It has been reassuring to see the widespread indignation that the college admissions scandal has generated. It’s good to know that many Americans still believe that educational opportunity should be based on talent and diligence, not one’s wealth and willingness to skirt, or break, the rules.

What baffles me is why it took high-profile celebrities and executives paying lofty and illicit bribes for people to wake up and realize that educational opportunity is not always about merit. In fact, it rarely is.

Take college admissions into selective institutions. Why does it even matter where a student goes? Because even though where you go doesn’t define who you are, it can shape your life’s trajectory in profound ways, particularly if you weren’t already born with all the advantages of being affluent. Studies have shown that low- and moderate-income students who attend top colleges are significantly more likely to graduate, to accrue less debt due to generous financial aid policies, and perhaps most importantly, to overcome generational poverty and become leaders and advocates for their communities.

And, for me, it doesn’t take prominent individuals like President Obama and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who ascended from modest- or low-income backgrounds, to corroborate this. My grandfather had the opportunity to come to this country from Honduras to attend Yale on a scholarship and spent the rest of his life in service to others as a diplomat and director for UNICEF in Latin America. His trajectory shaped my own. I followed his footsteps and attended Yale before working at a law firm and joining Teach for America. While teaching, I helped found EMERGE, a nonprofit that prepares high-performing students from underserved communities to attend selective institutions. Today, I oversee college and career readiness at the biggest school district in Texas. .

But it is becoming increasingly difficult for talented low- and moderate-income students to access these types of multigenerational opportunities. One study, for example, found that Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, Penn and Brown were among 38 top colleges that have more students from the top 1 percent income level than from the entire bottom 60 percent.

Nationwide, only 5 percent of the students attending the top colleges come from the bottom income quartile. The contributing factors are much deeper and systemic than the egregious behavior exhibited by those involved in the recent scandal. Many low-income students attend schools with inadequate or non-existing college advising, with limited opportunities to take college preparatory coursework. The opposite can be said about the schools that most affluent students attend. Furthermore, affluent students often benefit from outside resources, such as private SAT tutoring, college admissions consultants and extracurricular activities galore to fill their resumes. They also benefit immensely from parents who are aware of the significant value of attending a top college and who know the rules of the college admissions game inside and out.

To be clear: There is nothing wrong with parents using their resources to provide their children with more opportunities, within legal and ethical boundaries, of course. In fact, it is honorable and respectable for any parent to do so. However, if we as a society truly value merit and educational opportunity, we must find ways to level the highly lopsided playing field and give all students a chance, not just those who were born with economic privilege.

This is what led me to help launch EMERGE in 2010. The program has helped hundreds of incredibly talented low-income students from the Houston area attend the nation’s top colleges by providing them with access to similar information, resources and support that more affluent students have. EMERGE is proud to serve 2,000 students currently, but that only scratches the surface of overall need. Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby calculated that nationally, there are as many as 35,000 “hidden” students from low-income backgrounds whose test scores and grades would make strong candidates at selective colleges. The number may be an underestimate, though, as it doesn’t account for students who would perform at higher levels if they only had more support and resources.

Approaches similar to EMERGE’s should be taken in every aspect of education. We shouldn’t lower the bar for any of our students or discourage them from dreaming big. Instead, we need to acknowledge systemic inequities and challenges our students face and tackle them head on with a sense of possibility.

There is an expression in Spanish: “No hay mal que por bien no venga.” Rough translation: Something positive comes out of everything negative. It is my hope that out of this admissions debacle comes not only outrage, but a concerted effort to level the playing field in education and give more students a chance at a better life and all the opportunities that they deserve.

Cruz is chief of strategy and innovation for the Houston Independent School District.