Students, parents and advocates are demanding the city safeguard the entrance exam for its eight elite, specialized high schools ahead of a crucial vote next week which could decide whether the test gets torpedoed.
The Specialized High Schools Admission Test is the only entrance criteria used for top schools like Bronx High School of Science; Stuyvesant; Brooklyn Tech and others, but if the city’s Panel for Educational Policy doesn’t approve a new five-year, $17 million contract with education company Pearson, the test could be scrapped.
The deal is set to be voted on at next week’s PEP meeting after being repeatedly postponed. If approved, the test could be given digitally, but if it’s rejected there may be no exam next year for the freshman classes of 2026, exam proponents said.
“If the SHSAT [contract] does not get renewed, all the seventh-graders who want to go to these schools are out of luck,” Phoebe Gerber, a seventh-grader at PS 334 on the Upper West Side, said at a public meeting on Wednesday where speakers poured out to support the exam.
“I have toured many of these specialized high schools and have fallen in love with them, just like a lot of other seventh graders,” she added.
Proponents of the merit-based exam and admissions process fear the contract vote is a back-door way for woke critics of the controversial test, which is required by law for entrance into some of the elite schools, to finally kill it.
Opponents of the test point to a lack of Black and Latino representation within the eight specialized schools. Last year, only 4.5% of offers went to Black students and 7.6% to Latino students, according to city data. Some also argue that pricey test prep is out of reach for low-income families.
Gavin Healy, a parent and member of the Community Education Council for District 2 in Manhattan, argued Wednesday, “It’s a system that will always reward those with more resources, forcing disadvantaged students to pay a burdensome, regressive tax to test prep.”
Other parents want to maintain the status quo and prevent anymore disruptions to an already complicated admissions process.
“Rejecting the contract, in my point of view, is akin to jumping out of an airplane without a parachute and hoping that before we land we’re able to find a solution,” said Melih Onvural, a parent of three public schools students hoping to get into the crown-jewel high schools.
“Does the system have flaws? Yes. Does the contract have flaws? Yes,” he added. “But my ask of the committee is to separate dreams of a test free world from this contract renewal.”
Tom Sheppard, a PEP member, told Gothamist that his opposition to the test is an “equity issue.”
Panel chair Gregory Faulkner, however, has reportedly said he doesn’t “have a problem with having an exam” and is “confident the panel is going to arrive at a good decision.”
At a town hall on Thursday, schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos said the SHSAT process “is set forth by the state, and we will continue to abide by that,” according to reports. “Anything that changes in the future, we’ll abide by that too.”
Members of the City Council’s Common Sense Caucus rallied in support of the new contract on Thursday.
“Students who take the SHSAT are not rich kids who can afford private tutors but come from hardworking, low and middle class families,” Councilwoman Susan Zhuang (D-Brooklyn) said in a statement.
“This test is a lifeline for underrepresented and low-income immigrant students to gain access to some of the best public high schools in the country,” she said.
Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres also joined the calls.
“I have a simple message for PEP,” he said in a video posted on X. “Stop politicizing the SHSAT, stop polarizing the people of New York, and start focusing on fundamentally improving the system as a whole.”
