Posted BY: Chris Menahan | Information Liberation
San Francisco’s last good public high school voted to end their merit-based admission system in 2021 as part of the Great Awokening.
Lowell High School, which was previously overwhelmingly Asian and White, elected to switch to a lottery-based admissions system and became around 45% Hispanic and Black. The previously top-performing school saw grades swiftly collapse with 25% of freshmen students receiving either a D or an F in the fall 2021 semester, Legal Insurrection reported.
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“This ultimately led to the ouster of three school board members,” Legal Insurrection said. “The Asian community played a major role in the campaign.”
San Francisco Unified School District’s board of education last week voted to return the school to their previous merit-based system, KTVU reports:
The 4 to 3 vote will reinstate merit-based admissions for incoming freshmen at the esteemed academy in fall of 2023. The failure of the school district superintendent’s resolution to extend the lottery system means a return to applicants meeting a designated grade point average and standardized test score criteria for admission.
We previously reported, the district stopped the merit-based admissions for 9th graders during the COVID pandemic claiming there wasn’t adequate criteria to judge students because of distance learning.
The school board voted to make the change to a lottery system permanent, but critics sued over the switch. Last year, a judge ruled that the school board did not follow state law when it voted to end the competitive admissions process.
Despite Lowell’s prestigious reputation, the school has had its share of complaints by students, who were fed up with what they called the school’s “racist culture.” Students demanded change within the institution in early 2021.
There were only THREE STUDENTS who claimed racism – they were black and members of Black Student Union. They protested because their grades weren’t very good. Go pound sand, you 3. Lowell has always strictly gone by grades, not race. My husband taught science there for 20 yrs and I knew a black student who went there, he loved it and never saw any racism. This is excellent news, thank you for reporting this.