San Francisco’s Lowell High School, one of the top-performing public schools on the West Coast, has reported a spike in failing grades among students after replacing its academics-based admissions system with a lottery.
Lowell used to be the only school in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) where admissions were determined by a student’s grades and admission test scores, similar to how colleges evaluate their applicants.
In October 2020, the San Francisco Board of Education unanimously voted to enact a lottery-based admissions process for Lowell for the 2021–2022 school year. The decision was made on the basis that eighth graders applying did not have the grade records they needed, due to the fact that SFUSD schools shifted to pass/fail grades, which they said were to accommodate the difficulties that came with COVID-19 lockdowns….