The CEOs of some of the largest and most powerful American companies, including Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Google and Blackrock recently announced a new initiative to improve the education provided NYC students and hire 100,000 low-income Black, Latino and Asian employees into high-paying jobs over the next 10 years. It’s called the New York Jobs C.E.O. Council, and it will work with the city government among other entities, to “prepare a new generation of New Yorkers for high-paying jobs at some of the country’s biggest companies,” according to the New York Times.

Unfortunately, the corporate leaders are likely to find Chancellor Richard Carranza, the current head of the city’s Department of Education, resistant to this effort, as he is hostile to advanced and enriched education even if it benefits minorities and the poor.

Recently, the DOE announced that it was canceling the contract between Queens College and Townsend Harris High School providing its students with college courses. Under this program, every enrolled student earned 12 college credits.

Townsend is a wonderful school. U.S. News ranks it the fifth-best high school in the nation out of 24,000 schools, and first in New York State. Even though its student body is nearly 80% minority, with 55% meeting federal poverty guidelines for free or subsidized lunch, this did not prevent Carranza from making this draconian cut, which strikes at the heart of what makes this school so good.

Similarly, Carranza is leading the effort to change the law in Albany to permit him full control over the city’s specialized highs schools, Brooklyn Tech, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, along with five others the city administratively changed to test-in only status, so he can have complete unfettered power to decide admissions and curricula. The current law mandates that the original three schools exist, and that admission be based on a special, academically competitive exam.

The specialized high schools are also ranked among the highest in New York State.

While a great deal of attention has been paid to the unacceptably low percentage of Black and Latino children in specialized schools, where Asian-American students are the largest cohort, the fact remains that the majority of students in these schools are from low-income families, many of them immigrants.

According to city statistics, Brooklyn Tech, the nation’s largest high school (6,000 students), has a student body that is 77% minority and 62% economically disadvantaged. Total minority enrollment at Stuyvesant is 81%, and nearly half qualify for free or subsidized lunch, the educational standard for measuring economic disadvantage. At Bronx Science, total minority enrollment is 77% of the student body and nearly half are economically disadvantaged.

The New York Jobs C.E.O. Council is to be applauded for its intent. But if it is to succeed, the city must recognize that it needs to restore gifted and talented and enhanced educational opportunities in every elementary and middle school, especially those serving the Black and Latino communities, and preserve the enhanced educational opportunities of its best high schools.