Merit Looks Magnificent From The Top Of The Stairs

America can elevate a middle-school admissions system into a constitutional monument while leaving the children to find an entrance. The monument will be magnificent. There will be briefs. Nobody should mistake this abundance of adult distinction for an abundance of educational opportunity.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a challenge involving four selective middle schools in Montgomery County, Maryland. AP reports that parents allege a facially race-neutral policy disadvantages Asian American children. The district defends its lottery as race-neutral. The immediate question concerns the evidence needed for the discrimination case to proceed, not a ruling that the admissions policy is lawful or unlawful.

That distinction deserves more respect than the inevitable victory laps. Agreeing to hear a case awards neither side a constitutional trophy. It means the justices have agreed to hear a case, a modest accomplishment that legal combatants must endure without immediately ordering the engraved base.

The district considers the poverty levels of applicants' schools. Students from more affluent schools need higher standardized-test scores to qualify for its lottery. One can believe educational disadvantage matters without pretending that every method of accounting for it is beyond challenge. One can also take the parents' complaint seriously without declaring the existing distribution of opportunity a naturally occurring masterpiece.

The temptation is to give the word merit a splendid reception and never ask how it arrived. It enters in formal dress, apparently unaccompanied by any school, neighborhood or previous opportunity. Such exquisite independence. The adults have discovered a result with no history.

Poverty does not become irrelevant because a selection system can be described neatly. Nor does calling a policy equitable settle whether it treats particular children fairly. The students are not props for either institution's preferred account of its own virtue. They have already endured enough adult achievement by being made the occasion for it.

The parents argue that evidence of discriminatory intent cannot be dismissed merely because Asian American students remain well represented among those admitted. That is a serious contention to adjudicate. It is not a warrant to treat efforts to broaden access as inherently disreputable, any more than the district's stated purpose is a warrant to stop examining its design.

My objection is to the easy prestige available to everyone speaking on behalf of children while the actual opportunity remains tightly rationed. The language gets grander as the doorway stays narrow. We have made admission to a better educational experience important enough for the Supreme Court, then congratulated ourselves on the seriousness with which we manage the queue.

Let the court decide the question it has taken. The rest of the country might reserve its admiration for a system whose finest educational offering is something more useful to a child than an exceptionally distinguished dispute about who gets in.