San Francisco and other left-leaning areas tried pretty hard to directly reduce education inequality over the last 20-ish years, as discussed in the article, and the results were poor, to say the least.

This is not to say that one should not try to improve equality, but I think that introducing intentional unfairness (e.g. tampering with school or class or job qualifications) or trying to reduce excellence is a valid way to do it. Instead, it’s possible to improve equality by increasing the fairness of some parts of the overall system.

Here’s an interesting example of a school district with a good approach:

https://www.the74million.org/article/dallas-isds-opt-out-pol...

It turns out that many students who are capable of performing above grade level don’t do so because no one signs them up for it. So Dallas ISD tried signing students up automatically, and it works! Achievement appears to be increasing as a result within each major racial group and there’s less inequality.