Number 2 Pencil

A new twist on AA

I suppose this is the logical conclusion of quota-based AA policies:

A black police bodyguard who protected the Duchess of Cornwall has won $70,000 compensation after suing Scotland Yard for "over-promoting" him because of political correctness. Sgt Leslie Turner -- the first black personal protection officer to guard the royal family -- will receive the "racial discrimination" payout after reaching an out-of-court settlement with London's Metropolitan Police.

His representatives argued he landed the prestigious job as Camilla's bodyguard only because he was black. It was claimed that as a result of being over-promoted and not receiving proper training and support, Sgt Turner made mistakes which led to him being re-assigned.

Anyone want to take bets on when we see the first lawsuit filed by a US student who flunked out of an Ivy League college and wants payback for being allowed to progress that far?

Comprehensive review at UC-Berkeley

UC-Berkeley says race wasn't a factor in selecting its incoming freshmen class:

Race was not a substantial factor in the admission process for UC Berkeley’s incoming freshman class, said a university-commissioned study released Monday. According to the report by UC Berkeley sociology professor Michael Hout, the selection process relied on academic factors such as grades, standardized test scores and high-school course work rather than race.

The university kept in line with its goal to use comprehensive review, which weighs academic achievement and each applicant’s background, in the admissions process, the report said. “In 2004 comprehensive review worked pretty much as designed,” the report said. “Academic achievement outweighed all other factors in the selection process. Applicants’ grades influenced readers the most.”

...Interest in developing a study of the influence of race in admission harks back to 2003, when UC Regent John Moores questioned whether the university’s admissions decisions were being made efficiently enough. Moores published a report in 2003 which found that nearly 400 students with SAT scores below 1,000 were admitted to the campus, while 641 students with nearly perfect scores were rejected. The results set off a whirlwind of debate about the university’s admission practices.

I will admit to being a skeptic about comprehensive review, and I've wondered why much of the coverage didn't ask some straightforward questions about the theories behind the application process. I'm glad to see that academic achievement was heavily weighted here, and I'll be just as interested to see the graduation rates four years' hence.

If the university uses race in its admissions process, it would be in violation of Proposition 209, a 1996 initiative that bans affirmative action in California, Moore added.

That pesky little legality issue doesn't stop some students from complaining about the lack of AA:

...Yvette Felarca, chairperson of BAMN, a pro-affirmative action student group, said she was not surprised that race was not considered in the admission process. “(The UC) doesn’t go far enough to ensure the enrollment of black and Latino students,” Felarca said. “Test scores are not an objective factor. It is a saturated bias.”

It's interesting to see BAMN described here in such a mild way, as BAMN stands for "By Any Means Necessary." If you think that name means the organization allows for violence, there are some who would agree, and there are others who claim the organization is nothing but a student branch of the ultra-left Revolutionary Worker's League.

BAMN hates standardized tests, unsurprisingly, because they hate rich people, and they've duped themselves into believing that SAT items are somehow written so that only rich white teenagers can understand them. What BAMN really hates are comments like the ones I wrote over a year ago, because BAMN isn't about improving educational opportunities for minorities so much as they are about "redistributing the wealth":

The correlation of SES with SAT scores tells us absolutely nothing about whether the SAT is measuring something real. In fact, in our capitalistic society, it would be very odd if SAT didn't correlate with SES. The fact is that kids who come from wealthy homes are more likely to have had access to tutoring and better schools; are more likely to come from homes with educated parents; are more likely to have spent time around books and libraries and enriched environments. Thus, the SAT, which is related to SES, is telling us that kids who grow up around more money learn more, and do better academically as a whole. The faltering K-12 public system is complicit in this, because kids from poor backgrounds often get stuck in the worst schools, with the teachers most willing to lower standards and make excuses.

You will note that nowhere in BAMN's list of What We Stand For is there anything at all about improving the K-12 system so that minority students will actually be better qualified for college, as opposed to admitted by quota or AA.

When the SAT doesn't explain it all

John of Discriminations has a thoughtful reply to an unpublished study (excerpted in The Chronicle of Higher Education) about two common criticisms of AA:

[the study] examined longitudinal student data from 28 selective colleges in an attempt to determine whether any evidence supported two of the most common criticisms of race-conscious admissions policies. Those are the "mismatch hypothesis," which holds that such policies result in the admission of students who find themselves in over their heads academically, and the "stereotype-threat hypothesis," which holds that such policies stigmatize all minority students as academically subpar, thereby placing them under a form of psychological pressure that undermines their academic performance.

The authors apparently had at their disposal SAT scores and college GPAs by race for these universities. They deduced AA admissions by the following:

To try to measure how much of a role a particular student's race or ethnicity played in his or her admission, the researchers looked at the difference between that person's SAT score and the average for the entering class. (On average, black students' SAT scores were 131 points below the average for all students at the 28 colleges, while Hispanic students' SAT scores were 76 points below.)

John wonders, and rightfully so, why black and hispanics were compared to the average of the entire class, rather than the average of those who did not receive race-based preferences. That comparison would have provided a much clearer picture of the score gap.

Beyond that, I wonder why the authors made the assumption, as they seem to have done here, that all black and hispanic students who scored below the group SAT mean received race-based preference in admissions. I assume some non-minority students below the mean were also admitted, and it would have been enlightening to see how they did in school.

What's more, it's entirely possible that that admitted students of any race who had low SATs also had good high school GPAs or other indicators suggesting that they might do well in college. SAT and high-school grades are correlated, but not that highly. Wouldn't it have been logical to conclude that at least some of the low-SAT admittees were folks who didn't test well but had stellar extracurriculars and great references, and thus didn't need the race-based preferences? After all, unless everyone below the mean was a minority, we know that some non-minority kids did get in with middling SAT scores and no preferences. And unless every minority student below the SAT mean also had a subpar high school GPA and no references, there's no reason to assume that a student received racial preferences based on skin color and SAT alone.

John is also quite right to wonder at these conclusions:

The study found that those black and Hispanic students who had seemed to get the biggest break in admission actually tended to have slightly higher grade-point averages than other students, and were much less likely than other students to leave college. Their level of satisfaction with college was about the same as that of other students....

Again, we don't know that these students actually did get in because of race-based policies; we only know their SAT scores. And what about students below the SAT mean who didn't receive preferential treatment? That's really the group to whom these students should be compared.

And then we see this:

When all black and Hispanic students at an institution were examined collectively, however, evidence of "stereotype threat" emerged. The more a college used affirmative action, the lower were the grade-point averages of its minority students, and the more likely such students were to leave college and express dissatisfaction with their college experience. The negative correlation between a college's commitment to affirmative action and the grade-point averages of its black and Hispanic students grew stronger the longer the students were in college, suggesting that the effects of "stereotype threat" mounted as the students became more accustomed to the campus culture.

How on earth can the researchers look at this data and conclude that "stereotype threat" must exist, especially when they just said that the minority students they thought benefited from AA had higher GPAs than the average student? The only way they could reach this conclusion is if they assume that the "stereotype threat" hypothesis of AA is true, and rule out any other explanation why students admitted due to racial factors would do poorly.

Here's what I think is going on. In these colleges, some minority students below the SAT mean were admitted due to AA, and some were not. Those who had other strengths not measured by the SAT may have gone on to do okay in school, and that could increase the average of the below-SAT group. But the more a college indulges in AA - that is, the more they admit minority students with subpar SAT scores - the more likely it is they are going to get a group of students who are unprepared for and unhappy with the college environment.

Nothing I can see in these excerpts suggest that the "mismatch" hypothesis must be false, and that the "stereotype threat" hypothesis must be true. Nothing I see here supports the conclusion that AA policies are, as a rule, good for minority students. Statistical quibbling aside, these data are consistent with the idea that race-based admissions policies can be a bad idea, especially if the minority student not only has low SAT scores but doesn't qualify in other academic areas as well.

An educator swoons from lack of diversity

Associate professor at UCLA's Graduate School of Education & Information Studies Mitchell J. Chang looks forward to the days when "diversity" returns to UC, now that the bad ol' Ward Connerly is gone:

...Prop. 209...has had an alarming impact on University of California enrollments. Yet the change -- a sharp reduction in the proportion of African American and Latino students admitted and enrolled in the UC system, with the sharpest drops at UC Berkeley and UCLA -- has gone largely unnoticed by California voters...

By having an immediate and sharp negative effect on the flow of African American and Latino students into higher education, Connerly's efforts also dramatically interrupt the educational benefits of diversity that were endorsed by the Supreme Court.

I'm confused. Other documents claim that minority enrollment in the UC system overall is back to where is was the last year AA was in place:

Through outreach efforts, UC officials have worked hard since then to boost the number of such students, which dropped sharply in the first years after the ban. UC regents later voted to remove the prohibition, but the move was mainly symbolic. A statewide initiative, Proposition 209, had been passed in 1996 that bars the use of race, ethnicity and gender in admission or hiring by any public institution. This year, the proportion of underrepresented minorities systemwide stood at 19.8%, up from 19.1% last year, and above the 18.8% recorded in 1997, when race and ethnicity were last considered as a factor.

Across the eight campuses, Latinos represent 15.8% of California students admitted this year, African Americans make up 3.4%, and Native Americans 0.6%. About 37% of admitted freshmen are white and nearly 33% are Asian.

Granted, at UC Berkeley and UCLA, minority numbers are down. But those are the two most popular schools in the system, and turn away three out of every four who apply. Isn't it possible that those who don't attend those two schools do indeed go to other UC campuses? And isn't it possible that they might be making their college choices based on factors other than providing diversity for the college environment?

And of course, there's the obligatory bashing of tests:

Imperfect though affirmative action might be, finding effective solutions to compensate for its absence are not within easy reach. Some common changes are to de-emphasize standardized test scores when judging applicants, to guarantee admissions to students who graduate in a designated top percentage of their high school class and to evaluate more carefully an applicant's personal essay...

Because we wouldn't want to demand that someone attending UCLA on the state's dime be able to handle the SAT, even after the exam has been modified at the request of a former UC president.

This smarmy paragraph from Dr. Chang takes the cake, though:

After the important first step of enrolling larger numbers of underrepresented students, educators must make a commitment to maximize the benefits associated with diversity. This can be achieved by addressing past and present discrimination on campus, developing a more inclusive curriculum, nurturing the academic potential of underrepresented students and providing meaningful co-curricular activities that engage more students on campus so that they can learn to interact freely, wisely and responsibly with one another.

Is it possible to insert more multi-culti eduspeak into one paragraph? These are adults we're talking about here, not childlike robots for a social engineering program. Whatever happened to, "Admit those who can do the work, treat them like adults, challenge them constantly, and get the hell out of their way?" Especially the ones who have more important things to think about than constantly worrying about whether or not they're being discriminated against?

Another blow against AA

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.

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.

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.

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.

Understanding the disease but not the cure

The pro-voucher Captain's Quarters wonders why the Washington Post understands the disease - poor public schools - yet prescribes an ineffective "cure" - AA at the college level:

Today's Washington Post editorial decries the sudden dropoff in enrollment for African-Americans at the University of Michigan after a long legal battle upheld the college's affirmative-action programs. The Post tries to blame the publicity surrounding the lawsuit for the stark decline, but in the next breath notes that the falling enrollments belong to a national trend...

School voucher programs would solve most of these problems, even if given limited application to failing school districts. In order to produce students who can succeed at the college level, schools must produce successful students in the primary grades first. Once in high school, the battle is all but over; if they have not learned the basics at that point, they likely will fail there, let alone apply to college.

It's odd that the WaPo understands that the problem is that "American public schools are preparing many fewer African American students...for education at elite universities than those universities would like to admit," yet insists that more intelligent AA policies, and more scholarship money that is unrelated to merit, are part of the solution. Bottom line: If schools really want "diversity" without sacrificing academic excellence, they'll stop lowering standards, stop giving money to unprepared students, and start insisting that public schools - and local governments - work together to improve K-12 education.

When AA ceases to be a program, and becomes a religion

Unsurprisingly, John of Discriminations is all over the soon-to-be-published study (available here) by Dr. Richard Sander (of UCLA Law School) that promotes the provocative idea that affirmative action for black law students may actually be disadvantageous to them. Dr. Sander thus explores an idea that's often bounced around my head - that affirmative action has the potential to do great harm by placing unprepared students in programs that are far too demanding. And I've always felt that AA programs were more for the benefit of the schools - who could pride themselves on their "diversity" - than for individual students, who were often admitted on merits that had nothing to do with academic potential.

So what does Dr. Sander have to say?

[John Rosenberg] According to an article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, Prof. Sander conducted a systematic study of the bar passage rates of the 27,000 law students between 1991 and 1997. Among his findings:

* Ending affirmative action would increase the number of new black lawyers by 8.8 percent because students would attend law schools where they would struggle less and learn more, and earn higher grades...With the exception of the most-elite law schools, good grades matter more to employers than the law school's prestige.

As John notes, the unnamed critics so beloved by reporters are howling with anger over this departure from the politically-correct orthodoxy. John also notes that the articles criticizing Dr. Sander's work seem to be starting from the assumption that "social conservatives" who oppose AA do so only because they feel that whites are treated unfairly. Not only is this a bigoted and unwarranted assumption, but it misses Dr. Sander's point so completely as to suggest that these critics are wholly unfamiliar with his work, as well as with the reality of graduation rates for AA students. This type of reaction also suggests that AA has been removed from the realm of "interesting educational policy that might be useful" to a near-religious faith that must be defended against heretics at all cost.

The data are there. Take a look at the article for yourself, and check out the Volokh Conspiracy for Dr. Sander's guest blog posts. As with any study, the methodology of this one may be open to criticism, but to ignore the conclusions of this study by screaming "racist!" is to reveal oneself as unscientific and closed-minded - and unconcerned about the potential negative impact of AA to boot.

Embracing controversy

Some people prefer to remain a stranger to controversy. Others are more bold about walking up to controversy and shaking hands. Some people even go so far as to make friends with controversy, issuing invitations to tea and offering extra theater tickets.

And then there's Secretary of Education Rod Paige:

Secretary of Education Rod Paige this month condemned leaders of the NAACP for opposing the federal No Child Left Behind Act and questioned the organization’s commitment to improving the education of African-American children...

"You can’t expect anything different from a man who called the National Education Association terrorists," Mr. Bond said, referring to a comment Mr. Paige made earlier this year...

Self-defeating prophecies in education

Thomas Sowell has some harsh criticism for so-called "friends" of minority students:

My own moment of truth came when a roommate at Harvard said to me one day: "Tom, when are you going to stop goofing off and get some work done?"

Why endure all the hard work, self-discipline and self-denial that a first-rate education requires if The Man is going to stop you from getting anywhere anyway? People who have been pushing this line for years are now suddenly surprised and dismayed to discover that many black students across the country regard academic striving as "acting white."

And people who have pushing the line, "Standardized tests are biased against minorities" are now suddenly surprised and dismayed to discover that many black students regard tests as biased and unimportant, and the test score gap continues because black students are afraid of the tests, or are so convinced of their failure that they don't study for them.

When tests don't produce the "right" student body

From Devoted Reader Kevin S. comes this story of a school board which seems to think that "diversity" is more important than test scores, even when the school in question is the "elite" Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology:

Jefferson, a magnet school that draws students from across Northern Virginia, has long grappled with the role of race in admissions. Almost 3,000 students apply every year, and 800 semifinalists are selected based on a multiple-choice test of math and verbal skills. Last year, the student body was about 1 percent black and 2 percent Hispanic.

According to the panel's recommendation, which the School Board will consider tonight and again at a work session Monday, "work must begin immediately" so the amended admissions process can be in place by the fall for students applying to Jefferson next year.

The president of the local NAACP branch says that members are already "mobilizing" in order to speak at the July 21 meeting, but then he criticizes the school - which is a school for science and technology, remember - for communicating its policy changes using email and the Internet. His representatives "don't use computers," but anyone who doesn't use computers isn't going to be attending this school anyway.

Asian parents, on the other hand (Asian students make up 32% of the most recent entering class), wonder if their numbers are going to dwindle, and wonder if the suggested essay test might weed out some qualified students who are recent immigrants.

What no one wants to address are the possibilities that (a) students admitted from teacher recommendations might not be qualified and (b) the minority students who are already at TJ might not appreciate an influx of "diverse" students who didn't have to satisfy the same stringent testing requirements, especially if poor performance on the part of any of the newcomers leads to lowered standards, or more racial tension between those who can do the work, and those who can't.

Also, there's an unspoken assumption here that something must be wrong with the admissions test; otherwise, why say there are qualified students out there who can't score well on it? But does this school have any data to suggest that the test does not do a good job of selecting qualified students? Or are they just unhappy that they don't get the racial balance that they want using a purely meritocratic approach?

I hope TJ realizes that, now that they've opened the door to challengers who want to claim that their test is "biased" against minorities, they might have a hard time getting that door closed again.

When a diverse class doesn't include the rich kids

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.

The "best black" syndrome

Earlier this year, USA Today ran a feature honoring the 32 college student finalists in the American Advertising Federation's annual "Most Promising Minority Students Program." Jeff Jacoby wonders why the AAF, and USA Today, weren't honest about the true message this sends, which is, "For a minority, you're pretty smart":

William F. Buckley once remarked, upon being told that Lillian Hellman was America's finest female playwright, that this was on the order of celebrating the tallest building in Wichita. Perhaps the 32 students hailed in the ad really are gifted whiz kids with a genius for advertising — but when the competition excludes more than 70 percent of the field, how would one know?...

Once upon time it was racists who insisted that "nonwhite" was a synonym for "intellectually deficient." Today that attitude is promoted most emphatically by the defenders of affirmative action, a system rooted in the belief that blacks and certain other minorities can't hope to win if they have to compete on a level playing field.

When AA hits close to home

Lydia Brodeur is a sophomore at Michigan State University. The State News - the "independent voice" of MSU - recently published a letter of hers:

I would like to applaud Jim Lala's column in the Tuesday edition of The State News ("Diversity doesn't promote better education, system flawed"). I have two younger brothers. One is white, related to me by blood, and the other is Guatemalan, related to me by adoption. Both were raised in the same house, by the same parents, taught the same morals and values, and both are exceptionally bright. They have always been treated equally.

My two little brothers have always and will always be equal in my eyes. Why shouldn't they be equal in your eyes, too?

The letter is short, sweet, and to the point, and probably didn't take Ms. Brodeur very long to write. But oh, what a reaction it's gotten.

Andrew Sullivan linked to the report on the State News Blues which congratulated Lydia for making her voice heard. The first comment is from the woman herself:

Thanks, Steve.

I'll be taking a DIFFERENT class for my ISS 300-level credit next semester. That guy gets none of MY money.

This would be bad even if ISS didn't stand for "Integrative Studies in the Social Sciences," where students are supposed to learn to think critically, integrate information, and expand their ideas. Obviously, her professor has not yet mastered the part about separating his personal biases from his critical thinking.

Lydia's mom got involved, and the professor has apologized. The list of comments to this post make for great reading. One commenter insists that, despite being reared in the same house, Lydia's Guatamalan brother has by definition suffered more discrimination in the US and thus deserves AA. This commenter never quite explains to the satisfaction of other commenters why MSU should assume a Guatamalan has suffered discrimination, or why extra help is due such a person. Nor does he explain why suffering discrimination should, in and of itself, make an applicant more attractive to colleges or more qualified to do the work if admitted. That commenter thought the others should discuss how much someone who was teased in school "should be 'upped' in the college admissions process to compensate for the latent skin-color discrimination" in our society and was disappointed that Lydia didn't address this in her letter.

The other commenters, unsurprisingly, disagree:

If Nils assumes that race will definitely factor in the brothers' life in a negative, racist way (which IS the penitent, hand-wringing, deep-thinking socialist perspective) then so might their weight, height, and any number of other factors that shouldn't, but may, come into play when a boss chooses dinner guests or whatever other situation the brothers may encounter in their lives. Hypothetically, if the caucasian brother is obese, the Guatemalan brother athletic, and the boss is a fitness fanatic, might not weight discrimation come into play? What if the boss thinks tall people are better to have in negotiations and the Guatemalan brother is significantly taller? Should MSU give the Guatemalan brother 200 points on his SAT for being dark skinned, then minus 50 for being tall, and the white brother get 160 for being white but overweight? They may even encounter a boss who dislikes caucasian men from Michigan! What then? This is the slippery slope of affirmative action. And it's why it should not be the role of a publicly funded institution of higher learning to attempt to pre-guage the level of future discrimation that will be met by a particular applicant becuase of his appearance. The only real answer is to assess people on the content of their character, but the MSU policy and the policy on which its admissions department would assess the merits of Lydia's brothers does not seem to be a shining example of this.

Other comments address double standards in a more general fashion; this post by Heather almost curled my hair:

Here's an irony for you: The College Board awards Merit Finalist Awards to American students with the highest scores. It also has a separate award for an Hispanic-American student with the highest scores. Both of these awards were handed out at my daughter's school here in Madrid. It is a private American school with perhaps 40% Spanish students, 30% other nationality and 30% American. My daughter won the regular award. An American girl with an Hispanic last name won the Hispanic award. The standard for the Hispanic award is much lower than for the regular award. None of the Spanish kids are entitled to be included, since they are not American citizens. These kids are doing a difficult curriculum in a second language. How do you think it makes them feel, that the Hispanic standard is so much lower? Many of the Spanish kids had very high scores. Affirmative action is a slap in the face to intelligent people of all races and, in this case, even makes America look condescending.

Emphasis mine. Giving Merit Finalist Awards by ethnic group, with different standards by ethnic group, seems to be a very racist action. How could the message be any more clear that non-white students are not expected to compete with white students on an equal basis?

The National Merit website doesn't mention the awards by race. The page for the National Merit Award Scholarship program doesn't mention race at all, but there is a separate program, the National Achievement Scholarship program is open only to Black American high school students. Unlike students of all other races, black students have the option of competing both for this and for the National Merit Scholarships as well (although, if they win both, they can accept only one).

However, no mention of the standards is made on either website, so while the idea of having separate competitions is slightly disturbing, there's no indication on here that black students are winning awards with lower qualifications than other students, and I have no way of verifying if the comment quoted above is true or not. One can only hope that black students do choose to compete in both competitions, and that the competition for the blacks-only award is as tough as for the other award. Otherwise, what's there to stop them from assuming that they aren't qualified to compete for awards unless they're only for blacks?

Regardless, Lydia's letter should not have provoked such close-minded and insulting statements from her professor. Perhaps he'll learn to "expand" his thinking more in the future.

Money for the white kids

To make their point about affirmative action, the College Republicans of Roger Williams College have raised money to award a $250 scholarship - to a white student only.

The link provides a lot of reactions to this action. Some people say "Kudos!" and claim that this highlights the absurdity of giving students money based on skin color. Other people say the CR's shouldn't stoop to the level of this absurdity to make their point. And yet a few others claim that AA and race-based scholarships are necessary because even poor, uneducated white students don't face the barriers and social hostility that black students do.

What do you think?

(The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler's rather, er, unrestrained take on the topic is here.)

Shining a light on college admissions

Some influential Democrats are calling for universities that receive federal funding to release information on "the economic status and race" of legacy admits. Stuart Taylor Jr. believes that federally-funded universities should do this for all preferential-admissions programs:

This would shed light on who benefits and who does not, on the nature and magnitude of the preferences, and on how much they compromise academic standards. The questionnaire could go something like the following.

For each preferred category and each racial group of admitted applicants: the percentage receiving financial aid, median amount received, and median family income, to the extent available; the numbers of Caucasians, Asians, Hispanics, African-Americans, and Native Americans; the median high school GPA and median SAT (or ACT) score; the median college GPA of enrolled students; and the percentage who graduate within six years.

Problem is, this would allow us to compare the "legacy" issue to the "racial preference" issue directly - and Mr. Taylor is certain that universities do not want the public to know that information:

It would also expose the stunning magnitude of the racial preferences -- which are far greater than the legacy preferences -- used by all (or almost all) selective institutions, and who benefits from them...

Most Americans don't realize that the racial preferences at the University of Michigan Law School, upheld by the Supreme Court last June in Grutter v. Bollinger, are worth more than 1 full point of college GPA -- catapulting black and Hispanic applicants with just-below-B averages over otherwise similar whites and Asians with straight A's. Or that the average SAT scores of the preferentially admitted black students at most elite colleges are 150 to 200 points below the average white and Asian scores. Or that this SAT gap understates the academic gap, because black students do less well in college, on average, than do white and Asian classmates with the same SAT scores. Or that most recipients of racial preferences, unlike most legacies, end up in the bottom third of their classes and have far higher dropout rates than other groups. Or that, according to a study of 28 highly selective colleges by two leading supporters of preferences, some 85 percent of preferentially admitted minorities are from middle- and upper-class families.

In other words, not only are the achievement gaps between those admitted for "diversity" and the general student body larger than generally perceived, but those quotas don't help working-class kids of any race.

Andrew Sullivan linked to this article, and received this email:

"Have spent many years in the elite environs of higher ed and can tell you that whatever you think you know about admissions, it's tens time [sic] worse. The 'minority' admissions rarely graduate and few even get to be sophs.
All the administration wants is to meet their quota of freshman accepted for admission.

The reaction is to act up and act tough further alienating themselves. It's an awful system."

I'll say. I agreen entirely with one of Mr. Taylor's suggested benefits of making this system public:

A second benefit might be to focus attention on the real crisis in minority education: The average black 17-year-old is academically less prepared for college than the average white or Asian 8th-grader.

Of course John of Discriminations had something to say about this as well. Oh, and don't miss his discussion of an interesting racial preferences conundrum, and his exposure of a William & Mary Sociology professor for the overly-"sensitive" twit that she is. God help any student who takes a class from her; if they're not professional victims when they enter, they will be by the time they leave.

Michigan residents respond to AA poll

Poll results from Michigan suggests that voters want to ban affirmative action:

When read language from a petition on the affirmative action issue, 64 percent of poll respondents said they favored the ban; 23 percent were opposed. The News’ survey of 400 registered voters was conducted Jan. 7-12 by Mitchell Research & Communications of East Lansing...

A poll breakdown shows support for the ballot initiative cuts across age groups, gender, religion and union and nonunion households. The proposal is supported by about two-thirds of voters in the suburbs and outstate, but is opposed 47 percent to 42 percent in Detroit.

The high court ruled that using race as a factor in the law school application process was a constitutional means of achieving diversity. But in a split decision, the court struck down the school’s undergraduate admission process that gave extra points to students of color.

Time to call in an educational "plumber"

If there's one thing I've consistently stated here on N2P, it's that affirmative action at the college level is not only unfair, but ineffective. When AA policies are in place for college admissions, failing public high schools are off the hook for allowing students to pass through 12 years of schooling without gaining the skills needed for college.

Now, Jay Greene and Greg Forster say the same thing, only at length, and much more elegantly:

Think of the K-12 educational system as a pipeline: Students enter the pipe in preschool and, if all goes well, flow all the way through and out the other end into college. But some students "leak" out of the pipeline by dropping out of school or failing to acquire college-ready skills. And when it comes to minority students, the pipe is currently so leaky that only a trickle of those students flow into college. Expanding affirmative action policies and financial assistance is like opening the spigot at the end of the pipe wider: It's beside the point if the pipe is leaking badly. We can beef up affirmative action all we like and it won't increase the flow of minority students into college, because the K-12 system just doesn't produce enough college-ready high school graduates.

For students to be able to attend virtually any four-year college, they need to graduate from high school, have a set of required courses on their high school transcripts and demonstrate basic literacy. The shocking reality is that fewer than one in five minority students has passed these three hurdles and is thus "college ready."

According to Green and Forster's numbers (taken from the US Census), there were approximately 218,000 minority students in 2000 who (a) graduated from high school, (b) passed a literacy exam, and (c) took college preparatory courses. But in that same year, 244,000 minority students were admitted to four-year colleges. The numbers refute the claim (made by affirmative action supporters) that AA remains a necessity for some hypothetical large body of qualified-yet-overlooked minority candidates. If anything, the numbers suggest that all qualified minority students, and some who are not qualified, are admitted to college (my guess is there are plenty of "non-minority" admittees who are underprepared as well).

The only strategy that can meaningfully improve minority representation in higher education is to improve the quality of the K-12 education system so that it produces more college-ready minority students. We might disagree about how the K-12 system can best be improved, but we should stop wasting our energies on heated debates over affirmative action and focus them on the source of the problem. Unless we fix the leaks in the K-12 education pipeline, no higher education policy can possibly improve minority opportunities to attend college.

Confusing color-blindness with racism

Texas A&M will no longer use race when determining an applicant's eligibility for admission. This color-blind policy has, of course, resulted in lawsuits by those claiming that A&M is determined to become an "all-white institution":

On December 3, Texas A&M University President Robert Gates, who headed the CIA during the first Bush administration, announced that the University will consider in its admissions decisions whether an applicant has overcome socioeconomic disadvantage and other obstacles, but will not take into account an applicant's race.

In response, U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Houston) and State Sen. Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) have threatened to file a lawsuit and request a federal civil rights investigation of Texas A&M. After a group of left-wing minority state legislators met with Gates on December 8 to implore him to reverse his decision, he nevertheless stood firm against using race. The legislators subsequently bashed Gates at a news conference in which they accused him of attempting to create an "all-white university"...

This is in direct contradiction to Gate's plan, but these representatives don't seem interested in the facts:

Gates' plan steps up recruiting efforts in predominantly minority areas, works to persuade admitted minority students to actually enroll, and provides $5,000-a-year scholarships to all first-generation college students whose families earn $40,000 a year or less. Additionally, several essay questions encourage applicants to discuss significant obstacles they have overcome, which could include poverty and racism.

Since blacks and Hispanics are unfortunately more likely than whites to be disadvantaged, they will surely benefit disproportionately from the new admissions policy....

Note the requirement of the essay question and the SAT score. What this plan means is that underqualified students will no longer be accepted based on race, and qualified applicants will be less likely to be overlooked because of familial poverty. It's appalling that elected representatives would threaten to sue over this; it's extra-appalling that these efforts to ensure that qualified kids of all races and backgrounds are admitted are somehow synonymous with creating an "all-white" environment.

Are the congresswoman and senator assuming that there will be no qualified minority applicants, and are they really saying that all the current minority enrollees at Texas A&M were admitted solely due to race? That's a racist belief if I ever heard one.

Update John of Discriminations points out with exquisite tact that he covered this story last week. And in greater detail. Don't miss Claire's comment on the "religion" of A&M.

The Discriminations take on AA

John Rosenberg of Discriminations discusses a crucial topic for college admissions: Are those of us who oppose affirmative action under the obligation to come up with something better?

He first made this post:

Still, it is a fact -- a sad fact, but a fact nonetheless -- that a large number of decent people like Bill Cosby view all critics of racial preference as uncaring racists. This is no doubt caused in part, perhaps in large part, because that charge is repeated so often that after a while many assume it must be true. We, in turn, become bitterly defensive and reply in kind that the accusers are dumb or unprincipled, or both. This is not good.

I don't have a solution to this problem. Since we are honestly convinced that the principle of equal treatment is of fundamental importance we are not going to abandon it, nor should we. But we should probably do more than we have to demonstrate why that principle is so important, why it is not simply an abstraction, why abandoning it has its own terrible human costs.

Given that I'm a psychometrician, the "racist" label doesn't scare me that much. Some people apply it so broadly to everyone with my degree that it's hard to take it seriously after a while, although I still consider to be an insulting and inaccurate label. But John raises a very good point. I've often used this blog to criticize affirmative action policies, especially ones that involve lowered standards or quote systems. But if I oppose AA, does that mean that I must come up with some system other than equal standards for all?

One of John's commenters replied thus:

think the problem that anti-Affirmative Action folk need to address (and I consider myself a firm fence-sitter on the issue), is that it is not enough to JUST be against affirmative action. You need an alternative.

So, if I'm an open-minded member of the NAACP and I say, "Blacks are underperforming. Affirmative action is helping to make up for that. If you want to get rid of it, what are you going to do to help black people succeed?" it is not enough to just say, "I want everyone to be treated equally." You are essentially acknowledging the problem, but not suggesting a solution that will actually improve it.

At this point, though, John wonders why it's not enough just to say " I want everyone to be treated equally." The issue is not about solutions to problems, but on agreeing what the problem really is:

My correspondent regards affirmative action as a solution to the problem of blacks “underperforming.”... Affirmative action, however, does nothing to solve that problem. All it does is to reduce the use of performance as a criterion for entry to college, occupations, etc., but the underperformance continues unabated...

Indeed, since I am convinced that double standards do much more harm than good, even or especially to the temporary beneficiaries, I believe that opposition to such double standards is itself proof of “caring.”

Bingo. The reason that people like John and I don't come up with some other method of "correcting" the "underrepresentation" is that we don't think that particular groups have the right to demand equitable representation on college campuses. We don't think that anyone should get extra points towards college admissions based on race.

We do think that college applicants should be academically prepared, and many current AA policies tend to admit applicants who are not prepared solely because of those applicants' contribution to campus "diversity;" hence, our opposition. But that opposition is not uncaring; we merely want students to go to colleges that are best for them, instead of going to colleges that are too challenging. Why is it racist, or uncaring, to want to prevent AA-admit students from enrolling in colleges from which they will flunk out in two years, while the college gets to bask in the glory of its "diversity"?

Our society owes black children nothing more or less than it owes all children, which is a good solid education. The prevalence of AA at the college level is, I think, an indicator that our society is failing in this regard, but it is not a solution to that failure. It merely points out that our public school system is doing such a poor job of educating black youth that some colleges have come full-circle from the ideals of integration, and now admit students based on race more than on accomplishments.

My "alternative" to AA is to remove the need for it, and that cannot be done until the K-12 educational system is held accountable for the students who pass through it.

UCSD stands by comprehensive review

First Berkeley, then UCLA - and now it's UC-San Diego's turn:

Nearly 800 students, about 58 percent of whom were underrepresented minorities, were admitted to UC San Diego last year with below-average SAT scores, while an equal number of students with high SAT scores were denied access.

New data released by UCSD show that more than half of those students admitted with low SAT scores had grade-point averages below 3.8. The average GPA for the accepted students in 2002 was 4.13.

Remember my post about the aggravated columnist who is convinced that high-test-score, low-GPA folks are getting into top-notch schools left and right? That writer didn't provide any data to support her claim, and this is why. What's more likely to happen is this - high-GPA and high test-score folks are less likely to get into schools if they don't meet "diversity" guidelines.

UCSD officials emphasize that the 790 students with SAT scores below 1,000 made up only 4.7 percent of admitted students, and that most admitted students had good grades and SAT scores that were closer to or surpassed the 1293 average.

But the numbers raise questions, considering UCSD's 2-year-old admissions process, known as comprehensive review, in which 75 percent of the criteria is based on academic qualifications. The other 25 percent is based on a numerical measure of an applicant's socioeconomic status and personal opportunities and accomplishments.

So it's only 25% of the total. Still, one could ask why SES factors into college admissions at all, given that low SES isn't predictive of high college performance.

UCSD Admissions Director Mae Brown defended the [comprehensive review] policy, saying UC's responsibility as stated in California's Master Plan of Higher Education is to accept students from among the top 12.5 percent of high school graduates, a group that isn't limited to those with outstanding grades and test scores.

In other words, this includes students who, thus far, may not have necessarily produced any evidence of being capable of doing college-level work. That certainly may have been due to factors beyond these applicants' control, but unless UCSD is going to admit that their first year program is essentially a baby-sitting/remedial program, I don't see the point in admitting students who haven't yet proved themselves. Why is it now a given that students can begin to prove themselves in college?

A 2-year-old policy called Eligibility in the Local Context, or ELC, is widely considered race-neutral because it bases admission solely on GPAs. Similar to the approach at public university systems in Texas and Florida, UC guarantees admission to students graduating in the top 4 percent of their high school classes.

Still, long-term data show that many of those students admitted continue to have lower than average grades in their first year at college.

And there's the rub. If these kids didn't do well in high school, it's not necessarily just because they weren't given the chance. It could be simply because they're not smart, or focused, or determined enough. And now, thanks to UC's policies, these kids are paying for the privilege of earning bad grades at a good school.

The students attained an average 2.76 GPA for their freshman year, which was below the 2.94 average for the freshman class. But UCSD's Brown lauded the students' performance.

"They're clearly not struggling, with almost a 'B' average," Brown said. "These students are doing comparably to all other students at UCSD."

At what point, do you think, would UC be willing to admit that their policy was not working? Would these students have to flunk out en masse? My bet is that such an event wouldn't faze these "compassionate" educators; they'd just double up on the remedial work in the first year, never losing sight of their assumption that these kids can do the work. It's going to take more than data to dissuade them from their belief that admitting students with a track record of relatively low academic achievement to high-ranking universities simply may not be the best thing for those students, "diversity" of campus atmosphere be damned.

Update: Over at Discriminations, John is marveling at UC Berkeley's new definition of "stigma." Apparently, it's not stigmatizing to drastically lower standards for one group; it's only this inconvenient publicity that is the problem.

UCLA bending the rules as well?

Remember all the uproar over the discovery that UC-Berkeley was admitting students with bottom-feeder SAT scores? (Well, it created an uproar in the blogosphere, anyway.) Now there's a report wondering if UCLA was doing the same thing as well:

UCLA turned away over 1,000 students with high SAT scores in 2002 and admitted several hundred students with comparatively low SAT scores that same year, according to a report compiled by the university and released on Tuesday...

The grade point averages of students admitted to UCLA also rose more directly with SAT scores. Students with high SAT scores who were denied admittance generally had lower GPAs...

This comes as no surprise to those who support "comprehensive review" and all the campuses that use it as part of admissions procedures. Allegedly, the SAT I is the least predictive of the usual triad - SAT I, SAT II and high school GPA - and so the UCLA statement presents this finding to explain their disavowal of the importance of the SAT.

However, if a school says, "The SAT I is not predictive for our applicants, therefore, we will use some other factor X in admissions," then I expect to see data showing that Factor X is more predictive of success than the SAT I. If UCLA uses mainly high school GPA and the SAT II because those are more predictive of success, more power to 'em.

But if UCLA admits students with low grades, or low test scores, based mainly on "life experiences," they're as much as admitting that they don't really care what factors are predictive, because there's no evidence to suggest that having, or overcoming, a rough childhood is predictive of success in college. The universities are using one set of rules to damn the SAT, and another set of rules for deciding which touchy-feely measures are given weight in the admissions process.

If I thought that the UC admissions offices really cared about the applicant qualities that are predictive of college success, as opposed to the qualities that will allow UC to bend the rules and admit a lot more minorities regardless of acadedmic qualifications, I'd take their comments about the SAT I more seriously.

(Found via Professor Bainbridge .)

More on Berkeley's low SAT-scorers

Tonya Schevitz has the details about that "special" group admitted to Berkeley in 2002 with rock-bottom SAT scores, and she believes Berkeley was simply using this tactic as an end-run around the ban on racial preferences in admissions:

UC Berkeley officials developed the policy, which considers grades and SAT scores but includes other factors, such as socioeconomic status, after voters approved Proposition 209 in 1996 to ban affirmative action in admissions.

"This is under the blah, blah, blah, category," Moores said of the university's response to his report. "I think something is very screwy, so I want somebody to come back and tell me exactly what is going on."

Handicapping golf - and SAT scores

John Rosenberg of Discriminations is aghast at this bizarre short piece published in the New York Times (Michael Berube, “Testing Handicaps,” Sept. 21, 2003, Section 6, page 18, fee subscription required). Apparently, Professor Berube is concerned not only with racial score gaps on the SAT, but every other sort of gap that's possible, and foresees "fairness" on the SAT as norming the test for each group in the same fashion that golf scores are handicapped:

I've heard well-meaning people suggest, for example, that the test be "race-normed": the average "black" score is 857 and the average "white" score is 1,063, so let's treat the black kid with an 1,100 the way we'd treat the white kid with a 1,300. This is the kind of suggestion that provokes immediate and justified derision from conservatives -- often in the form of sports analogies: if we're going to spot black students 200 points on the SAT, they say, let's give white wide receivers a 10-yard head start on black safeties and cornerbacks.

Golf is proud, and rightly so, of the fact that its handicap system allows hackers to play alongside champions. And if only the SAT were as well organized and as egalitarian as the U.S.G.A., every high-school student would be assigned a handicap. We already have all the numbers we need; all we need to do is to combine "region" and "parental education" with the race-gender-class triad, and we can issue remarkably precise handicaps -- more precise even than golf handicaps, since the SAT's permit neither mulligans nor "winter rules."

Please tell me this was intended to be satire. Surely, a professor of literature cannot be serious when he states that an exam, one intended to separate test takers by ability as clearly as possible, should be normed on so many variables that everyone essentially ends up with the same score. Surely, he cannot be serious when he suggests that the world of college admissions should take lessons from the world of sport, especially after he calls similar sports analogies justifiably ridiculous. Surely, he cannot be serious to suggest that the score gap between those who come from educated families (who have presumably benefited from both nature and nurture), and those who do not is a problem, an indicator that the test is unfair, rather than a validation of the fact that the test measures academic skills which do not exist, nor develop, in a vacuum.

It's hard to top John's reply to this:

Berube assumes that the SAT can be fair only if the distribution of scores of members of every known group is identical. As Kimberly Swygert would say (in fact, has said here about a similar argument), Horse Puckey! The SAT is not a test of moral worth. A test is fair if it is accurate, not if its scores are distribued equitably by race, gender, class, region, etc., etc.

Emphasis mine. It's astonishing to see article after article address the racial score gaps on the SAT while providing virtually no evidence about whether those score gaps are measuring something accurately. If we want to talk about social engineering, we can talk about the impact of score gaps, and the use of affirmative action in admissions, and the performance of students once admitted to college, but from a testing perspective there's no evidence of bias here, and no need to address any score gaps by tinkering with the test.

Professor Berube, having hit bottom, digs deeper:

Take a black girl from rural Alabama whose parents make under $10,000 and did not graduate from high school, and put her up against the wealthy white boy from Lake Success whose parents have Ph.D.'s. Before she sets pen to paper, she could be facing an 848-point SAT deficit. If we assign her only 80 percent of the parental-education gap (217.6 points), 60 percent of the income gap (155.4 points), 30 percent of the racial gap (61.8 points), 20 percent of the regional gap (13.6 points) and 10 percent of the gender gap (4.3 points), the 452.7 point handicap will help us gauge her true talents more accurately. Fair enough, no? The reason we'd have to scale the percentages is that the various categories overlap, but I don't see any problem there -- certainly it's easier than scoring a golf match on the Stableford system.

Never mind that this young black woman was obviously cheated by her school system, or was reared in a home that did not value education, or was herself responsible for failing to learn enough material to graduate from high school (unlike Berube, I do not assume that her skin color means that she cannot be held accountable for her own choices). What on earth has convinced Professor Berube that this woman's "accurate" score is 452.7 points higher than what she produces when she takes the SAT? What on earth convinces him that she will do well if "handicapped" into college?

Why does the "wealthy white boy" not deserve the higher score he gets? Because he's white? Because he's a boy? Because his parents are PhD's? Professor Berube has a PhD; does this mean he would hope that his children's SAT scores be normed downwards, despite the amount of effort they've expended in doing well in school?

Appalling. Just appalling.

The important thing is that golf -- a game, notably, in which success has long been tied to race, sex and income -- has much to teach the College Board. Thanks to golf's handicap system, I can someday fill out a foursome with Tiger, Annika and Michelle Wie, and the U.S.G.A. will give me about a stroke a hole. And that's the kind of diversity of which any campus, and any country club, can be proud.

Um, unless I've missed something entirely, Tiger didn't win those tournaments because of any allowances for his race, sex, or income. He won because he's damn good at the game. Professor Berube can be as proud of his handicap as he wants; at the end of the day, no amount of data manipulation will affect who gets to don that green Masters Tournament jacket, just as no amount of data manipulation should affect who gets into college, either.

The blogosphere, in person

By the way, I feel as though my bloggage today is uninspired, in part due to my fatigue. I had a bad burger at a Labor Day cookout yesterday, and it wore me down from the inside out (bleagh) all last night.

However, I would be remiss not to mention that the weekend started off on a much higher note. Friday night I finally got to meet John Rosenberg, of Discriminations fame, and his lovely and intelligent (and talkative) family. They were in town because his daughter Jessie was returning to Bryn Mawr, where she will begin her senior year (at the tender age of 16). We had a great dinner out - it's so much fun to talk with people who have an opinion on standardized testing other than, "Huh?" or "Yuk." I can't say enough about how much I enjoyed meeting John in person and getting to know his family, of whom I had heard a great deal, and I promise I'm not saying that just because he picked up the check.

It was also funny to realize that all of us had read that day about the U of Michigan's "new" diversity-enhancing entrance requirements, but John and his family read the Washington Post article on it, which contained different details than the version that I read, so John got to blog different elements of the same story:

The [Washington Post] article did, however, quote an interesting comment from Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Mr. Nassirian said that over the years college admission people had grown dissatisfied with relying on applicant's grades because they realized that 4.0 in one [high] school wasn't equal to a 4.0 in another school."

Curiously, Mr. Nassirian was not quoted as saying anything about the role of standardized tests in alleviating that problem, a striking omission. In the context of the article, the clear implication of his comment is that it is unreasonable to rely too heavily on grades, which differ considerably in what they mean from school to school, but it is quite reasonable to pay attention to race, which right- (which is to say, left-) thinking people know is the same everywhere.

Indeed. "Group identity" is everything to the left-thinking, so that a black student will add "diversity" regardless of that individual's academic performance, attitudes, politics, and ideals. And just today, John uncovered a brutally-honest assessment about this sort of narrow-minded thinking.

Donald Scoggins is a concerned black father who was dismayed to discover that his mixed-race kids felt compelled to choose, on the U of Michigan's application form, the race which they felt would give them the greatest boost in admissions:

Ironically, the week before the oral arguments in the University of Michigan case, one of my sons was accepted to the school's engineering program. He's quite smart...I'm black, but my wife is Asian Indian. My sons selected "African-American" on their college applications. My wife was offended, and suggested they select "Asian-American" or "other." The boys said they might not get in because everyone knows Asians are smart and my sons didn't think their academic records were that good. They reasoned that selecting African-American and having reasonably good grades and test scores would allow them to rise to the top of the pile of black applicants...

Genuine black achievement is stigmatized by the perception that what blacks achieve was helped by special exceptions. Maybe a black freshman was accepted because he got a perfect SAT score and had a 5.0 grade point average with advanced placement courses. Unless you know that student and recognize his abilities, you might guess he is instead cruising by on his skin color.

Meet the New AA, same as the old AA

Admissions policies are changing for the better in Michigan - or are they?

An affirmative action policy unveiled Thursday for admissions at the University of Michigan eliminates automatic advantages for minorities but still allows the school to consider race. The plan also demands more work of the university and its applicants, who must write more personal essays and provide information about their lives and family backgrounds, including parents' education and income.

"More" personal essays? Why isn't one personal essay enough? And why should they have to provide information about their family backgrounds? What if a student considers that to be none of Michigan's business? I mean, I wrote a personal essay for college, but it didn't have anything to do with my family, or "overcoming hardships."

Two short essays will be added to the current requirement for a long essay. Prospective students will be able to choose from a range of topics, including a few that ask how a student's presence on campus would add to its diversity. It also asks applicants to ''describe an experience that you've had where cultural diversity has made a difference to you.''

Gah! So they've gone from engineering diversity to forcing each student to justify his or her contribution to campus diversity. What a crock. By this line of thinking, I would never have been admitted to the U of South Carolina, because, as a white middle-class female from a rural SC town, I added nothing to the diversity of the campus as far as "group membership" went. On paper, the only way in which I stood out was my academic achievements, and it's sad to think that students will now be forced to downplay their academics and create some contorted essay about how they will contribute to the "diversity" of the campus.

As far as that goes, how is a student supposed to know if they're "diverse" enough, unless it's a given that only minority group membership will count for this? Is Michigan really going to admit any NAAWP members, or hard-core Republican students, on the grounds that Michigan doesn't have enough of those already? Can those students sue on the grounds of diversity if they're rejected?

Applicants have to write how "cultural diversity" has affected their lives. Does this mean that anyone raised in a segregated environment, be it Asian, black, or white, doesn't have a shot at admissions? Or are minorities automatically considered to be "culturally diverse," even if (as is the case in Philly), their neighborhoods and schools were almost completely racially homogenous?

''We're changing things, and they will change more,'' [University Provost Paul] Courant said. But he predicted that the diversity of next fall's freshman class will differ little from this fall's.

If I were an optimist, I'd assume this means that Michigan trusts the students to provide adequate diversity without being assigned points for race. Instead, I believe it means that the new AA is the same as the old AA.

Celebrating the Band-aid solution

Nat Hentoff rips apart a "pious" and "self-congratulatory" pro-affirmative-action ad in the July 11th edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education. This ad celebrates the recent Supreme Court decision to uphold the concept of AA, although it ignores the Court's ruling that quota systems, like the one at the University of Michigan, are unconstitutional:

No mention was made, in this tribute to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's deciding vote, about the hidden fact that the University of Michigan's law school, whose case was victorious, operates on a clear quota system in defiance of the 14th Amendment's "equal protection of the laws" and the 1964 Civil Rights Act....

Taylor said that reducing these gaps is "an objective far more vital to the futures of tens of millions of black and Hispanic kids than getting affirmative-action tickets to elite universities for a fortunate, fairly affluent few thousand....

Indeed. This is why I refuse to support AA at the college level. Regardless of the original honorable intention of AA, and the well-meaning of many of its supporters, the fact is that reforming K-12 education is far more important than insuring that one minority kid gets into Harvard rather than U Mass. The goal should not be to institutionalize AA, but to reform education beginning with first grade so that minority kids do not need AA in order to attend college.

Mr. Hentoff poses a question that needs no reply:

...in that Chronicle of Higher Education ad, there is a pious section in which these high-minded influential experts pledge to "work in partnership with primary and secondary educators to dramatically improve the quality of educational outcomes for poor children and children of color."

But where is the action?...Have you seen many of these prestigious champions of "diversity" in college admissions getting down to actually working in the political arena on a long-term basis? Have you seen them fight to ensure that racial preferences for the relatively few in college admissions will no longer be needed?...

I don't agree with Mr. Hentoff on everything (re: his comments on high-stakes testing), but he's right on the money here. The college folks praise "diversity" to the heavens, but are blind to the amount of work needed to provide a diverse, yet academically-prepared, student body.

Ending Affirmative Action

And speaking of affirmative action (see previous post, below), a new American Bar Association poll supports Den Beste's thesis by showing that 69% of Americans believe the need for AA in college admissions will end within 25 years. The usual grain-of-salt arguments must be made for these results, given that it's a telephone survey of slightly over 1000 respondents, with a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.

Other findings:

Seventy percent of respondents said they agree with Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who wrote in June that although the Constitution allows race to be a factor in college admissions now, there should be no need for that consideration in a quarter-century.

Supporters of affirmative action say a variety of factors, including inadequate public education in many minority neighborhoods, means that minorities often do not score as well on standardized tests and other measures that colleges use to screen applicants.

This may be true, but such supporters almost never offer an explanation as to how lowering standards for minority college admissions will make up for the inadequate public education that the minority students in question have received. What makes more sense - for an elite college to admit a minority student who is not academically prepared, for the sake of "diversity"; or for a community college to admit that same student and teach them on the level at which they are currently performing, so that they may make genuine improvements?

It continues to amaze me that AA supporters do not see the dangers inherent in admitting students to colleges for which they are not prepared, nor do they see the part that AA plays in allowing inadequate public schools to remain inadequate.

The "Utopian idea" of non-racism

John of Discriminations covers a discussion on affirmative action that was sponsored by the Associated Press. The participants were a dozen high school students who are attending the University of Maryland’s Young Scholars Program. The discussion was presented in the Washington Post as, "Students Divided on Affirmative Action." John noticed that several of the quotes presented a very one-sided and unenlightening view of AA:

...the students were united in believing that their college experiences will be better if they choose a place with a diverse student body.

Not surprising, if you let each student decide what "diverse" means. Did every student, though, agree that their college experiences would be enhanced through racially-diverse populations? That's the pertinent question.

Chrisheena Hill, a black senior from Niagara Falls, N.Y., said affirmative action can still help minorities get into places that might otherwise be shut off from them.

Yes, AA can help minorities get into places shut off from them; that's the definition of AA. But has Ms. Hill considered that simply being a minority might not be a good reason to gain admission to a college? Colleges, by definition, must shut out some students, presumably on the basis of academic performance. If a minority student has shown poor academic performance, why should a college be advised to admit that student anyway?

"It gives us a chance to get our foot in the door to prove ourselves," [Ms. Hill] said, pointing out that – even with affirmative action – whites far outnumber minorities on American college campuses.

Why should a minority who didn't prove themselves during high school be given preference over anyone, minority or not, who did prove themselves during high school? Why is college now the place where one should begin to prove oneself? If that's true, it's a stinging indictment of the K-12 system - and AA at the college level allows high school students to continue to do bad work, and allows high school teachers to continue with bad teaching.

Also, whites far outnumber blacks, and every other race, in the general population, and that's not unrelated to the fact that whites far outnumber minorities in college populations. In the 2000 Census, 77.1% of respondents checked "White" as their race. Ergo, any campus that has three times as many white students as non-white students is neither "undiverse" nor racist, but are simply reflective of the population statistics.

Another black student in this discussion referred to race-blind admissions policies as "a very Utopian idea," and said that "We live in a world rooted in race and racism..it's always going to be an issue." Why is this an acceptable argument for the reverse racism of AA? Isn't this a pretty pessimistic viewpoint? What if the attitude of civil-rights activists in the 1960's had been, "It's too Utopian to imagine a color-blind world where we'd be judged on the content of our character, not the color of our skin, so let's just give up now"?

As John puts it:

Of course, the fact that race may “always be an issue” (always?) doesn’t mean that the best way to deal with it is to teach young blacks to play the race card whenever it serves their interest and to regard the principle that people should be treated without regard to race as hopelessly utopian.