> That was before programs like Prep for Prep, which canvasses the city’s public, charter and parochial schools for promising minority students, gives them an after-school and weekend preparatory boot camp for 14 months and then funnels them into private high schools, where they receive need-based financial aid. This program serves about 650 students a year, many of whom might otherwise be admitted to schools like Stuyvesant. And that’s not counting other scholarship programs at private schools, boarding schools and parochial schools designed to increase the diversity of their privileged student bodies.

This is an under-discussed phenomenon. I've heard the same thing said about public high schools in other cities. There are private schools that peel out many high-performing minority (non-Asian, of course) students, which affects the number of high-performing minority students who end up in the public high schools.

People then wring their hands about apparent racial performance gaps in the public schools, ignoring the effect of these programs.

Believe what you'd like, there's a reason their life expectancy is shorter, their income is smaller, their incarceration is greater. The answer isn't racism, it's the Bell Curve.

Let's start by getting fathers back in the home to raise their kids.

[delayed]