Widening admissions criteria to the specialized high schools would do little to ease the schools' racial diversity problem, and could still leave out many black students, according to a report from the Research Alliance for New York City Schools at N.Y.U. 

The report's authors said that even with measures such as grades and attendance considered, black and Latino students would be under-represented at these schools.

Calls to diversify the student populations at these elite schools have focused primarily on the single-test admissions policy for eight of the nine specialized schools. The mayor has called for using more holistic measures. And the admissions policy is under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education. 

Based on numbers released Thursday, only 10 of the 953 students offered admission to Stuyvesant High School are black and 20 are Latino. These numbers were consistent with previous years, and Stuyvesant wasn't the only specialized high school with a racial diversity problem. Racial disparities persisted at all of them.

Sean Corcoran, one of the study's authors, said the single-test admissions policy contributed to these disparities. But it is not the only problem. 

More high achieving students should be invited to take the exam in the first place, he said, and more students should get test prep help.

Corcoran and his co-author also simulated how different admissions criteria could affect admission to specialized high schools. They found that offers based on multiple measures, such as grades and attendance, would moderately help Latino students and would slightly reduce the share of Asian students. The number of white students receiving admission would increase. 

But black students, according to the simulation, would not be admitted at higher rates. Corcoran said the use of alternative criteria actually decreased admission to black students in some cases.

However, moving away from a single-test admissions policy could improve gender balance in a system where girls are less likely to even take the specialized high school exam than boys.

"Girls actually fare very well under systems that are more holistic and look at grades and state test scores," said Corcoran.

But even if more girls are admitted, they may not necessarily choose to go. The analysis found that, among the students with a similar level of achievement, girls were 11 percent less likely to accept an offer to a specialized high school.