Only the best get to go and the rest go to trade school or just work other jobs. I want people here to have the chance to better themselves. That is the American dream.
But they would have the chance to better themselves, by having good enough scores to get in. That’s what “chance” means. What you’re really suggesting is that everybody be guaranteed college, which is hardly the same thing.
More to the point, sending everybody to college is a waste and does a disservice both to society and the less-college-inclined individuals who otherwise wouldn’t have gone. We need more people learning actual useful skills like plumbing and welding and whatnot, and we don’t need them wasting years of their life earning a bullshit diploma-mill* bachelor’s degree that they’ll never use and would only serve to inflate the requirements for job applications.
Besides, if you want the baseline level of education to change from K-12 to K-16, just say that instead.
(* And they are bullshit diploma mills, because if the people we’re talking about were capable of completing a rigorous curriculum, they’d have succeeded under the merit-based system you’re decrying to begin with.)