URBAN AGENDA: Specialized High Schools Admissions Rigged Against Students of Color

Numbers don’t lie.

Only three Black students were among the 777 offered admission this fall to Stuyvesant High School. Just one was among the 300 offered admission to by Staten Island Tech.

Overall, this year Black students received 3.5 percent of the 4,023 acceptance letters to specialized high schools, and Latino students received 6.5 percent. By contrast, Asian students were given more than half of all offers, followed by white students with 23 percent, school figures show.

So few Black and brown kids in the hallways of specialized high schools send a message that their absence is normal, that they cannot cut it academically, and that maybe they’re just not smart enough. That thinking is shameful—and dangerous. We all know it is not the case.

Several factors are in play. There is the controversial Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT). Then there is the test-prep cottage industry that allows wealthy households—and others who view specialized-school admission as a last-ditch opportunity for a better life—to game the system, training their kids from early adolescence.

What is more, Black students comprise a shrinking constituency in the New York City school system. They make up only 19 percent of students, school figures show. The majority of school children, 42 percent, are Latino, while Asian students make up 19 percent and white students 16 percent.

As a result, the major racial minority groups hold equal or greater political sway than Blacks, which reflects the loss of nearly 200,000 Black city residents between 2000 and 2020, according to US Census data. That helps explain the lack of public outrage among our elected officials and education and racial-justice advocates about the current plight of Black specialized high school admissions.

The biggest culprit in this mess is the SHSAT, the sole standard for admission to eight of the nine specialized schools. LaGuardia High School, a performing arts school, instead requires auditions or portfolio reviews. The test is not used anywhere else in the United States.

I say dump the SHSAT and automatically admit the top three percent of all middle school students. At the very least, expand the criteria to include grade point average, extracurricular activities, and maybe even socioeconomic factors.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, himself a Bronx High School of Science alum, has changed his position on the crisis. On the campaign trail, he called for abolishing the SHSAT because, he said, the exam was biased.  More recently, the mayor told The New York Times that the issue is a “struggle” for him. 

Stuyvesant High School’s admissions decisions were the most striking. It’s arguably the city’s most sought-after specialized public high school and offers to Black students this fall have reached their lowest level since at least 2014, which is as far back as the city’s public data goes. In the mid-1980s, Black and Latino students made up approximately 15 percent of Stuyvesant’s student body.

The scandal in plain sight is how the wealthy game the system. They invest tens of thousands of dollars and countless weekends in test prep. Worthy students from modest households cannot afford those classes while some households pay eye-popping amounts, from $3,500 annually to as much as $50,000.

In fact, weekend SHSAT tutoring has become so ingrained in some cultures that they spare no expense to give their children the opportunity to achieve a top score on the grueling, high-stakes exam.

It wasn’t always like this. Indeed, the specialized schools once enrolled in coming classes that were more representative of the broader school system. For instance, Black and brown kids comprised the majority of Brooklyn Technical High School’s student body from the early 1980s until the mid-1990s, with Black enrollment alone hovering above 30 percent. That began to change in 2002, when the Bloomberg administration expanded SHSAT-based admissions — which instead of further integrating specialized high schools contributed to fewer Black students being admitted.

The plight of Black and brown students matters because, nationally, it contributes to a drop in people of color at America’s elite universities, according to  National Center for Education Statistics. In nearly all highly selective private and public colleges — the 85 that accept 25 percent or fewer applicants — Black and Latino enrollment in recent years has declined or remained flat.

Separately, a new study published by Brown University found that high-scoring students from underrepresented minority groups were more likely to be “cascaded” into less selective colleges, which generally have lower graduation rates and postgraduate earnings.

It’s unacceptable that Black students are effectively locked out of the opportunity to study at our premier specialized high schools. Something must be done, because growing numbers of them are being denied access to the springboard into the nation’s top colleges and highest-paying jobs.

David R. Jones, Esq., is President and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), the leading voice on behalf of low-income New Yorkers for more than 175 years. The views expressed in this column are solely those of the writer. The Urban Agenda is available on CSS’s website: www.cssny.org.