Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and his progressive pals on the city’s board of education have raised alarms after unveiling new plans that would potentially handicap high-performing students.

The board endorsed a resolution last week to shift focus and resources away from the city’s selective enrollment schools to neighborhood schools. Selective enrollment schools, or high schools that admit students based on middle school grades and standardized exams, have faced intense scrutiny by the notoriously left-wing Chicago Teachers Union over their supposed lack of economic and racial “equity.”

The changes, if enacted, could eliminate the ability for students to gain admission to selective enrollment schools, some of which are considered among the best high schools in the country.

Data show the board’s concerns are completely unfounded. Walter Payton College Prep, widely considered the most prestigious and coveted selective enrollment school, is one-third black and Latino and 31% low-income. Whitney Young Magnet High School, the alma mater of Michelle Obama, boasts a roughly 43% black and Latino enrollment, with 36% of students coming from low-income households. At Poe Elementary Classical School, 84% of students are black , and 77% of those black students are proficient in reading.

Black, Latino, and low-income students are still significantly underrepresented at selective enrollment schools compared to the overall Chicago Public Schools system, but this is not for lack of trying. The admissions process to selective enrollment schools prioritizes applicants from socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Since metrics such as lower family income and single-parent household status are positively correlated with being black or Latino, students from these demographics are disproportionately likely to benefit from the admissions process.

Don’t expect the uber-progressive Johnson to save these children’s hopes of attending a competitive high school.

Johnson has long been an opponent of standardized tests. While speaking in a 2020 panel titled “We Don’t Call Police: A Town Hall on a Police-Free Future,” Johnson lambasted standardized tests as one of several “tools that have been placed against black folks.”

While the selective enrollment system has not been a panacea for so-called “social justice” in education — black enrollment has declined at the most-coveted selective enrollment schools in recent years, and a racial achievement gap persists — these schools have served as a lifeboat for disadvantaged Chicagoans of all walks of life.

However, instead of working to fix the flaws in the current system by expanding enrollment or building more schools, Chicago Public Schools officials indicated that they are gratified with the board’s proposal to nix the prestigious magnet schools.

“The Board’s resolution aims to guide engagement and development in partnership with the District on a new strategic plan with an emphasis on strengthening all neighborhood schools as a critical step toward supporting all students and closing opportunity and achievement gaps,” the district said in a statement.

Instead of fixing the supposed “opportunity and achievement gaps” in the public school system, the board’s resolution would likely make the situation far worse. The resolution presumes that upper-middle-class urban families will throw their hands up and send their children to the local neighborhood school, regardless of its quality. This is highly unlikely to happen.

Affluent liberals will give all the lip service in the world to progressive ideals. But when the rubber hits the road, they will not hesitate to shield their children from gang-infested and dysfunctional schools by decamping into suburbs or heading for private schools. The ultimate losers in this scenario would be the low-income academic overachievers: students who will be bored to tears in a slow-paced academic environment but do not have the cash to pay for a privatized education.

Selective enrollment schools are racially and economically diverse and have excellent outcomes. So what’s the problem? The answer seems to be sinister.

Unable to fix the problems in neighborhood schools, Chicago Public Schools administrators have decided to abolish elite high schools in the hope of redistributing high achievers to mediocre schools and artificially raising their performance metrics.

If administrators were actually worried about so-called achievement gaps, they would focus their attention on the dismal performance of the neighborhood schools. No more than 10% of black students can read or perform math at grade level within Chicago public schools — a national disgrace.

Corey Walker is a Washington, D.C.-based reporter who focuses on institutional capture, education, and public safety.