Honestly, this is undoubtedly going to be worse for equity even as they define it. At least that’s what I’m going to guess what will happen. See what you think, maybe I’m wrong:

Moves like this will largely happen in more diverse schools where administrators notice a discrepancy in the results among races. They aren’t as likely to happen in all-white schools where, hey, race can’t be the reason, some of these kids are just smarter than others. So if you are the parent of a high achiever, no matter the race, and your diverse school cuts honors, are you going to just accept the idea? Fuck no, parents move districts to get their kids a little extra playing time in basketball, of course they’re going to fucking get their kids transferred to a school where honors classes are still a thing. So you’ll end up with, essentially, whole schools that are “honors” schools in all but name, and only the dipshit kids and poor kids who can’t afford to transfer left behind at the schools where honors classes don’t exist. You will all but create an honors system anyway, it’s just that instead of having mixed schools of high achievers and kids that need more help, you’ll have schools that are all one or all the other. Notice I haven’t said that schools will be segregated by race, I’ll let everyone draw their own ideas of what the demographic makeup will be.

Short story long, admins don’t know modern parents in modern times if they think they’ll just chill out idly if they feel their district isn’t offering the options they think their kid needs to succeed. (I’m a parent myself with kids just recently entering school and I’m already blown away by how readily some families will pick up sticks and move just over their kids’ schools). And when you factor in families moving to a new area who may choose a home/neighborhood based on the school their kids would be in, the speed at which districts will become either shittier or better, depending on whether it axed honors programs or kept them, will only increase.

If you wanted to make it more likely that “underserved kids” (to use an SJW term) could overcome their disadvantages and succeed, you’d try to spread honors programs further, to get them into every school, even if some schools might have fewer qualifiers at first. But they don’t really want the disadvantaged to succeed, they want to get rid of advantage. They aren’t into creating opportunities for all to potentially shine, they’re into making sure everyone is the same shade of dull.