The obvious solution is to create another specialized high school for the students who scored near the current cutoff, not to kick 20% of higher-scoring students to the curb because it makes you feel good. Thus: there would be a new, lower cutoff score because more slots would become available. Shouldn't de Blasio be striving to lift up as many students as possible rather than playing an education zero-sum game?
New York City has many middle and high schools that are somewhat selective, and they have also come under attack as being "segregated":
A Shadow System of Tracking by School Feeds SegregationBy Winnie Hu and Elizabeth A. Harris
New York Times
June 17, 2018
No other city in the country screens students for as many schools as New York — a startling fact all but lost in the furor that has erupted over Mayor Bill de Blasio’s recent proposal to change the admissions process for the city’s handful of elite high schools.
One in five middle and high schools in New York, the nation’s largest school district, now choose all of their students based on factors like grades or state test scores. That intensifies an already raw debate about equity, representation and opportunity that has raged since Mr. de Blasio proposed scrapping the one-day test now required to gain entry into New York’s eight elite high schools. Black and Hispanic students are underrepresented in many of the most selective screened middle and high schools, just as they are in the specialized high schools.
...
Unlike many cities, New York, with its 1.1 million students, also has a large base of middle-class families that attend the public schools, said Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation. Screened schools are a way to appeal to them and keep their children in the public schools, especially in a city where public housing projects sit beside million-dollar apartments, he said.
But the result has been that New York, in essence, has replaced tracking within schools with tracking by school, where children with the best records can benefit from advanced classes and active parent and alumni associations. According to the city, of the more than 830 middle schools and high schools, roughly 190 screen all of their students. Many of these screened schools are clustered in Manhattan and Brooklyn, with enrollments that are more white, Asian and affluent than the overall school population.
