SHSAT glitch: tech failure sends students home from NYC's specialized high school exam; Sunday testing still on

A technical failure on the online testing platform for the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, or SHSAT, forced New York City to call off testing at its weekend sites on Saturday and send students home, the New York Times and the New York Post reported. The exam is the only admissions criterion for eight of the city's nine specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech.

The Education Department's SHSAT page said Saturday evening that testing will go ahead as scheduled on Sunday, Nov. 15.

What happened

• The failure: the department said the testing vendor "experienced technical issue with the testing platform that kept many students from accessing and finishing the test," the Times reported. Some students could not log in; others had to stop partway through.
• How many: the department did not give a number publicly. The Post, citing a department letter it obtained, put it at about 2,500 students. Sources told the Post that sites including Brooklyn Tech and Stuyvesant were affected.
• The vendor: the exam is run by Pearson, which has a five-year, $17 million contract approved by the Panel for Educational Policy two years ago, the Times reported. An internal department email cited by the Post said Pearson "had significant issues" that kept many students from logging on or finishing. Pearson did not respond to the Times.
• Waiting for hours: one Brooklyn Tech parent told the Times her daughter sat down at 8:30 a.m. and the test did not load until 10 a.m.; she had answered two math questions when a proctor stopped the room.

What families should know

• Automatic reschedule: every student who could not finish Saturday will be rescheduled automatically, and the new date "will not affect any student's score or consideration for admission," the department said in its statement to the Times.
• New date by Nov. 20: a note handed to parents said students scheduled for Saturday would get a new test date by Friday, Nov. 20, according to both papers.
• Retest option: students who did finish but feel the problems hurt their performance can request a retest, the letter said.
• Remaining dates: this year's SHSAT dates are Nov. 14, 15 and 21 at weekend sites and Nov. 18 in schools. The department says Sunday's session is on. Questions go to SHSATassessment@schools.nyc.gov, the address listed on its SHSAT page.

Reaction

Council Member Susan Zhuang of Brooklyn wrote on X that "accountability cannot be outsourced," the Post reported. A Manhattan Institute fellow called for an independent investigation, and a former deputy chancellor said the department should consider giving the test earlier in the fall so make-up dates don't collide with the holidays.

"We apologize for the disruption and are working with the vendor to ensure this is fixed and does not happen again," the department said, according to the Times.

Background

About 30,000 eighth graders and 5,000 ninth graders take the SHSAT each year, according to the department. It moved from paper to computers in 2025, and this is the first year the city is using an adaptive version that adjusts question difficulty to each student's answers, the Post reported. The specialized high schools enroll about 5% of city high schoolers, and the test has long been at the center of the debate over segregation in city schools.