He was hastily appointed after the mayor’s first choice, Alberto M. Carvalho, the superintendent of Miami, turned down the post on national television. Mr. Carranza was appointed a few days later.
From his first news conference as chancellor, it was clear that he was far more willing to talk powerfully about school segregation than his boss. And a few months after taking office, it seemed like his rhetoric could translate into action. In June 2018, the mayor and chancellor announced a plan to get rid of the selective entrance exam that prescribes admission to the city’s high school, including Stuyvesant High School and The Bronx High School of Science.
Black and Latino students are extremely underrepresented in those schools, and low-income Asian-American children are overrepresented. Some Asian-American politicians and families were offended that they had not been consulted about the plan, and many took offense at Mr. Carranza’s clumsy defense of the proposal. “I do not like the story that any ethnic group has admission to these schools,” he said shortly after it was announced.
A major setback to the plan, led by Asian Americans, quickly killed the mayor and chancellor’s hopes of replacing the special admission exam for schools. The parents who fought to keep the exam in place have since asked Mr. Carranza’s hardest and most steady critics. Before the pandemic, a group of families followed the chancellor to all his public appearances and with ‘Fire Carranza!’ and accused him of prejudice against their children.
The administration of mr. De Blasio has not created any major new integration policies since the humiliating political defeat in 2018. However, the pandemic forced the mayor to announce some changes to the selective admissions policy late last year, including the abolition of a rule that only dips students in some of the city’s richest neighborhoods at selective high schools there. Mr. Carranza and his senior assistants have been pushing the mayor for years to get rid of the geographic preference that applies to students living on the Upper East Side, the West Village and Tribeca.
The language of mr. Carranza on integration often directly contradicted the attitude of Mr. De Blasio, who constantly irritated the mayor and his press team. The chancellor has the habit of publicly contradicting the mayor on a range of issues.
Only a few days after he started, Mr. Carranza ‘fuzzy’ the idea behind the mayor’s nearly $ 800 million school improvement program called Renewal. The chancellor later had to defend the program, even after the city canceled it after disappointing results. This trend continued until the last days of mr. Carranza’s term of office.