This is Hacker News, so let's talk about this from a software development perspective.
This feels like solving a CI failure by just deleting the failing test.
If the entrance criteria are bad or biased, then by all means fix them. For example, Stuyvesant, perhaps the best high school in New York, offers free study materials and tutoring sessions, offers entrance exams on the weekends and after hours on weekdays, offers free shuttling to the test sites, and in general tries to make its entrance exam as fair as possible. And indeed, the majority of students there are poor and qualify for free lunch.
But then, if the concrete issues that you can identify with the entrance criteria are resolved, but outcomes still aren't what you're looking for, guess what: now you have a great "unit test"! If you're red-green-refactoring your public policy to achieve equity, then surely a fair entrance exam for your advanced schooling is a good failing test. You can now implement other policies to try to see it go green. Maybe you can have free public pre-school, or pregnancy care packages with vitamins and other resources, or who knows what else. And then you can monitor your entrance exams a few years later and see if things are improving.
I think it's useful to present a different software engineering analogy. Getting into Stuyvesant is a lot like getting a job at a FANG company. Much like Stuyvesant, these companies tell you up front that you should practice for the test and provide links to study materials. They tell you that your normal experience of doing well at work/school is not necessarily enough, even if you are very good. The purpose of this entrance filter is not actually to select the smartest people or the most deserving people, but to select the best people - where "best" is on a scale of merit that is combination of being smart, knowing how to play the game, and being willing to dedicate yourself to passing the filter. When you think about this, it's important to note that it is not the case that students who don't get into a top school are all academically worthless, the same way that is true that many good engineers cannot/will not work at FANG.
This feels like solving a CI failure by just deleting the failing test.
If the entrance criteria are bad or biased, then by all means fix them. For example, Stuyvesant, perhaps the best high school in New York, offers free study materials and tutoring sessions, offers entrance exams on the weekends and after hours on weekdays, offers free shuttling to the test sites, and in general tries to make its entrance exam as fair as possible. And indeed, the majority of students there are poor and qualify for free lunch.
But then, if the concrete issues that you can identify with the entrance criteria are resolved, but outcomes still aren't what you're looking for, guess what: now you have a great "unit test"! If you're red-green-refactoring your public policy to achieve equity, then surely a fair entrance exam for your advanced schooling is a good failing test. You can now implement other policies to try to see it go green. Maybe you can have free public pre-school, or pregnancy care packages with vitamins and other resources, or who knows what else. And then you can monitor your entrance exams a few years later and see if things are improving.