The city’s worst performing schools are the most segregated.
At 283 schools in the bottom quarter of Common Core test scores in Grades 3 through 8 this year, an average 96 percent of kids are black and Hispanic, 2 percent white and 2 percent Asian, city data show.
The average passing rate in English and math at these schools was an abysmal 8.7 percent.
“I call it education apartheid,” said Mona Davids, president of the NYC Parents Union, who grew up in South Africa when its schools were segregated. But since South Africa ended apartheid in 1994, she said, “New York City schools are more segregated.”
Among the lowest performing schools with no white kids:
- The School for the Urban Environment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Harbor Heights MS in Washington Heights had no students pass the English exam.
- At Brownsville’s General D. Chappie James Elementary School of Science, and the Academy for Social Action, an 8th- through 12th-grade school in Harlem, no one passed the math exams.
Parents cite successful schools in the same neighborhoods that boast a diverse student body.
At Columbia Secondary School in Morningside Heights, an impressive 83 percent of kids in the tested grades, 6 through 8, passed the English exam and 90 percent passed the math exam. The school’s racial makeup is 66 percent black and Hispanic, 20 percent white and 13 percent Asian.
“If you’re a good school and kids are doing well, people are going to come, whether you’re black or white,” said Sanayi Beckles-Canton, a mom of six and member of Community Education Council 5 in Harlem.
Although Harlem has gentrified, many affluent or middle-income parents don’t send their kids to public schools “because they’re so bad,” Beckles-Canton said. She blames the city Department of Education for leaving in place the same principals, teachers and programs that have failed for years.
An analysis provided to The Post by the pro-charter group Families for Excellent Schools shows 76 schools in which every black student or every Hispanic student scored below passing in English or math.
A report by the UCLA Civil Rights Project last year called New York schools the most segregated in the nation.
The City Council passed a law in June requiring the DOE to file yearly reports on the racial demographics at each school, and detailing any efforts to spur diversity, including site selection for new schools, “targeted outreach” and recruitment.
DOE officials would not cite any efforts to date, but said they will comply with the new law. The first report is due by December 31.