By Joyce Szuflita
This letter was sent to me by my good buddy Allison Shillingford. Allison is an African American mom who lives in Brooklyn. She runs a not for profit called, Navigate the Maze:
Navigate the Maze to Achievement, Inc. (NTMA) is a non-profit, educational enrichment program that prepares black students in Brooklyn for the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) and supports the students socially and academically while in high school.

In 2019, out of the 5,488 black students who took the Specialized High School Admissions Test (SHSAT) to attend New York City specialized high schools, only 190 of the students received offers. In one of the worst years for black enrollment in specialized high schools, an emerging non-profit in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, demonstrates that black students are capable of passing the SHSAT.  Navigate the Maze to Achievement (NTMA) had 20 students take the SHSAT, and seven received offers. About 3.96% of Black students citywide passed the SHSAT, while 35% of NTMA students passed.  To put this into perspective, 1 in every 27 black students who received an offer to a specialized high school is an NTMA student.