Kids claim NYC gifted school segregation at top state court

MANHATTAN (CN) — New York attorneys on Wednesday afternoon urged the state’s top court to throw out a civil rights challenge to racial disparities within New York City’s gifted and talented program, which sorts public school students into specialized academic tracks separate from the general education system.

The March 2021 lawsuit, led by 13 anonymous students and the group IntegrateNYC, targets how the New York City public school system tracks and tests students for admission into its highly selective gifted and talented program — which skews predominantly white and Asian.

The students argue that gifted and talented testing, the Special High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) and other standardized admission tests are “culturally biased” and not “pedagogically sound," disadvantaging “Black and Latinx students who face culturally biased test language and tasks.”

New York Supreme Court Justice Frank Nervo tossed out the students’ complaint in June 2022, finding that it asked the court “to make educational policy” concerning school admissions, curriculum and testing content, which is beyond its authority.

While Nervo concluded that the Legislature, not the judiciary, is the proper branch of government to hear the petitioners’ particular civil rights claims, an appellate court reversed the opinion in March 2024, finding that the decision was an “error” and allowing the case to advance forward.

Appellate Division, First Department Justice Peter H. Moulton said that it’s the responsibility of the courts to “repair unconstitutional action on the part of the Legislature of the executive.” In his view, Black and Latinx students “sufficiently” showed they are harmed by New York City public school policies.

Now before the New York Court of Appeals, attorneys for both the city and state of New York argue that the seven justices should affirm dismissal of the amended complaint based on what they say is the plaintiffs’ failure to plead any viable cause of action.

Jeremy Schweder, senior counsel for the appeals division of New York City Law Department, said the First Department’s overturning of the dismissal “was based on a series of incorrect factual interpretations.”

“On each of plaintiffs’ claims, for this court to affirm, it’s going to have to break new ground, it’s going to have to break new ground or alter controlling precedent,” he said.

Associate Judge of the Court of Appeals Shirley Troutman asked the plaintiffs if their claims were required to include “a districtwide failure” to qualify under the Education Article of the New York Constitution, and if they had done so.

Mark Rosenbaum, Public Counsel’s senior special counsel for strategic litigation, answered that the plaintiffs had sufficiently made a showing of “a districtwide problem.”

“Because what exists in the New York City system — a hyper-segregated system, one of the most segregated, if not the most segregated school systems in the United States — is the creation of a two-tier system, districtwide policies of admission, of enrollment, and the provision of the basic inputs, which this court has recognized," Rosenbaum said.

The Court of Appeals did not immediately rule from the bench on Wednesday afternoon.

In August 2019, the School Diversity Advisory Group, commissioned by then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, released a 40-page report that called New York City’s schools “as segregated as the schools of Mississippi and Alabama,” thanks to test-prep programs that cater to its wealthiest ranks.

While de Blasio pledged to overhaul and dismantle the gifted and talented program because of the findings of racial discrimination and segregation, his successor Eric Adams called for expanding it.

Zohran Mamdani, the 2025 Democratic mayoral candidate, has said he supports an independent analysis of the SHSAT for gender and racial bias, and he would address the city’s highly segregated school system by implementing recommendations from School Diversity Advisory Group’s 2019 report.

The 2025 Republican mayoral candidate, Curtis Sliwa, supports expansion of the gifted and talented program across all boroughs and preserving the SHSAT for specialized high schools, “ensuring hardworking students have access to opportunities.”

Follow @jruss_jruss