District 15 Parents for Middle School Equity

District 15 Parents for Middle School Equity welcomes the news that the Mayor has eliminated selective admissions screening for all NYC public middle schools for this year’s admissions cycle. We encourage this move to be made permanent. We’ve seen firsthand how eliminating these screens improves equity and access in our district. 
 

In moving to lottery admissions, we encourage the Mayor to incorporate priorities for students who have historically been underserved: students in temporary housing, multi-language learners, and the economically disadvantaged. We found that using priorities in lotteries in this way has helped ensure equitable access to our district’s middle schools. 
 

As part of these changes, the Mayor needs to re-emphasize the inclusion recommendations that our district called for as a central part of desegregation: culturally responsive curriculum, restorative justice, a teaching staff more reflective of students, and audits to address practices that exacerbate racial inequities within schools. 
 

Equity also must be centered in other school admissions decisions. We applaud the Mayor for removing high school geographic priorities and urge the permanent elimination of these “gilded gates.” But high schools should not be permitted to use other racist admissions metrics. And none of our City’s students should be segregated within schools whether through tracking or other programs that claim to support “giftedness.” 

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Public schools should not be in the business of handpicking students using measures we know to be biased against the least privileged. COVID-19 has exacerbated the existing inequalities across our City. Let this be the year that we break down the structures that contribute to our segregated school system.