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The debate over using entrance exams to screen students into special schools is happening with a real shortage of evidence on both sides; I'm seeing mostly woke gobbledygook vs status quo table pounding with very little real inquiry.
There have been several good pieces about this by @matt_barnum, but there is actually very little evidence that attending these kind of selective exam schools is beneficial. https://www.chalkbeat.org/2019/4/1/21121082/how-much-does-attending-one-of-these-elite-high-schools-matter-not-as-much-as-you-might-think
The people who want to change these schools' admissions policies tend to be standardized test skeptics, which actually deprives them of the best argument against them — they only appear to be great schools because they take the best students as inputs while not adding much value.
As a society we need to try to find a way to reconceive of what it means for a school to be good away from "a lot of talented students go there so they do well" to "the kids there learn more than you'd expect ex ante based on where they were when they started."
