New Year, new mayor. Same old Department of Education when it comes to abandoning merit and standards.

The DOE’s new high-school admission system discounts the importance of top grades in winning admission to the city’s competitive high schools by, among other gambits, assigning the same weight to student grades ranging from 85 to 99. Along with other changes, that means a student with grades as low as 65 to 75 in some classes can land in the highest lottery group with kids who earned 90s across the board.

When advocates within the DOE didn’t get their way in eliminating geographic preferences at some high schools, they targeted the screening criteria, devising a complex mathematical formula to racially re-engineer those top schools while undermining the standards that make them top schools.

Effie Zakry, a vice president of the Citywide Council on High Schools, hit the nail on the head: This is “a lottery system masquerading as a selective process.” It dishonors hard work and earning top grades.

Middle- and high-school admissions were already a fraught process that the last mayor made even more confounding. This madness will only add to parents’ rage.

Mayor Eric Adams and Chancellor David Banks need to toss the new rules, stat, and instead offer plans to improve middle schools in predominantly black and Hispanic communities. Don’t play quota games via elaborate algorithms: Boost the many capable and talented students at those schools so they can achieve the top grades needed to earn admission to selective high schools.

Give the kids genuine equity, not the destructive illusion of it.