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New York City Specialized High School Admission Process is Unfair [1]

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Date: 2025-09-04

The New York City Specialized High School admission process is unfair, but charging the test is racist or gendered based distracts from what can be done to make the selection process fairer and to ensure a more diverse student body that better reflects New York City’ student population. The current process is deeply flawed and can be changed without pitting ethnic and racial communities against each other or a change in state law.

In a school system where over 40% of the students are Latino and almost one-fourth are Black, under 7% of the students accepted this school year to one of city’s eight elite “test” high schools were Latino and 3% were Black. Stuyvesant High School, the most selective of the specialized schools, accepted 27 Latino students and eight Black students, combined, less 5% of students admitted to the school.

In the past, Democratic Party Mayoral candidate Zohan Mamdani, a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science which I also attended, championed abandoning a single test score on the SHSAT as the only criteria for admission to one of the select high schools and adding other qualifying measures including middle school class standing. Now under pressure from voters whose children have generally done well on the exam, especially Asian parents, Mamdani has modified his position and promised that his administration would study the specialized high school exam for evidence of bias. The problem is not the test, but the process.

Three of the select high schools, Bronx Science, Stuyvesant in Manhattan, and Brooklyn Tech are mandated by state law to use the SHSAT for admission. The other five schools, Brooklyn Latin, American Studies, Math Science and Engineering, Queens High School for the Sciences, and Staten Island technical use the SHSAT to select students, but that is a New York City policy not a state requirement and can be changed by the city’s Department of Education.

A major injustice in the selection process is that the SHSAT is a competitive exam for a limited number of seats which means that students capable of doing advanced work are denied entry. It also means that students from families that place a priority on admission to these schools and can afford thousands of dollars for a test preparation class or individual tutoring and these classes have an unfair advantage on the test. These expensive courses can be taken more than once multiplying the cost and the unfairness.

An additional unfairness is that the quality of education in New York City elementary and middle schools is not the same. Some students are in classes with other high achievers while other students, especially Black and Latino students from poorer communities, are often in classes with English language learners, struggling readers, and students with life issues that interfere with learning. In these classes teachers must concentrate on the needs of students with a range of abilities and are unable to invest in the accelerated instruction needed to prepare students for the competitive SHSAT exam.

My proposal to whomever is elected Mayor of New York City in November is establish a committee of educators to develop a standard Stuyvesant-Science-Teach SST curriculum with criteria to determine the level of academic performance needed to successfully complete the program. The Department of Education could establish satellite SST academies across the five boroughs that all qualified students would be able to attend and where they would receive an SST diploma.

Students who are in the top 15 or 20% of their middle school class who achieve a passing score on the SHSAT would be admitted to one of the programs along with the highest scorers. Top middle school students who fall below the minimum score would be able to take support classes during the spring and summer to help them qualify. I would designate the current test schools that are not mandated to admit students solely on the basis of the SHSAT as SST academies and establish independent SST academies at Stuyvesant, Science and Tech but have the students in the academies take classes along with the other students. The education of all students at Stuyvesant, Science and Tech and the SST academies would benefit from the experiences they would have in schools with diverse student populations.

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