When I was a kid my school had a "Gifted and Talented" program.
The "gifted" kids were selected based on performance on aptitude tests, then "talented" kids were appointed by the school board.
Every single "talented" kid had a teacher for a parent. That is not hyperbole.
I don't think it's deliberate, but I think this war against standardization is to further exclude outsiders.
At the time, I didn't understand why I was pulled out of class except to discover how quickly I could arrange triangles and be plopped in front of a piano like a just-add-water circus monkey expected to be an instant concert pianist with this one weird trick.
The war on merit is to make it all about victimhood. Forced busing also ruined public schools because more affluent parents pulled their kids put and put them in private schools, and the number of public schools decreased dramatically.