Over the last fifty years, New York City has experienced a dramatic shift in both politics and racial demographics. Yet despite its increasingly diverse population and liberal policies, New York City is home to the most segregated public education systems in the United States. Modern-day school segregation and educational inequity across lines of race and wealth is a pervasive issue with historical precedent. The issue of educational segregation and inequity in New York City disproportionately impacts students of color, more specifically those of low economic status. Segregated schools in the modern age continue to disenfranchise students of color in the same ways it did over fifty years ago. Educational inequity continues to drive students of color into cycles of poverty by barring access to competitive opportunities.

In the landmark Supreme Court case of 1954, Brown v. Board of Education, the court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. Prior to the ruling, the infamous doctrine of “separate but equal,” served as the basis of legality for racially segregated public schools in the United States. Evidently, at the time, black schools were significantly behind white schools in nearly all aspects crucial for success: funding, infrastructure, academic rigor, and access to resources. In 1964, ten years following the decision of Brown v. Board, New York City set out to integrate its public schools through a series of elaborate initiatives led by Carl E. Gross, who served as the city’s superintendent of schools. Through extensive rezoning, nearly 40,000 students were transferred to new schools in an effort to achieve a racially balanced school system.¹ In 1971, New York City lawmakers crafted a bill in an effort to integrate its specialized high schools and mandated that test scores on a uniform entrance exam would be the sole determinant of admission.[1] That same year, nearly 10% of the student population at Stuyvesant High School, one of the city’s most prestigious schools, was black. Although it took nearly twenty years for there to be a visible change in the racial dynamics of New York City’s public schools, both the city and the Department of Education demonstrated an intentional push towards diversity and integration.

Over sixty years following Brown v. Board, New York City schools have demonstrated an overwhelmingly progressive pattern of racially isolating schools. Economic and racial segregation in public schools has become normalized in New York City and fails to reflect the diversity seen in the city’s overall population. While black and Latino students make up nearly 70% of New York City’s student population, they are the lowest represented demographic in each of the city’s nine prestigious specialized high schools, and consistently produce lower graduation rates and ELA test scores throughout the five boroughs. In 2019, only seven black students were accepted into Stuyvesant High School’s incoming freshman class out of 895 slots available. Furthermore, New York State Department of Education Data reveals that in 2018 over 83,000 students were homeless and over 50% of students were economically disadvantaged with the Bronx having the highest rate of 86% of economically disadvantaged students. Boroughs with higher rates of homelessness and economically disadvantaged students also had higher rates of black and Latino students.

The term “achievement gap” is commonly used to refer to the differences in academic performance between minority students from low-income communities and students from wealthier areas. However, the term fails to recognize the inevitable obstacles created for students by an inequitable educational system. The reality is that the gaps in achievement between low-income minority students and their affluent counterparts are the direct product of opportunity gaps that derive from not only a broken educational system but also systemic issues in housing and childcare affordability, healthcare solutions, and criminal justice reform. With 32 districts and nearly 1,800 schools, achieving integration and educational equity across New York City public schools is no small task. In 2019 Mayor Bill DeBlasio introduced “The Diversity Plan”, which seeks to remedy the consequences of segregated schooling. While the Department of Education certainly holds immense power in the matter, effective solutions must come from a collective effort across the city to create systematic change. Only once the systematic issues of racism and poverty are addressed at the institutional level can schools fully integrate and ensure equity for all students.