One of the top-performing public high schools in the country will no longer admit students based on academic performance, ending more than a century of merit-based admissions. The San Francisco Board of Education voted 5-2 to use the same lottery-based system to assign students to Lowell High as other district high schools instead of maintaining the previous system of test scores and grades. Board members cited “pervasive systemic racism” and a lack of diversity at Lowell as the primary reason to end the merit-based admission process following an incident in which students were exposed to racist, pornographic and antisemitic images...