The New York City school system is the largest public school system in the country, responsible for the education of over 1.1 million students housed in 1,700 schools. The Department of Education has an annual budget of over $21 billion. With all that money being spent, and with over 70 percent of the students in the system being Black and Hispanic, why is it that they are woefully underrepresented in the specialized high schools of New York?

This week in the New York Amsterdam News and Our Town newspapers begins a joint investigation into the reason for the lack of diversity, especially of children of Black and Latino descent, in New York's most elite high schools.

When you look at the numbers they are appalling. The racial breakdown of students in all public high schools is as follows:

At Stuyvesant High School, the supposed gold standard of New York public education, Blacks and Latinos make up a mere 4.61 percent of the total student population. At Bronx Science, they make up 10.94 percent. Yet Black and Hispanic students make up 71.41 percent of all students in New York City high schools.

These numbers are appalling. They play directly into the notion that Black and Hispanic kids are just not as smart. But the fact is that given the same academic advantages and experiences, they can play on the same field as everyone else – but the city has taken it upon itself to say that the field is fine the way it is and there's no need for any change.

When the Hecht-Calandra bill was passed and took effect in January 1972, it included provisions to guarantee some type of diversity within the city's specialized high schools. That was the creation of the Discovery Program. While the verbiage used in the bill was "Disadvantaged Students," we all know that "Disadvantaged Students" really means children who are Black and Brown.

Discovery works by providing students who miss the admissions cutoff grade on the specialized high school tests by only a few points with an opportunity for admission into that school if they complete a summer Discovery program. However, the most elite of these schools no longer has a Discovery program, leaving the ability to bring in more students of color impossible.

The specialized high schools of New York City need to take the best of the best – however, it needs to be the best of each of the different groups that make up the city's population. The specialized schools need to reflect the city that they are in and therefore need to be as diverse as this city and its entire school system.

We can't have a system that only honors those who test well. If we teach children to the test alone we will not have well-rounded individuals; we'll have drones, not intellectually stimulated, thinking human beings. They will be able to regurgitate information for a test but will not be able to create their own imaginative ideas and thoughts.

Back in 1971, they were afraid that if too many students of color got into these elite high schools they would become less educationally rigorous. Well, some may still harbor those fears, but they need to get over it. Our children have the same right to the opportunity for a specialized education as any other group, and the specialized high schools remain a sham in terms of equity of opportunity. We need diversity and we need more chances for Black and Latino students to excel at the highest level of the education ladder.