Deconstructing Discovery

On April 23, 2026, Brooklyn mother Yi Fang Chen filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education and Mayor Zohran Mamdani claiming that the Discovery program—a separate pathway for admission to New York City’s most prestigious high schools—is deliberately designed to reduce Asian American and White enrollment in specialized schools. The suit follows Chen’s son’s rejection from Stuyvesant, after he scored a 558 on the SHSAT—a score in the 95th percentile but three points below Stuyvesant’s cutoff for the class of 2029. 

Her lawsuit attacks having a separate admissions policy at a time when specialized high schools like Stuyvesant have come under fire more than ever before. As seen in the October 2025 NYC mayoral debate and widely-circulated articles in The New York Times, the lack of diversity at specialized high schools has made the racial makeup of NYC’s specialized schools a political talking point. New York City’s specialized high schools have a demographic makeup notoriously different from that of the city itself. In 2026, Stuyvesant’s freshman class of more than 800 students included only eight black students. At the eight specialized schools in NYC that use the SHSAT for admissions, Black students received just three percent of offers despite making up 20 percent of NYC’s student population.

Controversies surrounding the sole use of the SHSAT for admissions brought momentum to a movement to abolish the exam, with Former Mayor Bill De Blasio championing the move as an active voice against the standardized testing system. However, parents across the city mobilized to protest any change; to them, the system was designed to be as meritocratic as  possible, giving any student willing to study the opportunity to attend some of the city’s most prestigious schools. In response, the city created the Discovery program with the goal of broadening opportunities for students with low-income backgrounds without removing the SHSAT entirely.

Discovery is a three to five week long summer program offered to economically disadvantaged students, providing them with an opportunity to attend a specialized high school in the coming fall. To be eligible for the Discovery program, students must score below 495 on the SHSAT, and attend a public school whose Economic Need Index (ENI) is 60 percent or higher. If the student is homeschooled, or attends a non-public school, they must live in a high poverty area, meaning at least 60 percent of families in that area live below the poverty line. Once accepted to the Discovery program, they must meet certain requirements to receive an offer of admission for the fall. Most Discovery programs at specialized high schools require 90 percent attendance and 90 percent successful completion of assignments in order to receive a specialized high school offer, but some schools also require a recommendation by Discovery teachers and participation in classroom activities.

Chen is suing on the grounds that Discovery discriminates against Asian students through racial engineering for the benefit of certain demographics, arguing that using socioeconomic status is a way to circumvent explicitly using race as a factor in admissions. Yet data from the Department of Education indicates that in the 2025–2026 school year, 63.3 percent of participants in the Discovery Program identified as Asian. Therefore, the demographics of the students admitted through the Discovery program are not unlike the demographics of the students admitted to any of the eight schools due to their SHSAT scores, 53.5 percent of whom were Asian in the class of 2029.

While Chen v. Mamdani argues that the program discriminates against Asian students by using geographic proxies, in this case Chen’s son was ineligible for Discovery based on his middle school’s status, not his race. Chen’s son attended I.S. 239 Mark Twain, a high-performing “screened” school with an ENI of roughly 40 percent, below the 60 percent needed to qualify for Discovery. Because Mark Twain is considered a resource-rich pipeline that successfully sends 60-70 students on average annually to Stuyvesant alone, the DOE’s stance is that its students have already been given the educational support necessary to hit standard cutoff scores, despite their individual economic backgrounds.

Chen’s suit asserts that reserving 20 percent of seats in the incoming class is unfair to those who fell slightly short of their target school; however, Discovery is not a “free ride” or a lowering of standards. Instead, the program’s goal is to benefit those who lack the proper resources but can learn quickly and effectively given the opportunity. Admitted students must go through an intensive summer program that requires them to prove they can handle the academic rigor of a specialized high school before they are even granted a seat. Discovery programs grant seats only after students complete weeks of high-level prep and meet strict criteria to demonstrate their ability to study and improve when given access to the educational resources needed to succeed. In this system, schools like Mark Twain are ineligible; no students there qualify for Discovery, regardless of their race, because the city views the school environment itself as a substantial advantage.

Overall, the Discovery program aims to provide disadvantaged students lacking the proper resources and environment to prepare for the SHSAT a chance to gain an offer to a specialized high school through it. The program chooses students based on their personal and their school’s socioeconomic background, not their race.

We reached out to many faculty members who teach at and manage the Discovery program at Stuyvesant, the majority of whom declined to comment. Therefore, our information is limited. If you have any tips or responses to this article, we ask that you email them to eics@stuyspec.com.