Meanwhile, competition to get into the specialized schools is ferocious. The report by the Partnership for an Upper East Side High School meticulously documents the failings of neighborhood high schools, using test scores from the Board of Education's annual school report cards. But it omits the pages of those report cards that detail the racial composition of the schools. A closer look hints at the complicated racial, political and educational questions that the movement to reclaim neighborhood schools raises citywide. The racial balance in the high schools is almost reversed, ranging from 19 percent white at Bayard Rustin to 3.7 percent white at the Richard Green High School of Teaching on East 88th Street.
Parents bristle at the notion that they are being exclusionary.
He is the father of Sean, a seventh grader at the East Side Middle School. We're talking about people on the East Side who have middle incomes and need a neighborhood school. Click here to read more of Congressman Jackson' s Issues and Positions.