Sweeping Suit Over NYC Schools Bias Calls to Disband ‘Gifted & Talented’ Programs
In a city as diverse as New York, home to the country’s largest public-school system, a lawsuit filed Tuesday says students are among “the most segregated in the country.”
“Indeed, if government’s goal were to create a system of education that would replicate and in fact exacerbate pernicious racial inequality in the city, it would be challenging to design a more effective system than that which currently exists,” the sprawling 77-page complaint declares.
The suit takes aim at how the New York City public school system tracks and tests students for admissions into its highly selective “Gifted and Talented” programs — the makeup of which are predominantly white or Asian.
Alleging that the result is a “caste structure” of racial and socioeconomic segregation, the complaint brought this morning in Manhattan Supreme Court fires off a series of startling statistics.