POLITICS: Progressives aim to destroy NYC’s top high schools in the name of ‘equity’

Mayor Adams and schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos sound confident that the city Panel for Education Policy will OK the contract for an admissions test for Gotham’s elite public high schools when it meets Wednesday night, but that will only be one small setback for the progressive war on these schools.

This threat is serious: “Equity” and anti-testing activists have pushed to kill the contract for the Specialized High School Admission Test even though state law mandates it as the main means of admission to Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant and five other top schools also rely on it.

That’s left 30,000 anxious families fearful that their kids will wind up in educational limbo if the PEP KOs the new five-year, $17 million contract with education company Pearson.

To no one’s benefit: This wouldn’t make admissions “more fair,” but only rob everyone of opportunity.

The “elite eight” high schools are centers of scholastic excellence that have long infuriated the left.

Most recently, champions of “equity” complain that the race-blind testing now admits predominantly first- and second-generation immigrant kids of Asian, South Asian and Eastern European heritage.

Black and Hispanic students make up roughly 10% of enrollment; activists want that to change — without changes to the K-8 public-school system that leave those kids unprepared for the exam and indeed for the challenges of an elite school.

Mayor Bill de Blasio spent much of his eight-year tenure trying to appease the loony left, including efforts to scrap the test-in admission process; his chosen chancellor, Richard Carranza once called these elite high schools “the epicenter of privilege.”

That particular nonsense ended when Mayor Adams took over — except that the Legislature, at the behest of the United Federation of Teachers, has been watering down mayoral control of the schools by expanding the PEP (and messing with its rules) so that his appointees don’t always control a vote’s outcome.

Plus, lobbying by the left and the union can sometimes sway the mayor’s PEP members, a key reason the vote on the Pearson contract has been repeatedly delayed.

That is: Adams fully supports maintaining (and even adding!) strong academic opportunities for accelerated learners — but it requires continued attention and City Hall can get distracted.

We expect Wednesday night’s vote will finally go the right way.

But it’s a grim sign that a nonpartisan, non-ideological goal — ensuring continued educational opportunities for the city’s most gifted and talented students — is regularly at risk because so many players in New York politics put the children’s interests last.