Do Elite High Schools Keep Opportunity Out?

Every fall, when selective public high schools open their admissions cycles, the same set of questions rises to the surface. Who gets in? Who doesn’t? And what does the process say about how we value talent, opportunity, and fairness in public education? For schools like ASMSA—and for our peers across the country—these questions carry particular weight. We want to be schools of excellence, but also schools of opportunity. Balancing those two ideals has never been more complicated.

To understand the challenge, let’s start with two schools that have become symbols of this debate: Stuyvesant High School in New York City and Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Virginia. Both schools are nationally recognized, academically elite, and fiercely competitive in their admissions. Both have also been criticized for failing to reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.

The statistics from Stuyvesant are staggering. In a city where nearly 20 percent of public school students are Black, only eight Black students were admitted to a class of almost 800. That’s one percent—far below the citywide average. And this isn’t a one-year anomaly. It’s a pattern that has persisted for decades despite widespread awareness and ongoing debate about the fairness of using a single admissions test, the SHSAT, as the sole gatekeeper for entry. Stuyvesant has become a powerful example of how a seemingly neutral policy—everyone takes the same test—can still yield outcomes that are anything but equitable.

Contrast that with Thomas Jefferson, or TJ, outside Washington, D.C. In 2020, the school found itself under similar scrutiny. The student body didn’t come close to reflecting the racial or socioeconomic diversity of its community, and national conversations about equity in education only sharpened that criticism. In response, TJ’s leaders took bold action. They eliminated their standardized test and adopted a holistic admissions system. This new approach considered a student’s socioeconomic background, whether they attended underrepresented middle schools, and other opportunity-based factors. Importantly, it did not consider race directly, but it did broaden the pool of who could realistically be admitted.

The impact was immediate. The number of Black and Hispanic students admitted to TJ rose significantly, and the school’s demographics began to shift toward something closer to the diversity of its region. On paper, it seemed like a success story. But as with most big changes, the reaction wasn’t universally positive. Lawsuits quickly followed, claiming that the new process, while not explicitly race-based, was designed to engineer racial outcomes. The plaintiffs argued that by focusing on certain zip codes and socioeconomic indicators, TJ’s plan unfairly reduced the number of Asian American students admitted, despite their strong academic performance.

This legal battle wound through the courts and eventually reached the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Although the Court chose not to overturn TJ’s new policy, its decision came on the heels of another landmark ruling—Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard in 2023. In that case, the Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions and made it clear that even race-neutral policies could be unconstitutional if they were intended to produce specific racial outcomes. That’s the tension schools like TJ—and by extension, every selective public school in America—must now navigate.

So what lessons can schools like ASMSA take from this? One lesson is that there’s no quick fix. Relying on a single standardized test, as New York’s specialized schools still do, often reinforces systemic inequities because it rewards those who can afford extensive preparation. But swinging to the other extreme—implementing broad holistic measures without carefully explaining their intent—can invite legal challenges and community distrust. The path forward is about balance. It’s about designing admissions systems that recognize opportunity gaps, not as a backdoor to affirmative action, but as a genuine attempt to measure merit in a fuller, fairer way.

And that brings us to the heart of the matter: what do we mean by “merit”? For decades, selective schools have leaned heavily on narrow definitions—highest test scores, top grades, extracurricular checklists. But we know that merit is more complex than that. It can be seen in the student who excelled despite attending a school without robust advanced coursework. It can be measured in resilience, adaptability, and creativity—qualities that aren’t always captured by a multiple-choice exam. By broadening our understanding of merit, schools can identify students whose potential has been shaped by challenge as much as by privilege.

Critics will argue that these kinds of shifts dilute excellence. They’ll say that without hard test scores as the primary measure, admissions become subjective and standards fall. But let’s be clear: the old systems weren’t as objective as people like to think. Test preparation industries have thrived for decades precisely because wealthier families could buy access to an “objective” advantage. What TJ demonstrated is that you can maintain rigor and still create space for a wider range of students to demonstrate their worth.

For selective schools across the country, the stakes are high. These schools have always occupied a unique role: they are both symbols of academic excellence and gateways to opportunity. Their graduates often go on to elite universities, to groundbreaking careers in science and technology, to leadership roles in business, government, and the arts. But if the door to those opportunities is consistently shut to large portions of the population, then the public mission of these schools is undermined. A public school that only serves the already-advantaged isn’t truly public at all.

So where do we go from here? One step is reframing the conversation away from race alone and toward opportunity as a broader construct. Opportunity is about access to strong teachers, to advanced coursework, to supportive learning environments. Opportunity is about whether a student had to fight uphill for every inch of progress, or whether doors were opened at every turn. And when we look through that lens, we begin to see that fairness isn’t about treating every applicant the same—it’s about recognizing that not all applicants had the same starting line.

Another step is transparency. Schools must be crystal clear about why their admissions systems look the way they do, what values guide their decisions, and how fairness is defined. Communities need to see that these changes aren’t about lowering the bar, but about redefining what excellence looks like when measured more holistically. Without that trust, even well-intentioned reforms can become lightning rods for controversy.

Finally, we need to recognize that this debate isn’t going away. Each admissions season brings renewed scrutiny. Each lawsuit adds another layer of complexity. But in the long run, this ongoing conversation is healthy. It forces us to confront uncomfortable questions: What do we value in education? Who deserves access to the most rigorous opportunities our public schools can provide? And how do we reconcile the ideals of equity and merit when they so often seem in conflict?

The truth is, talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. The job of selective public schools is not just to find talent where it already shines but to uncover it where it has been overlooked. The students we admit today will become tomorrow’s scientists, innovators, and leaders. And if we want that future to reflect the full potential of our society, we need to make sure the doors of opportunity are open wide enough to let them in.

As we begin another admissions season at selective schools across the country, that’s the challenge before us. To uphold excellence. To ensure fairness. And to never forget that public schools—no matter how selective—are meant to serve the public.