Public School Education: What Do NYC Families and Students Really Want?

Lucas Liu shares his perspective on the discussions around SHSAT results

Recently the results for the Specialized High School Admissions Test (“SHSAT”) were released. Although the final tally on offers and acceptances won’t be released until June, we can once again expect to hear that only a small percentage of Black and Hispanic students were able to score high enough on the SHSAT to gain admission to one of the eight Specialized High Schools. Make no mistake, this is a very big problem that needs to be fixed.

But what you won’t hear from those “equity” advocates is even more important - the actual cause of the problem. These “equity” advocates will blame the SHSAT and proclaim it is racist and discriminatory. They play the race card because they lack any convincing argument and by doing so it’s far easier to mislead the many uninformed parents, advocates, and elected officials.

These advocates won’t mention how they advocate for lower standards and expectations for Black and Hispanic students and then complain about lower outcomes. They need Black and Hispanic students to remain low performing to reinforce their racism narrative. Most importantly, it keeps attention on themselves and enables them to continue to receive funding that keeps them in their self-created positions of power and influence.

They also won’t talk about the widely known secret - every year as many as 1,500 of the higher performing Black and Hispanic NYC public school students are recruited by the ~500 NYC/tri-state area private, religious or boarding schools which offer a more rigorous education and learning environment. This recruitment is often done with the assistance of the local public-school administrators and teachers.

This month the NYC Public Schools (NYCPS aka NYC DOE) published the results of their Enrollment Survey. Parents were allowed to select 3 reasons why their child was no longer enrolled in a NYC public school. A startling 41% responded that they wanted a more rigorous education than possible in NYCPS, while 40% stated they moved out of NYC. Clearly families are fleeing NYC and its public schools in search of more rigorous education.

Source: NYCPS April 2025 Enrollment Survey

However, “experts” and the “equity” advocates claim these survey results offer little useful information since the response rate was only 3%. In truth, it’s because the data doesn’t support their preferred narrative. They also fail to mention that 46% of respondents were Black or Hispanic, and an additional 8% were bi-racial.

Despite this information NYCPS continues to focus on initiatives that won’t lead to more rigorous education such as smaller class size. Almost half of public-school classrooms were already below the smaller class size cap, most for many years, AND most of those classrooms are low performing and in low performing schools. In truth, smaller class size, while sounding nice, doesn’t automatically improve students’ performance.

Meanwhile, in many higher performing schools most classrooms have been well above the cap for many years. The primary beneficiary of smaller class size will be the UFT. There will be more teachers paying union dues, and because of UFT rules, new inexperienced (and rubber room) teachers will get placed in lower performing schools.

Smaller class sizes will only reduce the number of available seats in high demand schools that offer quality rigorous education. This will cause more families to leave NYCPS in search of better educational opportunities for their kids.

Parents also want leaders who will represent them and advocate for high quality rigorous education. Right now, the Citywide and Community Education Council elections for parent representatives is underway through May 13^th. NYC public school parents will once again be voting for parent leaders who will listen to them.

Lucas Liu is a former NYC public school parent, former CEC 3 President and Co-Founder of Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education (PLACE)

This article was first published in the One City Rising April newsletter.