Lowell High School

Lowell High School is a prestigious public magnet school in San Francisco, California.

Academics and Admissions

Lowell is regarded by many as the best high school in the San Francisco Unified School District and offers students opportunities to build a strong academic background. The school's modular scheduling system allows students freedom in course choice. Students also have the chance to take a large number of Advanced Placement courses. The school's graduation rate is nearly 100%, and is the largest feeder school to the University of California system, in particular to the Berkeley and Davis campuses. Many students also matriculate at other prestigious universities all over the nation.

Related Topics:
San Francisco Unified School District - University of California - Berkeley - Davis

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Lowell High School is distinguished among the public schools of San Francisco as the only one using a competitive merit-based admissions process. The admissions policy is based on a point system which takes standardized test scores, GPA, a writing sample, and extracurricular activities into account. Lowell's academic success is due to the stringent requirements placed upon admission, and at present, Lowell High School is ranked 3rd in terms of test scores among the Top 10 Public Schools in California, behind Gretchen Whitney High School and Oxford High.

Related Topics:
Gretchen Whitney High School - Oxford High

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However, the academically selective admissions policy has created controversy over the years. In particular, beginning in 1982, the San Francisco Unified School District attempted to ensure racial "balance" at Lowell by instituting a race-based admissions policy that created different admissions requirements for applicants based solely on their ethnicity. For the freshman class entering in 1985, for instance, Chinese American applicants needed to score a total of 65 points out of a possible total of 69, Caucasian and other East Asian candidates only needed to score a 61 out of 69, and candidates from statistically "underrepresented" groups, including African Americans and Hispanics, were admitted with an even lower aggregate score. The difference in aggregate score quite literally meant that Chinese American candidates needed an "A" average GPA and nearly perfect standardized test scores to gain admission, while Caucasian candidates with perfect test scores could get a "B" average and still be admitted.

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Opponents of this admissions policy were particularly dismayed because the policy was strictly based on race--the policy did not take into account any candidate's socioeconomic background--which had the arguably inequitable result of requiring some children from poor families to score higher than children from wealthy families. Many of these opponents felt that the strongest traditional argument in favor of differential admissions requirements based on race--i.e. to remedy past discrimination against members of the "underepresented" group(s)--was not applicable. Indeed, given the long history of discrimination against Chinese Americans in education and other contexts (including numerous shameful incidents involving the SFUSD itself), the suggestion that the academic success of Chinese American candidates was somehow the result of historical legal inequities created by Chinese Americans that needed to be remedied with a preference for non-Chinese candidates appeared ironic at best, and arguably, grotesquely perverse.

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In 1994, a group of Chinese American community activists organized a lawsuit to challenge the race-based admissions policies used for all San Francisco public schools. The lawsuit did not seek to ban "affirmative action" to benefit socioeconomically disadvantaged applicants, but focused on eliminating the use of race and ethnicity as the determinant for admissions not just to Lowell, but to all public schools at all levels in San Francisco. After a number of unfavorable rulings in the federal district and appellate courts, the SFUSD agreed in 2004 to a settlement with the plaintiffs that included an agreement to substitute a "diversity index" in place of the race-based policies. However, the settlement agreement explicitly prohibited the use of race as the sole or dominant admissions criteria, even as it permitted and even encouraged the development and use of non-racial criteria to assist socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

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Lowell has also been awarded the Blue Ribbon Academic Excellence Award numerous times.

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