NEW YORK — The high-stakes admissions test for New York City’s specialized high schools faced technical difficulties on Saturday, sending thousands of test-takers home from sites across the city.

The Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, known as the SHSAT, is the sole determinant for admissions to eight of the city’s nine specialized high schools, which include Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech.

“This morning, SHSAT testing sites experienced a technical issue with the testing platform that disrupted testing. As a result, testing was discontinued and students were dismissed from testing sites. We apologize for the disruption,” read the city Department of Education’s letter to families.

“Students who began testing this morning but were unable to complete the test will be scheduled for a retest. If your child completed testing today and you believe the testing experience was disrupted, you may request a retest.”

It was not immediately clear how many students were impacted by the glitches. More than 26,000 eighth graders took the SHSAT last year, the Daily News previously reported.

“It made us frustrated ’cause we’ve been studying for this, and we told we were gonna take it today, but in the end, we didn’t,” one Brooklyn Tech test-taker told the student broadcast journalism club Tech News Network about Saturday’s snafu.

The SHSAT was developed by a contract vendor, Pearson.

For years, Pearson developed and graded the SHSAT taken with pencil and paper, but the test transitioned last year to a computer-based version — a process that went smoothly for the majority of test-takers.

This year was the first time the SHSAT was set to be “computer adaptive,” meaning the test questions change in level of difficulty based on how a test-taker is performing.

Pearson did not immediately return requests for comment.

Students who were scheduled to take the test Saturday will be assigned a new testing date, according to the letter. The new date is expected to be posted in MySchools, the city’s school admissions portal, by Friday.

Upcoming exam dates are scheduled for Sunday, Wednesday and next Saturday, according to the DOE’s testing calendar.

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels, in a post on X, put the blame for the exam meltdown squarely on Pearson and pledged an investigation. He said the issue had been resolved and assured that testing would continue as planned on Sunday.

“New York City Public Schools understands students and families put enormous time and effort into preparing for the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test and we want every student to have the chance to do their best,” Samuels said.

“I’ve directed my team to do a full investigation into the provider to understand how this happened to ensure it doesn’t happen again.”

Samuels said he spoke with the vendor, which assured him the issue has been corrected.

The DOE assured families that requesting a retest won’t negatively impact their children’s consideration for admissions.

But for some students, the damage may already be done.

“Everyone knows this is the single most stressful day in a student’s life for high school admissions,” said Naveed Hasan, a member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, who called for a return to pencil and paper. “The collective trauma experienced by those kids is not worth the trouble of trying to do it this way.”

The problems with the SHSAT came after tech glitches similarly disrupted annual state tests this year, which also recently transitioned to computer-based exams.

As the city’s public schools try to reduce student screen time, City Council members have called for a return to paper-and-pencil tests.

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