SHSAT Predicts Whether Students Will Succeed in School, Study Finds

Tyler Pager:

Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed during his first mayoral campaign in 2013 to overhaul the admissions process for New York City’s specialized schools. After years of inaction, Mr. de Blasio announced in June his plans to scrap the SHSAT.

In the debate over the test for New York City’s elite high schools, one question had seemed to be unanswered: Whether there was evidence that the exam was a good predictor of how well students would do at the schools.

But on Friday, the city’s Education Department released for the first time a study it had commissioned in 2013 that showed a strong positive relationship between doing well on the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test and high school academic performance.