I am pretty disgusted by the Atlantic article attacking New York City’s selective high schools (which includes Stuyvesant, my alma mater) which base their admissions solely on an admissions test.

Over and over again, the article screams that these schools are not “diverse” and are unfair to the socioeconomically disadvantaged. But the reality is that Stuyvesant is only 22% white (according to this Bloomberg article. How can a school that is only 22% white not be “diverse”?

The answer, of course, is that Stuyvesant is 73% Asian, and Asians just don’t add diversity, I guess. Yet most rich white parents don’t want to send their kids to Stuyvesant because they secretly think it’s too Asian (although they would not voice that opinion in public). White parents who have the money will send their kids to a private school or move to a wealthy suburb with a good majority-white public high school. The typical minority white kid at Stuyvesant is from an Eastern European immigrant family living in the outer boroughs and is not rich. And even the Atlantic article admits that 37% of the students at Stuyvesant are eligible for free or reduced-price meals, hardly an indication that Stuyvesant is full of rich kids.

Whites are actually severely underrepresented at Stuyvesant. Manhattan is 58% white, but Stuyvesant is only 22% white.

The headline of the Atlantic article is completely wrong, Stuyvesant is absolutely not “elite.” Selective, yes, but not “elite.”

I fear that De Blasio will do everything possible to destroy the selective New York City public high schools, because he hates the idea that some kids are smarter than others.