The big-name backers of specialized high school admissions testing claimed Thursday their pilot tutoring program for Latino and African American students was a success.

Education Equity Campaign — which is backed by cosmetics billionaire Ronald Lauder and former Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons — said 31 of 197 kids enrolled in its SHSAT prep program got into one of the eight elite schools this year, a 15.7 percent entry rate.

Citywide, the average for the 12,422 black and Latino kids who took the SHSAT was just 3.8 percent, EEC added.

“These impressive results confirm what we’ve been saying all along: when you give kids the resources they need to succeed, they soar to new heights,” said Lauder, a Bronx Science graduate. “New York’s specialized high schools are the envy of the world. Now dozens of disadvantaged kids will have access to a world-class education that will open up new horizons.”

Two of the ten black students admitted to Stuyvesant HS this year went through the EEC tutoring program, the group said.

Rather than scrap the single-test system to boost diversity, the organization has pushed for universal tutoring and other measures to bolster low acceptance rates for black and brown students to the city’s most prestigious high schools.

The two business magnates have assailed City Hall’s plan to replace the test with automatic admission for the top 7 percent of middle school students to bolster diversity, arguing that it minimized black and Latino academic potential.

“Now that we have proof of concept, the City Council should build on our pilot by implementing free, universal test prep citywide,” Parsons said in a statement. “Only then can we begin to achieve true education equity for disadvantaged kids.”

Critics argue that hinging admissions on a single exam is an arbitrarily narrow measure of ability that elbows out black and Latino students. And they point out that it advantages families with the resources to tutor their kids for the test.

A spokesman said that EEC randomly selected participants from interested families, save for a small number identified through tutoring partners.

The DOE, which wants to scrap the test, said overall black and Latino enrollment remains unacceptable.

“The proof is in the data–we, too, have invested in efforts to diversify our Specialized High Schools through increased access to tutoring, but our combined efforts aren’t moving the needle because a single test for admissions is inherently flawed,” said DOE spokeswoman Katie O’Hanlon.

States like Texas have adopted a similar “Top 10” setup for university admissions for similar reasons.

But, scrapping the test at all of the eight high schools would require approval from Albany lawmakers, who passed on the idea in 2019.

The specialized campuses are currently 62 percent Asian, 24 percent white, and 9 percent black and Hispanic. This year, Asian kids were admitted at a rate of 54 percent, followed by whites at 25.1 percent, Hispanics at 6.6 percent and African-Americans at 4.5 percent.