Black and Latinx Students Still Mostly Shut Out of Specialized Schools
By Nicole Mader
The New York City Department of Education recently released the results from the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) that was administered last fall. The one-day test provides the sole criterion for admission to the city’s eight elite high schools.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the test results showed that the longstanding lack of racial and ethnic diversity in the schools will continue in the 2020-21 school year.
To put this year’s admission results in a larger historical context, we analyzed SHSAT testing and admission results from each of the last six years, 2015-2020, and visualized them as proportions (by race and ethnicity) of total SHSAT takers, total SHSAT offers, and offers to each school.
See the full visualization below. And if you want to read about how Mayor Bill de Blasio’s now-abandoned plan to dismantle the SHSAT would have changed admissions at these schools and also at the City’s non-specialized high schools, read our Scrapping the SHSAT report.
