Demographics
About 1.1 million students attend New York City public schools. There are about 635,000 students from kindergarten through eighth grade.
About 40% of students in the city's public school system live in households where a language other than English is spoken, and one-third of all New Yorkers were born in another country. The city's Department of Education translates report cards, registration forms, system-wide alerts, and documents on health and policy initiatives for parents into Spanish, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Urdu, Persian, Hindi, Russian, Bengali, Haitian Creole, Korean, and Arabic.
In 2007, Hispanics and Latino students made up 39.4% of the student population. African Americans made up 32.2% of the student population. White American and Asian American students made up 14.2% and 13.7% of the student populace respectively. Native Americans made up the remaining 0.4% of the student body.
The specialized high schools tend to be disproportionately Caucasian and Asian. New York's Specialized High School Institute is an after-school program for students in late middle school. It was designed to enlarge the pool of African American and Hispanic candidates eligible for admission to the selective schools by giving them extra lessons and teaching test-taking skills. Unlike other urban school districts (such as San Francisco Unified School District), New York does not use racial preferences (affirmative action) in public school admissions.
Read more about this topic: New York City Department Of Education