Changing the admission criteria of a highschool is not akin to burning libraries.
> So what happens when you dumb down the only decent public high school for students to aim for?
Changing the admission criteria of a highschool is not the same as dumbing it down (whatever that is supposed to mean). In Europe children are not required to write essay or complete extracurricular activities to enroll in highschools or middleschools, and they are not generally dumber than the Americans.
> Add this together and you can see how pushing equitable results by attacking merit-based options only widens class and economic divides.
The admission criteria of a highschool do not necessarily reward merit. They are more likely to reward having been tutored on how to write highschool admission essays.