The same thing happens to every gifted student program in America, not always so dramatically. One example is how many public schools now push uninterested stud

The same thing happens to every gifted student program in America, not always so dramatically. One example is how many public schools now push uninterested students who lack the preparation to succeed into AP classrooms. Usually not for diversity, but to meet targets set by the state education department, or the nonprofit funding the AP program in states where the education department's main priority is killing the public schools. It comes from the same place as the diversity-based campaigns, though: the belief that everyone is entitled to, literally, the "same education". Whether you measure it as a percentage of the student body or by how well its demographics match the student body's, a program that aims to provide specialized education to a select group that wants and needs them isn't going to look productive through that universalist lens. The problem is, the universalists are kind of right. If you reserve a disproportionate share of increasingly scarce resources for the top students, it will tend to perpetuate whatever inequalities exist in the rest of society. The individual success stories might make nice reading, but the statistics usually tell a different story. So I think what's really needed is first abandoning the idea that educational equality means everyone gets the same lessons and support and so on, and then make reforms that make the system better at cultivating a wide range of talents and interests, instead of the current system that's only capable of giving meaningful support to people who aspire to go to college for STEM, music, or athletics.