New York Specialized High School Exam Disrupted by System Failure; About 2,500 Students Sent Home to Await Retest

New York City's Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) was disrupted on Saturday (November 14) by a failure in its digital testing platform, and the Department of Education will reschedule the exam for affected students. About 2,500 students were affected, the New York Post reported.

Students at multiple sites could not log in or were cut off mid-test

According to Gothamist, the Department of Education attributed the disruption to problems reported by its testing vendor, Pearson. Students at multiple locations, including Brooklyn Technical High School and Stuyvesant High School, could not sign in to the testing system, and some who had begun answering questions were cut off before finishing, then sent home. The city told families they would get a new test date by November 20; Sunday's session will take place as scheduled.

Students who completed the exam but believe the problems affected their performance can request a retest, the Post reported. That is distinct from the new appointments for students whose Saturday sessions were stopped.

First year of computer-adaptive testing

New York City moved the test from paper to computers last year, and this fall is the first year the test is computer-adaptive: the software begins with a question set of average difficulty and uses a student's answers to adjust the difficulty of later questions. The city says the conversion from performance to a reported score remains consistent with previous administrations. The department statement reported by Gothamist did not establish that the adaptive question selection caused the disruption; the problem was in login and platform access.

Eight of the city's nine specialized high schools use the test as their only admissions criterion; LaGuardia High School uses auditions. For affected students, a replacement session gives them a way to compete for seats alongside those whose sessions went ahead.

(File photo: students taking an exam in a school gymnasium.)