What Happens When an Élite Public School Becomes Open to All?

The lottery system they put in place assumes that everyone is equally able to succeed and the only drawback is related to not being able to get in. But the reasons are so much more. They need to look into getting a support system that helps those that start to struggle. Problems which include both in school issues as well as outside school issues. Otherwise it's just wishful thinking that all accepted students will be able to perform at an elite level. There also needs to be a way to expel those that just can't make it. Otherwise, as it's happening at the school, the school's elite status falls apart. Making things worse for everyone involved.

Very long article. Some key figures below:

> At Lowell, the first round of grades had been filed for the freshmen, and teachers saw a big change from previous years.

> “I have three times as many students as usual failing—instead of one or two, I have three to six,” Wenning, the biology teacher, told me. “I have some students who have done no work the whole first grading period.”

> About ten per cent had a D or lower in at least one subject; the average freshman G.P.A.s that autumn fell ten per cent from what they had been before the pandemic.

> Between system-wide cuts and the forfeited A.P. funds, he told me, Lowell would lose $3.6 million, dropping its per-pupil funding to the bottom of the district. It would lose between twenty-one and twenty-eight educators, about twenty per cent of its faculty;

I applaud the wordsmiths at the New Yorker - "open for all" does sound much better than "loosens its standards".