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.

Nicole Mader is a senior research fellow at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in public and urban policy at The Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy at The New School, where her research focus on the impact of school choice on educational outcomes in New York City public schools. An earlier version of this column appeared on the Center’s InsideSchools website.

Banner Photo by Mike Licht.