Education
Former NYC schools chancellor says he tried to change specialized admissions criteria
David Banks and former First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, who both served in former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, discussed the SHSAT at a podcast taping in Harlem.
One of the panels at Tuesday’s podcast taping featured Council Members Lincoln Restler, Nantasha Williams, former First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, former New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks and Assembly Member Alicia Hyndman. Nila Roper
Former New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks said he tried to get former Mayor Eric Adams to change admissions criteria to the city’s specialized high schools, and Adams just wouldn’t go for it.
Banks and Sheena Wright, who served as first deputy mayor under Adams, hosted a live taping of their new-ish podcast at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem Tuesday night. And on the heels of a contentious town hall with current Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels about integration and equity in city schools, the married couple’s podcast tackled the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, the sole determinant of students’ admission to the city’s eight specialized public high schools. Ahead of this school year, Black students received just 3.5% of acceptance letters, while Hispanic students received 6.5%. The school system is roughly 19% Black and 42% Hispanic.
During the discussion, which featured elected officials, educators, advocates and audience Q&A, Banks spoke out against the SHSAT. “We’re the only city in the nation that has one single test for admission to specialized schools,” he said. “This is a system right now that doesn’t even care about your grades… It really makes no sense.”
Banks said he spoke to then-mayor Adams about the lack of diversity while he was chancellor, and suggested changing admissions criteria, but inaction followed. “I went to the mayor, and he would not do it. I’m just being real. But you gotta understand, he’s a politician.”
Many at the podcast taping suggested changes to or complete elimination of the SHSAT, while others pushed for building more specialized high schools. Several panelists called for increasing slots to the specialized high schools, and others focused on improving the elementary schools to better prepare students for later grades, as well as improving education quality in all high schools citywide.
Multiple speakers pointed out the elephant in the room: even with more equitable access, there are still many more students in the school system than there are slots to specialized schools. “There’s more genius than there is capacity… the SHSAT should not be a proxy for system-wide integration,” said Rev. Kirsten John Foy. “We are focused on 15,000 seats out of a system of one million (students).”
Council Members Nantasha Williams and Lincoln Restler, as well as former Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter, among many others on the rotating panels, called for the elimination of the Hecht-Calandra Act, which mandates the SHSAT as admission criteria for three of those specialized schools: Stuyvesant High School, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech.
Last week, New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones grilled Samuels in a town hall discussion about inequity and segregation in city schools. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a graduate of Bronx Science, has said that reforms are needed but has been unspecific about what those should look like. “I’ve said that my focus is on what precedes that here in New York City,” he told City & State over the summer. “I don’t believe that the test itself needs to change.”