Why Are Only 3 of 777 Stuyvesant High Freshmen Black?
And what kind of name for a football team is The Peglegs?
From the New York Times news section:
An Elite N.Y.C. Public School Admitted 777 Students. Only 3 Were Black.
New York’s specialized high schools give disproportionately few seats to Black and Hispanic students, continuing a pattern that has drawn criticism.
By Matthew Haag
July 14, 2026
A disproportionately small number of Black and Hispanic students received admission offers to New York City’s elite public high schools for the upcoming academic year, continuing a pattern of racial and ethnic gaps that has existed for years despite promises by elected officials to address the divide.
You might also point out that not only has this disparity existed for decades in New York City, it exists all over the rest of the country too. Famous public exam schools like Thomas Jefferson in the D.C. suburbs and Lowell in San Francisco have the exact same problems getting equal percentages of each race to pass the entrance test.
And the problems blacks have making the cut in exam schools without the help of blatant racial preferences are particularly severe in liberal metropolises with multiracial populations, especially lots of Asian immigrants.
It’s hard to make the totality of facts fit the conventional wisdom that the great majority of the New York Times’ 13 million paying subscribers subscribe to, so many facts about exam schools are ignored or shoved to the back of the article.
About 62 percent of the students in the city’s public schools are Black or Hispanic. But at its eight most prestigious high schools, about 10 percent of the students in the incoming freshman class are expected to be Black or Hispanic, roughly the same as last year. About 80 percent of the seats went to Asian and white students.
Lumping Asians and whites is misleading, as we’ll finally be informed in the 13th and 14th paragraphs.
At Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, often considered the most selective of the city’s specialized high schools, three of the 777 offers were made to Black students, and 21 were for Hispanic students, together representing a nearly one-third decline from the previous freshman class.
But how many black students turned down Stuyvesant to go to a private school?
It doesn’t help attract black boys that the name of the school football team is the Stuyvesant Peglegs.
How many who could have passed Stuyvesant’s test got offered a scholarship by Dalton or Phillips Exeter?
For example, there is the lavishly funded Prep for Prep charity program in NYC. From Wikipedia:
Each year, a citywide “talent search” selects about 125 students—95 fifth-graders and 30 sixth-graders. To qualify for recruitment, 5th-graders must have a scaled score of 330 or above on the English Language Arts (ELA) test administered during their 4th-grade year or have scored in the 90th percentile on any standardized reading test administered in that year. 6th-graders must have a scaled score of 335 (90th percentile) or above on the ELA exam administered during their 5th-grade year. Applicants then undergo a series of interviews and further standardized testing to gain admission. Fifth- and sixth-graders are admitted into Prep for Prep and earn spots at leading day schools in New York City.
Program
Admitted students undergo a rigorous 14-month academic course known as the “Preparatory Component” before their sixth- or seventh-grade year, which includes two intensive seven-week summer sessions and after-school Wednesday and all-day Saturday classes during the intervening school year. Courses include History, Algebra, Pre-Algebra, Research, Latin, French, Spanish, Mandarin, Literature, Writing Conference, and Science, which includes biology, physics, and chemistry, Invictus, a sociology and psychology-based course, PIMAS (Problems and Issues in Modern American Society), term paper research, and Computer Science. On average, 60% of students complete this program and are placed in schools among three dozen leading New York City independent schools. These schools commit places for Prep for Prep students and almost $12 million annually in scholarships. Throughout the program and after high school graduation, students receive personal and academic counseling, college counseling, and career counseling, and participate in leadership and community development activities, parties, and trips for alumni.
The program also helps students after college with placement into positions at prestigious firms such as Goldman Sachs, Google, and J.P. Morgan Chase through corporate partnerships designed to expand diverse talent pools on Wall Street, in engineering, and across business.
No doubt there are other such efforts in New York.
I was involved in a similar charity in Chicago in the early 1990s. I tended to argue …
Paywall here.
