New York City Approves New Contract for Specialized High School Test

A New York City education panel voted late Wednesday night to approve a new contract for a contentious testing system for admission into the city’s elite public high schools.

The board, the Panel for Educational Policy, made its decision in a 14-to-2 vote, with four abstentions, at its final meeting of the year — a vote that had been delayed as debate waged over the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, the sole admissions criteria for the city’s eight specialized high schools, which include Stuyvesant High School and Bronx High School of Science.

The new contract, a five-year, $17 million agreement with Pearson, the dominant education publisher in the United States, would make the test computer-based for the first time, according to the city’s Department of Education.

The move marks a major shift for a test that has been the source of fraught fixation for decades. While the specialized schools educate only about 5 percent of New York City high schoolers, their admissions are scrutinized yearly, as they are regarded both as shining examples of the best of the city’s education system and as symbols of entrenched school segregation.

According to the D.O.E., approximately 30,000 eighth graders and 5,000 ninth graders take the test each year. Major racial gaps have persisted in the admissions process, with 12 percent of spots last year offered to Black and Latino students — the highest number since 2013 and up from 10 percent the year before. Mayor Eric Adams once referred to the schools as “a Jim Crow school system.”

The flagship school, Stuyvesant, admitted only 10 Black students to its first-year class of 744 students last year.