MORE THAN MERIT: REFRAMING THE DEBATE OVER EXAMINATION-BASED ADMISSIONS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

Some selective public schools use entrance examinations, either alone or in conjunction with other academic measures, to admit students. This practice often generates student bodies with tiny numbers of Black and Latino students, numbers dramatically disproportionate to the populations from which the schools draw. Many voices therefore call Jbr test-based admissions to be abolished. More broadly, critics argue that, in addition to being poisonous to equity, "merit" is anincoherent and pernicious category for public-school admissions. This Article seeks to expand what has been a narrow debate over selective admissions. The reasonableness and desirability of academically selective admissions do not depend solely upon the propriety of rewarding "merit," either at all or in the ways that admissions tests define it. There are Cat least) three ways to think about exam schools other than as meritocratic institutions: as contests not primarily designed to reward: as part of a strategy of differentiated instruction: and as pork, one among many statecreated goods whose benefits politicians spread across constituencies. The choice of frame strongly affects the resonance of various arguments regarding exam schools, including disputes about disparate resources, the impact of exam-preparation services, and whether exam-school attendance benefits students. The propriety of exam schools also depends not only upon the schools themselves but upon the structure of the school system in which they a re embedded. Exam schoots can be more easily justified when they are apart of a large set of diverse schools with multiple missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]