Gothamist parrots a NY Times fear that blacks and hispanics (and dammit Gothamist, those don’t get capitalized unless someone is named Black or Hispanic) aren’t getting into specialized schools. It’s a tragedy! Black and hispanic enrollment is down!
And for Gothamist (as well as the NY Times) that seems to be the only story.
In typical liberal fashion, they panic for the poor minorities, mention in passing those pesky smart asians, and completely ignore the fact that white enrollment is also down across the board (in fact, the NY Times outwardly lies about white enrollment).
Here’s the chart that Gothamist loved so dearly:
And here’s how the Times lied about it:
The changes indicate that even as New York City has started to bridge the racial achievement gap in the earlier grades, it has not been able to make similar headway at top public high schools and colleges. Asian enrollment at all three high schools has soared over the decade, while white enrollment has declined at two of the three schools.
There are so many conclusions you can draw here. Let’s draw some of them for Gothamist and the NY Times:
1. The graph says that enrollment is down for all groups except asians. There’s no community outreach to asians There are no race preferences for asians. There are no affirmative action programs to get asians into the schools, and yet there they are making their way in.
2. If the article itself is to be believed, then the fact that whites aren’t making it in should be a problem, but it’s not. Instead, the article has quotes like these:
Andres Alonso, the city’s deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, described the figures as “extraordinarily surprising,” even though they are the Department of Education’s numbers. Deputy Mayor Dennis M. Walcott called the schools “true gems of our system,” saying, “We have to make sure they’re open to all of our students.”
Robert Jackson, the chairman of the City Council education committee, who is from Washington Heights, was more pointed in his criticism.
“The statistics clearly show that black New Yorkers are being shut out,” he said. “If we’re looking to be inclusive in the greatest city in the world, I would think that the chancellor and every educator has to ask themselves why is this, and what do we need to do to reverse that. Is it institutional racism or is it something else?”
Notice no panic over whites or praise for asians.
3. In the article, despite the graph, the Times claims that White enrollment is up at Brooklyn Tech, even though it’s clearly on a downward trend and has been since 2002. Even the caption on the graph only mentions the Black and Hispanic decline, clearly indicating that the interest is not putting the best students in these schools (God forbid) but instead getting those black / hispanic numbers up. In other words, race isn’t really important unless it’s blackness or hispanicness.
4. In order to make their sinister racist allegations, they’re completely ignoring the facts (the critics are) presented in their own graph. If that isn’t an example of shoddy journalism, I don’t know what is. And Gothamist is no better because they only observation they took away is the tragic nature of the decline in black / hispanic enrollment. Guys, you need to pay better attention.