>*The case before Young challenged a system Boston Public Schools deployed for the 2022-2023 admissions cycle that created eight equally sized socio-economic tiers based on factors including limited English households, single-parent households, owner-occupied households, educational attainment, and poverty.*
Per usual, the elites want their elite schools back--or back under their control. But the courts are not only sticking to their guns but have lots of evidence that admissions to these top high schools is working just as it was intended to.
115
Select_Resort_7267Mar 19, 2026
+45
Well said. The decision shows the court looked at results, not just outrage from people uncomfortable with change.
45
CalEPygousMar 19, 2026
+20
I don't think the decision had much to do with the results obtained. If you read the judge's decision it was based on the fact that the criteria used to determine admission had nothing (on the face of it) to do with race, but rather geographic and social factors. While these factors may end up favoring black and Latino kids and disadvantaging White and Asian kids based on the criteria alone there is no way to determine that (i.e. a white kid could come from an non-English speaking, poorer household). Further, the case was deemed extremely similar to the zip code case already decided by the first circuit court with the judge ruling that it
"... possesses the same factual pillars that the First circuit rejected as insufficient to demonstrate an equal protection violation in its 2023 consideration of substantially the same issue."
So essentially this case was DOA based on the 2023 decision by the First Circuit.
The policy is working to bring in more black, Latino and disadvantaged kids but is it also lowering performance (decreases in scores on a variety of benchmarks by around 10-40%) which, on some level, defeats the purpose of having elite schools in the first place. It is also following national trends in under-representing boys (currently Boston Latin Academy schools are about 57% girls) which is a topic that doesn't get enough attention. In Boston, or any large city, siphoning off the best performing students to go to elite schools ends up hurting the other public schools since the student quality there goes down. This has always been an argument against elite schools but there are intelligent opinions and counter-arguments on both sides of the topic.
20
Select_Resort_7267Mar 20, 2026
+5
That is fair. The ruling was more about race-neutral criteria and existing precedent than about endorsing the outcomes. The real debate is what selective public schools should optimize for.
5
VegasRoomEscapeMar 20, 2026
+4
I wouldn't call them "elites." The truly elite just pay for private school. This is a shrinking tier of the middle class that is desperately trying to separate themselves from the mass of workers. Not defending it at all, I just don't see them as the real movers and shakers of our city's politics. If they were, this program would have never made it past the planning stages in the first place.
4
PoliticsboringagainMar 19, 2026
+14
We know this is not about Merit because all of the people who talk about Dei or meritocracy they never use those same words for their kids who have mediocre grades.
Hell, JD Vance benefited from a Dei scholarship for poor white men from the Appalachian Mountains.
14
Select_Resort_7267Mar 19, 2026
+3
"Pulling up ladder behind them"... considering JD's Yale education and connections, maybe we should call it 'DIE' - Degrees Inherited Easily?
3
CT_Phipps-AuthorMar 20, 2026
+1
As an Appalachian, JD Vance does not represent us or is us.
9 Comments