New York, September 14, 2026 – PLACE NYC (Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education) reviewed the Plan submitted to the Mayor and the NYCPS Chancellor by City Council Members Restler and Williams advocating yet another overhaul of admissions to Specialized High Schools (“SHS”).
While the letter includes some valid suggestions, three of the proposals are blatant attacks against merit and unveiled racial engineering.
The Council Members are proposing to change the admissions process for the five SHS (Staten Island Technical HS, the HS for Math, Science & Engineering at City College in Manhattan, the Queens HS for the Sciences, the HS for American Studies in the Bronx, and Brooklyn Latin). Those five schools were designated as SHS by former Mayor Bloomberg and together represent one quarter of SHS seats. While NYS Education law 2590 (h)(1)(b) expressly grants NYC the authority to designate additional SHS’s, the statute gives no explicit authority to declassify those schools.
Restler and Williams’ vague proposal to incorporate “middle school performance, teacher recommendations, applicant backgrounds and essays” opens the door to high subjectivity. High school admissions with convoluted rubrics varying from school to school are complex enough for families, who are already subject to the luck of their lottery number; conversely, the SHSAT – a single, anonymous, in-person test – guarantees a fair and objective admission to all those who take the test, irrespective of ethnicity, zipcode, or resources. For families seeking multiple-measure admissions, NYC already offers dozens of academically strong screened schools. But clearly, 25,000 families like the option and simplicity of an objective test, the SHSAT.
Another worrisome proposal is the modification to the Discovery Program, which would limit eligibility to 15 community school districts out of the 32 in NYC. Today, 20% of the SHS offers are made to students who miss the lowest cut-off for the SHSAT; to qualify, students must be low income and attend a middle school with a high economic need index. This means many low income students are already unfairly excluded. The proposed plan would exclude even more low-income students from this program simply based on geographic location.
The letter concludes by proposing a City Council resolution to repeal the Hecht-Calandra Act, a recurring plea from progressive NYC lawmakers. Eliminating the SHSAT would address the effect, but not the root cause of the problem. Preparedness for the SHSAT and for the challenging education offered in SHS varies greatly across NYC; unfortunately, school districts with majority Black and Hispanic students are plagued by years of abandonment of accelerated programs in elementary and middle schools, resulting today in very few students sitting for the test and earning a seat.
The letter still makes some suggestions worth exploring, and which echo PLACE NYC’s advocacy over the years:
- Increase seats at the five small SHS: the letter mentioned “tripling enrollment at the five small schools;” while ambitious, this may be achieved by physically expanding schools where possible, by expanding class size as seats should not be limited by the 25 student per class mandate, and by opening new rigorous SHS across NYC
- Expand advanced math in every middle school starting in 6th grade and with the offering of Algebra 1 in 8th grade to ensure that all NYCPS middle schoolers have learned the test material
- A revamping of the DREAM program is also in order, but starting by assessing student participation and effectiveness for enrolled students. The objective should be offering a more targeted and flexible, expanded test preparation program at no cost for middle schoolers.
Finally, PLACE NYC urges NYCPS to implement an earlier outreach, particularly for middle schools where very few 8th graders sit for the test. While students in “feeder schools” are well informed about the SHSAT and timeline for preparation, well-trained guidance counselors must inform students and their families as early as the beginning of 6th grade about the SHS offering and admission method.