Are the students doing poorly in those schools because they are poorly run/staffed/and funded, or is it the case that the students in those schools have more problems at home leading to poorer results?
In other words, is this a problem schools can fix at all?
There has been research (don't have it handy right now) that there's a negative feedback loop with that.
Schools in poor areas tend to have less parental involvement (and direct economic support from those parents as is common in wealthier neighborhoods), so school staff don't have as many resources and aren't as incentivized to raise expectations of the students.
That creates an environment where the students aren't learning as well as in other neighborhood schools.
I suspect that if the authority figures on either side of that raise their expectations and requirements of the students, the negative feedback loop can be, at least partially, short-circuited.
>In other words, is this a problem schools can fix at all?
Yes. They can't do as much as schools with significantly more parental involvement, but improving the teacher/staff performance would likely improve parent performance.
No, it's not a panacea, but blaming all this on poor parenting and throwing up our hands just promotes the centuries-old trope that "poor people are morally and intellectually inferior. It's obvious, if they weren't so they wouldn't be poor."
That's circular reasoning and doesn't reflect reality.
Except the problem isn't with the gifted/talented programs in NYC. And it isn't with the SHSAT[0] either.
The problem is that public elementary and middle schools in majority black/hispanic neighborhoods have measurably much worse educational results.
What's more, those schools don't even consider preparing their students for G/T programs or the specialized high schools.
There are many reasons for this and fixing it is hard. As such, instead of giving minority students a better education, some activists are calling for (and succeeding) removal of gifted/talented programs and getting rid of the SHSAT.
As a product of the NYC public school system, I have no illusions that fixing these problems will be easy.
But removing the G/T programs instead of directing poorly performing schools to bring all their students up to educational levels which allow the best of them (as in every other school) to participate in G/T programs and increase their numbers in the specialized high schools.
IMHO, this is completely ass backwards.
And De Blasio is gone in January, leaving this mess to his successor.
As a NYC resident, I'm glad I don't have kids here.[1]
[0] https://www.schools.nyc.gov/learning/testing/specialized-hig...
[1] I could go on and on about how ridiculous this is, but I am so disgusted with De Blasio and the NYC Department of Education about this stuff that I'll just stop now before this becomes an all out rant.