Essentializing Merit: Disability and Exclusion in Elite Private School Admissions

Historically, elite schools have selected students in ways that reproduce advantages for dominant groups and exclude groups deemed undesirable. The specific outgroup in question has changed over time, but the underlying logic used to exclude these groups is often related to disability. Yet, disability as a social category has received minimal attention in discussions of elite reproduction. In this article, we draw on qualitative data collected from elite independent pre-K–12 schools to show that