30K students will take the SHSAT this weekend. Here’s where the push to eliminate the exam stands.
This weekend, more than 30,000 New York City students are expected to take the Specialized High School Admissions Test.
The SHSAT — the sole means of admissions for most of the city’s nine specialized high schools — has served as a point of contention for the mayor and schools chancellor, who have been working to get rid of the test, as well as to parents and educators hoping to keep it intact.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza have claimed that legislation to do away with the SHSAT — which is currently stalled in both the Senate and the Assembly — would increase racial diversity in the top high schools like Brooklyn Technical High School and Stuyvesant High School, which currently enroll disproportionately low numbers of black and Latinx students. (According to Chalkbeat, in 2019, White and Asian students were more likely to take the test — and to score high enough for admission.)