Some legislators and civil rights groups have blamed the test-only policy for the fact that very few black and Hispanic students are admitted to the eight so-called specialized high schools, in comparison with their numbers in the city’s school system over all. Mayor Bill de Blasio said during the mayoral campaign that the schools should use a broader set of measures for admission, but his power to make that change is limited.
State law mandates that the test, known as the Specialized High School Admissions Test, be the only standard for admission to the three biggest schools — Stuyvesant High School, the Bronx High School of Science and Brooklyn Tech — and an attempt to change that law fizzled earlier this year.
