-school grades and teacher recommendations — and that it has never demonstrated that the exam is a valid or essential way to identify the brightest students.

They point to higher rates of enrollment of black and Hispanic students at La Guardia HS of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan — a ninth specialized high school that relies on auditions and academic records for admission, rather than an exam — as evidence that using such multiple measures is a fairer method.

City Department of Education officials noted that state law sets the admissions criteria at the specialized high schools.

They also said that while more than 70 percent of students qualify for free or reduced price lunch at city schools, only 31 percent of students who attend specialized high schools do so.

“The Department of Education has launched several initiatives to improve diversity, and last year, more black and Hispanic students were offered a seat in one of our specialized high schools than in the past two years,” said DOE spokeswoman Deidrea Miller.

“We want all of our students to have opportunities to prepare for the test, no matter their ZIP code.”