A NYTimes article on affirmative action in law school is sure to result in some heated discussion:
...a recent study published in The Stanford Law Review by Richard H. Sander, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, has found a new way to inflame the debate. In fact, the study has ignited what may be the fiercest dispute over affirmative action since 2003, when the Supreme Court found some forms of it to be constitutional.
Professor Sander's study tests a simple, but startling, thesis: Affirmative action actually depresses the number of black lawyers, because many black students end up attending law schools that are too difficult for them, and perform badly.
If black law students were accepted to lesser law schools under race-blind admissions, Professor Sander writes, they would receive better grades and pass the bar in greater numbers. Even accounting for the many black students who could not attend any law school without affirmative action, the ultimate number of black lawyers would still increase, he concludes.
If this is the first time reporter Adam Liptak has heard of this theory, he isn't reading any edublogs. But we'll take his word for it that this is the first study published which supports this theory, which makes perfect sense to people who oppose the admission of college applicants who are unqualified, for any reason.
His critics generally accept, and sometimes even praise, aspects of his empirical work. He shows three large gaps between black and white students: their academic credentials before entering law school, their grades in law school and their success on bar examinations.
But many critics dispute Professor Sander's assertion that the first gap - in undergraduate grades and L.S.A.T. scores - causes the next two, in law school grades and in rates of passing the bar.
The basic numbers are not in serious dispute.
Using a standard 1,000-point scale to reflect both L.S.A.T. scores and undergraduate grade-point averages, Professor Sander writes, the average black student's score was 130 to 170 points below that of the average white student.
Once at law school, the average black student gets lower grades than white students: 52 percent of black students are in the bottom 10th of their first-year law school classes, while only 8 percent are in the top half. And the grades of black students drop slightly in relative terms from the first year of law school to the third.
Black students are twice as likely as whites to fail to finish law school. Nineteen percent of the black students who started law school in 1991 had failed to graduate five years later; the corresponding figure for whites was 8 percent.
About 88 percent of all law students pass a bar exam on the first attempt; 95 percent pass eventually. For blacks, the corresponding figures are 61 percent and 78 percent.
And how do AA supporters debate these data?
Timothy T. Clydesdale, who teaches sociology at the College of New Jersey, says the law school environment, and not affirmative action, suppresses the grades of some law students.
"Something intrinsic to the structure or process of legal education affects the grades of all minorities," he writes in the fall issue of Law and Social Inquiry.
You've got to be kidding me. All minorities? Men and women? Fair-skinned and dark-skinned? Rich and poor? It's so pervasive that no matter how individual or talented a minority student may be, their grades are automatically lowered? And it's intrinsic in the system which has been churning out lawyers for many, many years?
Isn't this extremely insulting to those minority students who do really well? Doesn't it suggest that it's not that they're bright, they've just found a way to beat the presumably-white "system"?
One interesting twist:
Professor Sander's study may be most vulnerable in its assessment of the top law schools, where the vast majority of law students of all races graduate and pass the bar.
For instance, Richard O. Lempert, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said that the university's law school had found little difference between its black and white students in rates of graduation, in passing the bar or in income afterward. "We think the fact that Michigan is an elite law school has a lot to do with it," he wrote in an e-mail message. "Sander's data, though he barely mentions it, convey essentially the same story. Thus his analysis provides no case for the Harvards, Yales and Columbias of this world to abandon affirmative action."
But the situation may be different at less prestigious schools.
In other words, if you're good enough to get into Harvard, even with AA, you're probably good enough to take advantage of the environment, graduate, and pass the bar. But if you're not-so-good, then a little extra boost based on AA is only keeping you from realizing sooner that maybe a career in law isn't for you.
Adversity.net takes pains to point out Sanders' background:
Professor Richard H. Sander is a lifelong liberal Democrat (he describes himself as a "progressive".) He supported John Kerry for president in the 2004 presidential election. Sander is a former VISTA volunteer. He has sired a biracial child in a previous marriage. He has long been an advocate of hyphenated "racial justice", and has long been a supporter of race-based affirmative action and racial preferences. Sander has marched, worked, protested, and fought for special "remedial" treatment for blacks and other minorities throughout his entire life.
If he were a Republican, would that mean the data that exist don't actually exist? And speaking of Republicans:
Needless to say, the implications of this are breathtaking. If affirmative action hurts its supposed beneficiaries, then it is even more untenable than it already is. And if it is ended for African Americans, it will almost certainly be ended for other races and for women, too.
I found very little on the web so far critical of Sander's data, or his conclusions, though I'm sure that will soon change.
Posted by kswygert at February 14, 2005 04:46 PM