The SHSAT Crisis Starts in Kindergarten

Via Mayor’s Office

Each year, when the NYC Department of Education releases admissions data for specialized high schools, the press and elected officials highlight the low enrollment of Black and Hispanic students. Just yesterday, the New York Times published a story titled “An Elite N.Y.C. Public School Admitted 777 Students. Only 3 Were Black.” The focus was on the test and racial disparities, without addressing the underlying causes.

A Brooklyn city council member requested state legislation to “modify the admissions process,” while the Queens Borough President called for “a real, independent investigation into the admissions process.” A spokesperson for Mayor Mamdani said that the mayor “believes we must root out the deep racial and economic inequities that persist in our public school system, and our administration will be reviewing these results carefully.”

Headlines such as “Just 1 Black student gets into Staten Island Tech” or “NYC specialized high schools continue to offer few seats to Black and Hispanic students” are intended to shock, yet they often overlook that few Black and Hispanic 8th-grade students are adequately prepared to succeed on the admissions test. The articles also don’t mention the fact that these specialized high schools enroll a majority of low-income students, nor do they include the data on private schools’ scholarships for high-performing black and Hispanic students.

Absenteeism is a significant factor in these results and deserves more attention.

Among the ethnic groups of students in the city’s public schools, there are notable differences in attendance. In the 2024-25 school year, 13% of Asian 7th graders were chronically absent, compared to 36% of Black and 35.2% of Hispanic students. This issue begins early: in kindergarten, 27% of Asian students were chronically absent, while over 45% of Black and Hispanic students missed more than 10% of school days and significant instructional time.

Students cannot learn effectively if they are not present in school, and chronic absenteeism is reflected in test scores.

In grades 3-8, Asian students demonstrate high proficiency rates in math and ELA, at 80% and 74.9%, respectively. For Black students, these rates are 43% and 47%. Hispanic students have proficiency rates of 43.1% in math and 43.5% in ELA. Students who are not proficient are unlikely to perform well on a rigorous test such as the SHSAT.

Mayor Mamdani, who attended the private Bank Street School before enrolling at Bronx Science, has benefited from specialized high schools. During the campaign, he said that he would follow the advice from the 2019 School Diversity Advisory Group and “ensure that all high school admissions criteria are transparent and designed to reduce the racial and socioeconomic isolation currently prevalent in most high schools.”

To address the racial inequities highlighted by the admissions test, his administration should prioritize reducing absenteeism among Black and Hispanic students and ensure access to high-quality instruction throughout K-8. Efforts should also focus on decreasing the number of Black and Hispanic students in persistently underperforming schools, where more than half of students are not reading or doing math at grade level. This systemic failure contributes to disparities in SHSAT participation: 32.4% of test-takers are Asian, compared to 18.4% Black and 26.1% Hispanic students.

Mamdani’s first budget indicates no significant changes to the educational system responsible for these outcomes. It continues to fund underperforming, underenrolled schools and does not expand high-demand, high-performing schools. As long as these policies persist, SHSAT admission numbers are unlikely to change.

Expanding SHSAT seats in the borough with the greatest need would be a good starting point: students from Queens receive 32% of offers, but only 3.2% of seats are there. His administration could also publish both racial and income breakdowns of admitted students to highlight how these schools serve a majority of low-income students, so we can have an honest debate about the challenges and benefits of these schools.