Texas' "10% solution," a response to a ban on race-based admissions policies, is coming under fire from parents who say their kids deserve more credit for making top scores in better schools:
Seven years ago, after a federal court outlawed the use of race in the admissions policies of the state's public universities, the Legislature came up with an answer: It passed a law guaranteeing admission to the top 10 percent of the graduating class from any public or private high school. After a few years of hard work, diversity was restored and other states, including California and Florida, adopted similar approaches. The law looked like a success.
But the 10 percent rule, which seemed to skirt the tricky issue of race so deftly, is coming under increasing attack these days as many wealthy parents complain that their children are not getting a fair shake...Parents whose children have been denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin, the crown jewel of Texas higher education, argue that some high schools are better than others, and that managing to stay in the top 25 percent at a demanding school should mean more than landing in the top 10 percent at a less rigorous one. The dispute shows how hard it is to come up with a system for doling out precious but scarce spots in elite universities without angering someone.
You betcha. It's a given that someone is going to complain; as one member of the UT community put it, "The only thing that would satisfy everyone is an open-door policy and an unlimited number of spaces." The usual class-based stereotypes are thrown around here; one Texas high school students insists this is all because "the rich people" don't want poor people to go to UT, thus missing the point entirely. The arguments about whether all kids who are in the top 10% rage back and forth, the position changing depending on what's used as a measure of good performance.
In an attempt to quell the complaints, and as a result of a recent Supreme Court ruling, Texas is now going back to race-based admissions, which I consider to be a step backwards. Texas A&M has a better system. They admit only half of their students using the 10% rule, but admit another 25% who are in the top half of their class and score higher than 1300 on the SAT, which allows those from demanding high schools to have a better shot.
Posted by kswygert at June 15, 2004 10:24 AM