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Responding to criticisms of a program created to diversify the city’s elite high schools, school officials are highlighting a surprising fact: The program no longer gives special preference to the black and Hispanic students it was built to serve.

The city launched the Specialized High School Institute in 1995 to help get more black and Hispanic students admitted to schools such as Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. Black and Hispanic specialized high school applicants who attended the institute have been more likely to get in than those who didn’t attend.

But fewer black and Hispanic students have gotten that chance since a 2007 lawsuit forced the city to give equal access to the program to all students. Department officials drew attention to the policy change after the Daily News reported last week that fewer black and Latino students who completed the program last year scored high enough on the city’s high school exam to be admitted to elite schools.

Indeed, the new policy appears to have transformed the makeup of the institute. Between 2009, when students admitted prior to the policy change completed the program, and 2010, Hispanic enrollment dropped by more than half, from 414 to 155, while Asian enrollment more than doubled, from 156 to 481. (more…)

In the next step of an advocacy campaign to make it easier for families to apply to charter schools, 20 schools have teamed up to put a common application online.

The application, which was developed by the city’s main charter advocacy organization and is available through its website, allows parents to apply to multiple charter schools by filling out a single online form.

By introducing the online common application, charter advocates hope to increase demand for charters. They’re also trying to answer critics’ charge that the overwhelming and duplicative paperwork that marks the current admissions system discourages all but the most motivated parents and effectively screens out needy students.

Last year, the city introduced a paper common application, which parents could fill out and submit to any of the city’s roughly 100 charter schools. (more…)

Every spring, the city’s charter schools hold admissions lotteries and every year, parents applying to multiple charters must fill out a different application for each school. But this year, parents will have a new option: a common application.

The application, which can be sent or turned in to any of the city’s 99 charter schools, is one page long and is available in eight different languages.

It’s not a complete replacement for schools’ individual applications. This year, schools have to accept both the common application and their individualized forms, a change that Department of Education officials hope will make the process simpler and increase the number of applicants. Officials are considering making the common application mandatory in coming years. (more…)

Charter schools could soon have one single “common application,” under a deal hatched today by the three bodies that oversee the state’s charter schools, a Department of Education official confirmed.

Right now, families apply by filling out separate forms for each charter school that enter their children into separate lotteries. Under the new process, the city will create one common application, accepted by all schools, but keep lotteries separate.

The change will answer critics’ charge that the current process, with its overwhelming paperwork, is so complicated that it discourages all but the most motivated parents and effectively screens out needy students. The introduction of a common application does not address a second demand from critics, including the teachers union — that the lotteries also be streamlined.

Michael Duffy, the head of the city’s charter schools, said the city’s goal was “to widen the access for families” to charter schools. Duffy previously spearheaded a push to increase recruitment by charter schools, and said that the new common application should help charters reach out to groups of students, including those learning English, that charter recruiters often miss.

Duffy told me about the plans today by phone, just after a meeting with representatives from the State University of New York and Board of Regents charter authorizers, who Duffy said agreed to join the city in using the new application.

Their decision comes just after a group for charter school parents announced its own effort to streamline the admission process. (more…)