Legislation or Litigation for Educational Exclusion and Accomodation: New York and San Francisco Compared.

Both New York and San Francisco maintain high schools that admit students through a selection process that excludes many applicants who must attend other, less elite, high schools. In both cities, this policy has come under attack at times as manifesting discrimination by race, ethnicity, and/or parental economic status. Students admitted to these high schools over-represent white, Asian and middle- and upper-middle-class students while under-representing minority and poor students. This paper examines the attacks on these elite schools and the policies that produce them as well as the defenses of the policies that have been mounted by defenders of their existence. The trajectories of each city's conflict have differed widely, the former largely being played out in the state legislature, while the latter has been in and remains in court. Utilizing path dependency model, the paper seeks to illuminate the forces that turned the conflict in each City as it developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]