The District’s most competitive application high school is failing to enroll students who attended a neighborhood middle school in the city’s poorest wards — even after officials temporarily eliminated an admission test during the pandemic, data show.

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       The city has just one public high school that requires students to take a high-stakes exam as part of the admissions process: School Without Walls in Northwest Washington. That school educates the lowest percentage of low-income students and highest percentage of White students of any high school in the traditional school system.

       In December, when the city’s public school system was still teaching virtually full-time, Chancellor Lewis D. Ferebee canceled the admissions test over fears that it could not be administered safely or fairly during the pandemic. Ferebee said he would use it as an opportunity to examine how that would affect enrollment. New York City and other big cities did the same, using the pandemic as an opening to at least temporarily suspend admissions exams.

       Schools, caught by pandemic and confronting systemic racism, jettison admission tests

       But data obtained through a public records request show that eliminating the test did not make the Walls freshman class any more socioeconomically or geographically diverse.

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       Five of the school system’s 15 neighborhood middle schools are located in Wards 7 and 8 — the wards with the highest concentrations of poverty and many of the city’s lowest performing schools based on standardized test scores.

       None of the 132 students in the incoming freshman class at School Without Walls attended one of those five middle schools, data shows. Last year’s freshman class also didn’t have any students who graduated from those middle schools, according to the data.

       “Despite this change, we have not yet seen an increase in diverse representation across all wards and acknowledge there is more we must do,” Ferebee said in a statement. “We are in the process of evaluating additional changes to the admissions approach to recruitment, access, and student preparation to further build a process.”

       Does every D.C. child have a fair shot at getting into an elite D.C. high school. The city is trying.

       In the District, nearly 4,000 of the city’s 20,000 public high school students attend an application campus. The other schools rely on grade-point averages, essays and interviews — and not a standardized exam.

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       In previous years, prospective Walls students needed to receive passing marks on the math and English portions of a national standardized exam to even take the school’s entrance exam. This past year, students needed to have a 3.0 grade-point average. Walls administrators offered interviews to the 500 students with the highest grade-point average and then offered slots to the students with the highest scores based on their interview and transcripts.

       Just three eighth graders at middle schools in Wards 7 and 8 — Hart, Johnson, Kelly Miller, Kramer and Sousa middle schools — made the cut of 500 students and accepted interviews, according to city data. Two of those students matched at other high schools and one is currently on the Walls wait list.

       Across the country, selective high schools have historically enrolled low percentages of Black students, and critics have long pressed for change, saying that these schools exacerbate segregation.

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       Officials in Boston and San Francisco also jettisoned selective high school admissions tests for the current academic year, citing the pandemic. While these districts could reinstitute old systems after the pandemic abates, many advocates expect them to outlive the pandemic. Fairfax County eliminated an admissions tests for the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, though that decision was unrelated to the pandemic. This fall, it welcomed its most diverse class in history.

       D.C. tried before the pandemic to diversify the Walls class, but has not been successful. The Walls admission’s test is typically administered at the high school. But in early 2020, before the pandemic closed campuses, the city administered a test at a school in Ward 8.

       In 2019, Ferebee announced he would overhaul application requirements for the city’s eight selective high schools, eliminating most testing requirements and reducing the minimum grade-point average from middle school necessary to gain entrance.

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       But nothing so far has yielded significant changes at Walls.

       Ferebee has not yet announced what the admissions process for Walls will be next year.

       The conversation around Walls has looked slightly different than in other cities because the school is one of the District’s more racially diverse — it just doesn’t reflect the racial, socioeconomic or geographic make up of the city it serves.

       Walls, for example, is 51 percent White. The public school system is about 15 percent White, with the percentage of White high-schoolers smaller than that. A quarter of Walls students are Black, compared to 60 percent of students in the school system.

       The school also educates few at-risk students, which is defined as students who are homeless, in foster case or whose parents receive public assistance. Citywide, 46 percent of public school students meet this definition. At Walls, just 10 percent are considered at risk.

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       Walls, located in downtown Washington near two Metro stations, is intended to attract students from across the city. But data show that few students in the incoming freshman class live in Wards 7 and 8. Students can use a school lottery placement system to attend traditional public and charter schools in different neighborhoods and many in these wards attend charters or schools in different neighborhoods.

       Last year’s freshman class included six students who live in Ward 7 and seven in Ward 8. By comparison, 46 live in Ward 3, the wealthiest part of the city.

       Preliminary data shows the new freshman class includes four students from Wards 7 and 8, though the city says it does not have the ward of residence for 39 students. None of these students were enrolled in the traditional public school system.

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       According to the school system, 50 students living in Wards 7 and 8 applied to be part of the incoming freshmen at Walls.

       “It could be that our families have gotten wind that certain schools are not for them, or not supportive of them,” said Carlene Reid, the Ward 8 representative on the D.C. State Board of Education. “I would not trust to put my child in a school that has systemically shut out students from Ward 8.”

       Meanwhile, more and more students from the city’s wealthiest wards have applied in recent years.

       In 2019, the school said that since 2015, the number of students applying from Ward 3, the wealthiest corner of the city, has jumped nearly 50 percent. And applications from Ward 6, another area with wealthy families, had increased by 20 percent.

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       In 2019, a study from the Office of the D.C. Auditor about the city’s specialized high schools found that students from low-income families who attend the top schools typically attend middle schools outside their neighborhoods. And that Banneker and Walls — the two most competitive schools — offer virtually no students with special education needs.

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       The school system says that it recruits students from its five middle schools in Wards 7 and 8. Schools Without Walls sends administrators in-person — or virtually during the pandemic — to high school recruitment events at the five middle schools. They also invite students to their open house and talk with counselors at middle schools in these wards.

       “We recognize .？.？. that we need to do more to ensure that students across all of our Wards benefit from the unique opportunities our schools provide,” Ferebee said in a statement. “For the last several years, this has been a priority as we evaluate all the ways we could create greater representation of students from every Ward.”