This is exactly what lead to the school board recall election in San Francisco in 2022.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
Parents Challenge Lottery Systems Used to Diversify Elite High SchoolsWhen Philadelphia’s school district overhauled the admissions process at its most-elite public high schools to try to improve socioeconomic and racial diversity, the reaction from parents came quickly.In surveys and at school-board meetings, parents called the shift to a lottery system demeaning, unfair, stressful and the opposite of equitable. Families shared stories of high-achieving children failing to win a seat in any of the district’s selective high schools, or being placed in a school too far away or one misaligned with student interests.Some families sued.“It just turned our whole family upside down,” said Liza Gonzalez, whose daughter enrolled at a Christian high school in the fall after not winning any lottery placements.A parent group at the city’s top-ranked high school, Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School, recently released a 51-page report contending that Masterman is being “systematically dismantled” by the new system.The response mirrors pushback in San Francisco, New York, the suburbs of Washington, D.C., and elsewhere in recent years, as school districts seek to expand access to rigorous public high schools.The school districts say that white and Asian students are often overrepresented at the schools and that a broader array of residents should have an opportunity to attend. Parents and some alumni groups have said the pipeline is what needs to be fixed, not the admissions systems.
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