For yet another sign of how wrongheaded the folks in charge of New York state education are, consider the state’s Science and Technology Entry Program.
STEP helps thousands of bright kids attend classes, get exams and college prep, and do hands-on research work at colleges and medical schools around the state every year.
But, argues a new federal lawsuit by a cluster of brave activists fighting injustice, it allegedly openly discriminates against Asian kids.
How?
By letting black, Latino and Native American students in at any income level,while demanding that Asian (and white) families meet certain low-income criteria to be admitted.
Proving that the goal of the program isn’t equity, or improving students’ chances should they go to college.
To be clear: Helping smart, hardworking low-income kids get access to better education is a noble goal, one well worth spending taxpayer dollars on.
But doing that would mean applying income standards universally, across all races.
What STEP evidently does is pervert that goal in the service of the favored form of racism among woke leftists: i.e., racism against Asians (and whites).
Per the suit, this has been going on for nearly four decades.
It’s high time for the policy to end, forever.
Tellingly, state Education Commissioner Betty Rosa is a defendant in the lawsuit.
Rosa’s been leading the charge to wreck graduation and learning standardsand conceal just how badly New York’s public school kids are actually doing from their parents.
So expect major pushback — with plenty of babble about equity — from her and her fellow educrats.
And anti-Asian discrimination has been a part of US education for a looooooong time.
Its practitioners are complacently confident — or at least they were until the salutary shock of summer’s landmark Supreme Court ruling striking down institutional racism in college admissions.
It’s hard to see how the STEP admission criteria survive now.
And that’s a very, very good thing.
