But the test helped drive sharp racial and economic segregation: In 2020, the last year it was administered, just 12% of kindergartners in gifted programs were Black or Latino.
After the city nixed the test, the demographics began to change.
In the 2023-24 school year, 30% of kindergartners in gifted programs were Black or Latino, officials said at a recent City Council hearing. The share of students from low-income families in gifted programs citywide rose to 47% last year, up from 34% in 2019, according to Education Department data.
Blog
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Mamdani wants to rethink gifted and talented in NYC. The program has already seen big shifts.
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Pipelines and Equity in Gifted and Talented Programs
This project will study enrollees in elementary school gifted and talented (G&T) programs, and follow the educational outcomes of this group through high school. Racial diversity of G&T programs is a persistent concern, as Black and Hispanic students make up less than 25% of the NYC G&T population despite making up 70% of NYC’s student population. The research team will therefore pay particular attention to the effects of programs on racial minorities and study policies that aim to increase program diversity.
Overall, we find little evidence of large G&T program effects on future
schooling outcomes for marginal students.
This suggests that the large representation of G&T students in
specialized high schools is driven by selection rather than causal effects
of G&T programs.https://mitili.mit.edu/research/pipelines-and-equity-gifted-and-talented-programs
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Elite New York High School Admits 8 Black Students in a Class of 781
Just over 4,000 students received acceptance letters for the fall semester after nearly 26,000 eighth-graders took the exam last fall. Black and Latino students made up more than 44 percent of all test-takers.
Another highly competitive specialized school, the Bronx High School of Science, made 21 offers to Black pupils and 55 to Hispanic students, in a freshman class of 738, down from a combined 97 offers last year.
Some of the schools admit less homogenous freshman classes: Roughly 18 percent of seats at Brooklyn Latin in Williamsburg went to Black and Hispanic students.
Starting next fall, students will take a digital version of the entrance exam for the first time. Some test preparation organizations have expressed concern that the shift could worsen inequality and place students who are less proficient with technology at a disadvantage.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/nyregion/specialized-high-schools-black-students-stuyvesant.html
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Fewer Black and Latino students win offers to attend specialized high schools
Just 3% of offers at eight of the city’s specialized schools went to Black students, down from 4.5% last school year, according to Education Department data released Thursday. Meanwhile, 6.9% of offers went to Latino students compared with 7.6% a year ago. Across the city’s public schools, nearly two-thirds of students are Black or Latino.
Asian American students received nearly 54% of the offers, a slight increase. The proportion of offers that went to white students, about 26%, was flat. Nearly 17% of public school students are Asian American and about 15% are white.
Specialized high schools command outsized attention because they are widely considered to be some of the most prestigious public schools in the country, even as they only enroll about 5% of the city’s public high school students. They also contribute to the city’s status as one of the nation’s most segregated school systems.
Admission to eight of the city’s nine specialized high schools depends entirely on a student’s score on a single standardized exam. Five of the eight specialized schools that rely on the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, admitted 10 or fewer Black students this year. Out of 781 offers to Stuyvesant High School, the most selective of the specialized schools, just 8 went to Black students.
Overall, nearly 26,000 eighth graders took the SHSAT, and 4,000 were offered a seat based on their score, according to the data.
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Should NYC’s specialized high school test come in other languages? Manhattan parent council says no.
Last school year, just four of the nearly 16,000 students enrolled in the eight specialized high schools, or 0.03%, were classified as English learners, according to city data. That’s in a school system where roughly 148,000 students, or 16.3% of the population, are learning English — a share that’s been growing as the city absorbs tens of thousands of migrant families.
Last year, roughly 900 English learners took the specialized high school test, and fewer than six got in. (The Education Department suppresses data for groups that small, so the precise number isn’t shared.)
It wasn’t immediately clear how many current specialized high school students were considered English Learners at one point in their school career and have now tested out of that designation. About 47% of specialized high school students last year spoke English as a home language, compared to about 52% of all city public high school students, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of city data.
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New York City Approves New Contract for Specialized High School Test
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.
The meeting agenda for Wednesday night acknowledged that the D.O.E. was aware of 19 investigations into Pearson for workplace discrimination but said that 16 of those cases had been closed or dismissed.
But the department did not address a string of issues involving Pearson’s testing over the years. Testing errors led the New York State Education Department to end its contract with Pearson in 2015.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/18/nyregion/specialized-high-school-test-new-york.html
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The NYC school system must reject this contract
- In 2012, the NYS state exam produced by Pearson featured more than 30 errors, with faulty questions and problems with translation and scoring. One of the reading passages was so ludicrous it was featured on John Oliver.
- In 2013, Pearson’s state exams featured crass, commercial product placements as well as reading passages lifted from Pearson textbooks. According to Kathleen Porter Magee of the conservative Fordham Institute, Pearson was abusing its monopoly power in a way that “threatens the validity of the English Language Arts (ELA) scores for thousands of New York students and raises serious questions about the overlap between Pearson’s curriculum and assessment divisions.”
- The Pearson Charitable Foundation paid a $7.7 million fine after the state attorney general found they had broken state laws. The company also had to pay $75 million in damages plus costs to settle a lawsuit over price-fixing.
- Pearson was found to have made mistakes in scoring the NYC Gifted and Talented tests. Not once, but twice.
- In 2015, it was discovered that Pearson was monitoring the social media of students who criticized their NJ state exams.
- In 2018, Pearson’s lax security practices led to one of the largest student data breaches in history, involving probably millions of students, including many in New York. The FBI alerted Pearson to the breach in March 2019, but they didn’t tell anyone, including the schools or the students until months later. Eventually, Pearson was fined $1 million by the SEC for misleading investors about the breach.
- Altogether, Pearson has been subjected to dozens of investigations for discrimination against its employees on grounds of race, disability, gender, age, etc.
https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/12/18/the-nyc-school-system-must-reject-this-contract/
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Push to digitize NYC entrance exam for specialized high schools reignites equity debate
n panel documents, it reported receiving two bids during a request for proposals from Pearson, which has historically provided the exam, or a competitor, Educational Testing Services. After negotiating the contract down with Pearson, education officials said the cost of their product was 19% lower than switching vendors, and urged panel members to vote it through.
“This would be the sole means of providing an exam,” First Deputy Chancellor Dan Weisberg told the panel on Wednesday night at its monthly meeting, the second consecutive forum where the test was included but later removed from the agenda. “So if we don’t have this contract in place, the current contract will expire. There will be no contract of paper and pencil to continue.”
The tests will continue to be administered in school for eighth graders, with weekend testing available for ninth graders and students from private, religious and charter schools at central locations, according to education officials. Paper versions would remain available for students with disabilities who need accommodations. The changes would go into effect next fall.
In a statement, State Sen. John Liu (D-Queens), the chair of the upper chamber’s committee on New York City education, reiterated state law requires the exam for admission to specialized high schools, with no indication that he would push for changes in Albany.
“While the single test is not perfect, it is still the most objective assessment for admission to these specialized high schools,” Liu told The News.
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NYC eyes $17 million contract to create computer-based Specialized High School Admissions Test
This year’s eighth graders could be the last class that takes the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test with paper and pencil. A New York City education panel is slated to vote on a roughly $17 million contract later this month that would transition the test to a computer-based model.
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More Black and Latino Students Admitted to New York’s Elite High Schools
Across the public school system, 24 percent of students are Black and 41 percent are Hispanic. But at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, often viewed as the city’s most competitive high school, 10 of the 744 offers made this spring went to Black students while 16 went to Hispanic students. Asian students were offered 496 spots, and white students were offered 127.