Back in October of 2000, Katherine was slated to take the NYC Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT), and she did not want to be late.

A nerdy Dominican girl growing up in the Bronx, Katherine was a straight-A student despite being a year younger than everyone in her 8th grade class. She attended Roberto Clemente Junior High School alongside plenty of students that looked like her and talked like her. Most of the students at Roberto Clemente were Dominican, Puerto Rican, or Black and the majority were first or second-generation immigrants. Flipping through her yearbook now, Katherine did find one White student—an eastern European immigrant student that had joined the school when Katherine was in 8th grade—but there were no Asian students.

Early one Saturday morning, Katherine and her dad were trying to find a part of the Bronx that neither of them had ever seen. This was strange, given that Katherine grew up in the Bronx and that her dad drove around the borough daily for his job. Since his degree in electrochemical engineering (from the oldest institution of higher learning in the New World) did not qualify him to work as an engineer in the United States, Katherine’s dad had spent the last five years working as an HVAC contractor for supermarkets and bodegas all across the Bronx. 

Still, they found themselves lost as they tried to make their way to one of the city’s specialized high schools—Bronx Science. Katherine was trying to focus on reviewing the study sheet that her math teacher had given her less than three weeks before—but she glanced around nervously as the minutes ticked by.

With plentiful resources and strong track records of graduates going on to prestigious colleges, NYC’s eight specialized high schools represent the best that the city’s public schools have to offer. These schools use a separate admissions process from the rest of the city’s schools, basing admission almost exclusively on the child’s score on the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT. According to the NYC Department of Education’s website, “Students are ranked according to their score on the test and assigned to a school depending on their rank, the priority in which they placed schools on their application, and the seats available at each school.” Given its importance for obtaining entry into these prestigious schools, some children begin preparing for the SHSAT as soon as they enter middle school.

Katherine’s 8th grade math teacher, Mrs. Rodriguez, told her class about the SHSAT three weeks before it was scheduled. Before this announcement, Katherine--as well as many of her classmates--had never heard of the SHSAT. Most students at Roberto Clemente did not take the exam, so the school offered little notice about the impending exam and did not offer any means of preparation. Since she recognized Katherine as a hard-working student who might stand a chance at gaining admission to the specialized high schools, Mrs. Rodriguez made an extra effort to encourage Katherine and a few other hand-selected students to take the exam—suggesting that it would be really good for them.

Two weeks before the exam, Mrs. Rodriguez gave Katherine and the others a study sheet to prepare for the SHSAT. Katherine has a clear memory of the night before the exam—her father was trying to teach her things from the study sheet that she had never seen before.

Katherine and her dad had left early that Saturday, so they made it in time for the exam despite getting lost. Still, the experience of getting lost on the way to Bronx Science sticks with Katherine to this day. In this way, and many others, going to Bronx Science to take the SHSAT felt like going to another world.

“It’s like the other part of the Bronx, you know?”

She and her dad knew plenty of other schools—like Clinton, which a few short blocks from Bronx Science. They both knew friends and family members that had gone to Clinton. But neither of them knew anyone who had ever gone to Bronx Science, so Katherine had no idea what she would encounter when she arrived.

Bronx Science was nothing like Roberto Clemente. The first thing she noticed about Bronx Science was that “it was pretty. And big. It had this really big walkway leading up to the school. I remember it being very green and very big.”

“It looked like they had money,” she laughed. “More than we did.”

Katherine remembers wanting nothing more than to go to that school, with its big walkway and green spaces. “It was supposed to be a really good school,” she remembers. “But I think it was only after I took the test that I realized how big of a deal it was.” 

Katherine did not score high enough on the SHSAT to be offered admission into any of the specialized high schools. Later, her teacher told her that she’d only missed the threshold for admission by one question--which she says was the hardest part for her. “I probably could have gotten in if I’d had a little more time to prepare,” she said. None of her classmates at Roberto Clemente were accepted, either.

The day after the test results were released, Katherine’s math teacher--Mrs. Rodriguez--was furious. Katherine remembers her standing in front of the entire class, yelling at the students.

“I didn’t just ‘find out’ that no one else made it. My teacher walked into the class and screamed at us. She told us that she had ‘never been so embarrassed.’ She was mad that none of us had gotten in, instead of realizing that she did not do enough to prepare us. Plus, half of the class had not even taken the exam! So, they did not know what was going on. They were getting a lecture for no reason!”

Katherine still remembers how terrible Mrs. Rodriguez had made them all feel. “She wrote the scores on the board, the ones needed for admission into each of the [then] three specialized high schools. Then she wrote the highest score that any of the students in the school had gotten that year. It was my score, but it wasn’t high enough for admission. I went home and I cried.”

Katherine took the SHSAT 20 years ago, but not much has changed in that time. Black and Latino youth—who represent approximately 70% of the city’s students—are far less likely than White and Asian youth to perform well enough on the SHSAT to gain admission into New York City’s specialized high schools. A recent New York Times article revealed that, this year, less than 4% of the students admitted to Stuyvesant High School—arguably the most prestigious of the eight specialized high schools in New York City—were Black or Hispanic. Specifically, out of a cohort of 760 incoming freshmen students, only 10 of the students were Black (up from 7 last year) and only 20 were Hispanic (down from 33 last year).

These striking statistics have generated considerable backlash in the past few years, culminating in the introduction of multiple policies intended to increase the representation of Black and Latino students in these schools. Many advocates argue, however, that none of these “diversity policies” will make a difference in the ethnic and racial composition of these schools unless they stop using the SHSAT. They explain that the SHSAT is not a good indicator of a child’s potential, especially for Black and Latino students who are more likely to attend elementary and middle schools that do not adequately prepare them to succeed.

Katherine’s old middle school, Roberto Clemente, has since been shut down. By the time of its closure, the school’s average test scores for reading and math were in the bottom 50% of all schools in New York City. Incidentally, the high school Katherine attended when she did not make it into Bronx Science has also shut down due to academic underperformance. Despite this lack of preparation and not being accepted to the specialized high schools, Katherine went on to graduate early from her high school before attending and graduating from an Ivy League university. Clearly, the SHSAT does not capture everything.

J. Alexander Watford is an IES-PIRT fellow, and 5th year Doctoral Student in the Psychology and Social Intervention program.