A Golden Opportunity Amid the Fire and Fury Over Exam Schools

One solution asks schools to overthrow the whole-classroom approach that has dominated American schooling for more than a century.

In the battle over so-called exam schools, both sides are missing the opportunity.

From coast to coast, some are attacking these selective, public institutions — schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science in New York, Lowell in San Francisco, Boston Latin, and Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax, Virginia — because they are seen as disproportionately excluding Bl…