The debate about the Specialized High School Admissions Test is completely misplaced. As usual, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his allies are looking to put a Band-Aid on a gaping wound requiring major surgery.

The contentious debate about the test risks obscuring a much bigger problem, one all policy makers need to address — namely, the inequities across the entire system in New York City. The lamentably small number of black and Hispanic students at the specialized schools are merely a symptom of a larger, systemic crisis.

Consider the citywide results for eighth-graders on the 2017 state math exam. Of the students who received the highest level score, 53 percent were Asian, 24 percent white, 17 percent Hispanic — and only 6 percent black.

Compare these results to the passing rate on the SHSAT that year: 52 percent were Asian, 28 percent white, 6 percent Hispanic and 4 percent black. The neatly matching numbers are no fluke. These trends held in 2018 and across grade levels.

The uproar should be about this criminally irresponsible system, which consistently fails to provide a high-quality education to black and Hispanic students. These students make up 70 percent of the city’s schools. Yet the fact that most of them can’t read, write or do math at grade-level receives scant attention compared to what happens at a handful of specialized schools.

I’m a former middle-school reading teacher, and I know firsthand that what happens in middle schools is critical to whether students are successful in high school. If the de Blasio administration is serious about changing outcomes at the high-school level, it needs to focus on raising the rigor at the middle-school level. The recent news that the city chose a math curriculum that educators say isn’t rigorous enough is only the latest distressing sign that we are ­already on the wrong track.

There are three things to keep in mind when it comes to improving our middle schools.

First, real change requires dramatic improvements in our middle schools that won’t come from incremental tweaks.

While small-scale testing can help inform larger efforts, for example, our city’s elected leaders have to realize that their diagnostic attempts so far — such as one testing initiative that impacts 4,300 out of 78,000 seventh-graders — are insufficient.

Such narrow testing can’t help us figure out whether an initiative is working. Real change comes from bold strokes, like our city’s small-school initiative that opened hundreds of new schools and boosted the graduation rate.

Second, Albany has a leading role to play. Through legislation and the budget process, lawmakers can ensure middle-school teachers have access to high-quality curricular materials and professional learning to ensure their students engage with rigorous content.

The Legislature should also ensure class sizes allow teachers to meet the individual needs of students needing extra attention. At the start of the 2018-19 school year, there were more than 336,000 students in classes of 30 or more, far too high a ratio.

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Third, helping our students demands strong, accountable leadership in each school. Plus, the personnel to meet students’ non-academic needs. Today, more than a quarter of our middle schools have no social worker at all. That needs to change. These professionals help students navigate outside headaches that often influence their in-school performance and can increase awareness of opportunities like specialized schools.

I know from experience and research that middle-school improvement work is intensive, time-consuming and doesn’t come with a simple blueprint. But we must take this important work on.

Part of the reason why I chose to serve on the Board of Advisors of the Education Equity Campaign is because it offers critical short- and medium-term policy solutions, steps that the city can rollout in the fall — like administering the SHSAT during the school day to all eighth-graders, with the choice to opt out — to start immediately increasing access for black and Hispanic students.

Eliminating a test might be politically expedient, but it will not improve a single middle school. The state Legislature has the opportunity to strive for a more systemic solution that is rooted in equity, and the opportunity to leverage the current chaos into meaningful improvements in a system needing much repair.

Nicole Brisbane, a veteran teacher and education advocate, is a project director at Columbia University’s Center for Public Leadership and Research.

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