Op-Ed: A Critique of the New High School Admissions Process

"I criticize America because I love her.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

There is a rather troubling misconception these days that criticism must be a weapon; that the goal of criticism is always to refute and destroy, and that the very second anyone mounts their own criticism, if nothing else they’ve declared themselves opposition. This isn’t true. Criticism at its finest is sanative. It is a power which leads towards balance, harmony, and compromise. Criticism should be loved, admired, and respected, and never prematurely dismissed.

My criticism here, about the new high school admissions process, is a subject which cannot avoid attention to concepts like diversity and equity. But if the general argument in favor of this lottery arrangement is that diversity is favorable and therefore equity is appropriate, shouldn’t this rationale be applied even-handedly? Is diversity only good when it comes to the composition of people? Or should a diversity of ideas, both approving and disapproving, be welcomed, even if an adjustment to them is uncomfortable? And maybe uncomfortable in the same way that physical integration is, at first, uncomfortable. It is contradictory to believe that a diversity of people would be enriching and beneficial while thinking that everyone should undoubtedly dismiss all ideas that diverge from the supposed facts of the matter. Why is a diversity of ideas so different from a diversity of people that it must be forbidden, and looked upon like it has its own villainous motives?

From any broad range of perspectives, whether they are personal or more abstract, there is a special value that makes them worth achieving. And this is obvious to most of us; I don’t think that there are many who believe we’re best off as we are, and that we couldn’t be improved by a little more diversity in our life– that we’ve reached the peak of the mountain, and can now relax and enjoy our condition.

There are certainly those who are in favor of silencing voices of disagreement, thinking disagreement and friction prevent swift, decisive action towards an urgent end. In this case the diversity of ideas could be a wall that limits the diversity of people. To that I would reply it is only unresolved conflicts which withhold answers and an opportunity for progress. Even so, there is a clear problem with impetuous conclusions which don’t address their opposition. There is a quote which I find to be rather true from the sharp-witted imp of Westeros in the television show Game of Thrones. He says, “When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”

There is still work to be done, but it must be in both of the kinds of diversity that I’ve mentioned thus far: the diversity of people and the diversity of thought. So in the spirit of the latter, I present my account of the latest admission policy changes in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP).

Before I begin, though, I will briefly summarize the changes which have spurred controversy:

As of this year, the era of special admit high schools in the SDP is over. In their place come the newly framed criteria-based schools. Special admit schools, now history, were once high schools which set a threshold of academic eligibility for prospective students. They would have an internally organized admission committee judge those who qualified on a case by case basis, accepting the most attractive candidates. Masterman, for example, used to require all prospective students to have grades of at least A’s and B’s with a C in a minor subject, attendance marks over 95%, and scores over the 88th percentile on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessments (PSSAs), to have their application even considered. From there, the school's admission committee would choose students based on where they ranked beyond the minimum requirements in these three categories.

Out of fear that this sort of process was failing to make for an accurate reflection of Philadelphia’s demographics in their most elite schools, administrators at the SDP remodeled their original selection methods.

Special admit schools were made into criteria-based schools, or schools which set a threshold of academic eligibility for prospective students. This puts those who qualify into a centralized lottery, giving special preference to underrepresented zip codes. This means a school such as Masterman will now require all prospective students to have grades of at least A’s and B’s, attendance marks over 95%, and a score of 22 on the electronically graded online writing sample, a new part of the process, to be added to their lottery. From there, it is a matter of chance who will be accepted and who will not.

This is where the tension lies. It is primarily a battle between those who want racial equity by any means and those who think these specific means are unfair. I haven’t heard any voices, and it must be a very slight minority, who are even remotely against promoting racial equity. Rather, this is a question of whether or not it’s right to judge all students who meet a given academic criterion as having the same academic worthiness, and roll the dice on their fates as long as it's conducive towards accurate racial representation. Keep in mind, I am assuming that this lottery is indeed conducive towards accurate racial representation and I don’t know that it is.

The reason this new system is problematic is because all students are not the same and should not be treated as such. Both sides of the aisle start their arguments from this premise, albeit in two very different ways.

On one hand, students are different, and they differ according to race. Those who begin with this statement would likely support the latest admission process and emphasize that since 52% of the high school population in the SDP is Black, and because only 15.5% of, say, Masterman is Black, it is equitable to take measures to equalize these statistics. It is a case which claims there is no academically relevant difference between students with an eligible resume for acceptance at Masterman (according to special admit standards) and students enrolled in Masterman. Or there is no difference between students who could be considered and students who have been accepted by Masterman’s admission team. Therefore, a lottery giving special preference to underrepresented zip codes is fair because every qualified student is academically identical, or has the same potential, and the only difference between them is race– which, in the old admissions methodology, would be grounds for discrimination. Admissions through randomization, then, is the only way to guarantee impartiality.

Although it is a suspicious argument, the question must be raised: if every student is their own person, why are they only different according to race and not academically relevant traits? It’s important to think about this question because a concession on the reality of academically relevant differences would undercut the claim that schools should only care about the proper organization of races and ignore the proper organization of academic talents. A claim which is justified by the assumption that every kid is unique by race but the same by academic standards beyond a certain minimum requirement. Remember, it wouldn’t matter how any homogenous group organizes itself on the basis of its uniform characteristics, because whichever way it is, it will be the same.

It is just a fact of nature that people have different passions, judgements, intellect, creativity, and memory. If there is a difference between the students who make Masterman’s eligibility criterion and those who don’t, there should still be differences between the students who barely make the eligibility criterion and those who rank in the 99th percentile of academic measurements across the board. The notion that everyone has the same kind of mind in different colored bodies is nonsense, and there isn’t any good reason to ground decisions in this faulty premise. High school admissions should be based on academically relevant material before race, and it is insane that this could ever be considered a radical opinion. Yes, there are very pressing issues regarding race in this country and the world, but they do not begin with the high school admissions process. The intense focus directed towards this precise moment in children’s lives is misplaced. It is letting a corrupt chronology run its course, and then manipulating the results at the end when it’s not quite logical to do so. The regard would serve a better role elsewhere.

Imagine you have a horse race.

In one lane stands a glorious Akhal-Teke horse. It is a very healthy and powerful horse with a dazzling golden coating. It has recently been fed, cleaned, and prepared with high quality equipment like blinkers to keep focus, tongue ties to hold the tongue behind the bit, and shadow rolls to block the shadows on the ground from the racer's vision. In the other lane, is a donkey. A rather lame donkey, too, with a gray coloration like iron. The donkey is observably malnourished, dirty, and missing equipment. All this and not even to mention the Akhal-Teke has been given the privilege to start the race, which will be 440 yards long, 100 yards ahead of the donkey with a 5 second head start.

Now, let’s say the Akhal-Teke horse wins the race. We’d probably remark that the race was set up without much fairness in mind. The Akhal-Teke horse had every circumstantial advantage that it would’ve taken a miracle for it to lose. This is true, but how should we resolve this trouble of fairness? It is not a question of whether a problem exists, but how it should be addressed. Suppose we decided that since the racing conditions for either horse were unequal, we would celebrate them both with medals, the title of winner, and all the spoils of victory. This proposition would equalize the outcome, because of unfair opportunity, which is unfair to the faster horse, as one of them is almost definitely faster. And this isn’t due to the varying colors of each pelt, which has no bearing on speed or strength at all, but the other differentiating, innate qualities like speed and strength as they exist themselves. The Akhal-Teke horse could have the gray pelt, and the donkey the golden pelt, and all could still be the same. But even if both of them made the preliminary, qualifying time, they are not both equally entitled to win the race if one horse is markedly faster. The ideal solution would be to equalize the racing conditions for both animals, and create an equitable opportunity. Measures could be taken to feed the donkey, clean it, train it, and equip it with high quality racing materials. That way, if the Akhal-Teke horse wins, it would be well deserved and undisputed, with the same being true for the donkey. This, I think, is the most just approach to competition. And as the high school admissions process is a sort of competition, it is most reasonably embodied in the special admit schools of the past, and not the criteria-based schools of the present.

Finally, I’d like to note that Masterman is a diverse place. I agree, it could and should be more diverse, but in comparison to most other schools in Philadelphia, it is very diverse. And it seems as though the hope of the criteria-based school plan is not to make it more diverse, but to make it a microcosm of the SDP’s demographics, which are not as diverse. I would be remiss, though, if I didn’t point out that these demographics have a majority of Black students, and Masterman is still filled with a majority of white students. Moreover, this is a subject of economic class as well, with poorer students represented less at Masterman than wealthier ones. All this is significant, and warrants revision, I do not deny that for a second.

However, the school district administration has it wrong right now. They have made an impulsive, poorly constructed, sweeping policy change that is barely explained and never justified on their website. There are plenty of middle-schoolers here at Masterman who they have stressed right to the core, and there are surely examples of deserving students who may have otherwise been accepted into Masterman, the intended targets of this new plan, who have been rejected everywhere. I sympathize with the vision for this program, but it’s been carried out badly and needs to be reconsidered.