Archive for Richard Sander
In 2004, University of California at Los Angeles law professor Richard Sander released a study called A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools (PDF), in which he contends that law school race-based preferences result in fewer black lawyers, because blacks admitted under these conditions are placed in schools that exceed their levels of preparation. As a result, they fail the bar exam at higher rates.
In 2007, Sander asked the State Bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners for historical data on past bar exams, and the committee refused, citing privacy concerns. Sander asked the state’s highest court to compel the committee to release the data. The court denied his request, also on privacy grounds, and recommended he re-file in the appropriate court.
Sander filed in the California Superior Court for San Francisco County. Last week, the judge ruled that the state bar was not legally obligated to release the data. An excerpt:
Judge Karnow’s ruling was technically a “proposed statement of decision,” but it is expected to become final after a 15-day period for comment from the lawyers for both sides. The judge held that the researchers’ argument for access to the data under public-records laws relied on a definition of “public document” that was overly broad, and could be interpreted as covering judges’ rough notes, grand-jury transcripts, and other documents that the courts have long held to be exempt.
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Richard Sander has documented the mismatch effect that occurs when blacks are admitted to selective schools through race preferences. He found that law students admitted under preferences tended to receive lower grades and pass the bar exam at lower rates. Sander posits that without preferences, blacks would be better matched to their schools.
Four Duke University researchers conducted a study in which they argue more information is needed to determine if the mismatch effect exists. Specifically, they contend that mismatch could occur only if selective universities possess private post-enrollment student information, which they call a “necessary condition” to make the determination. (Source)
Rather than looking at objective factors to determine whether the mismatch exists, such as GPAs and scores, the researchers suggest “two potential avenues that may lead to a more conclusive test of mismatch,” which is what they mean by “private post-enrollment information.” The subjective approach includes asking admitted black students what they expected their GPAs to be after their first year and whether they still would have attended if the GPAs turned out to be X.
Confused yet? I think that’s precisely the idea.
Leave it to a group of academics to make something simple seem complicated. As the Center for Equal Opportunity’s (CEO) Roger Clegg notes, the researchers have in front of them evidence of the mismatch theory already. His comment on NRO’s Phi Beta Cons blog (emphasis added):
All very interesting, but doesn’t this article miss the forest for the trees? The most important point, found in the last line of the table but not commented on, is this: The first-year GPA for white and Asian students was 3.33 and 3.40, respectively; for black students it was 2.90; for Latinos was 3.13. So the ethnic groups that, in all likelihood, got preferences (look at the rest of the table) did substantially worse than the ethnic groups that did not (e.g., a half-point gap between blacks and Asians). Sounds like confirmation of “the controversial ‘mismatch’ theory” to me. (This is not news, of course: The Shape of the River acknowledged that African Americans at selective schools on average had a class rank in the 23rd percentile, versus the 53rd percentile for whites; the Center for Equal Opportunity’s studies over the years have found similar gaps.)
Such lopsided GPAs (not to mention test scores) is evidence of mismatch, isn’t it? Why is it necessary to send letters to students asking them to speculate on first year grades? The mismatch isn’t subjective; it’s an effect that either exists or doesn’t exist. If students admitted under preferences have substantially lower grades than students not admitted under the policy, there is a mismatch.
Download “Does Affirmative Action Lead to Mismatch? A New Test and Evidence” here. (PDF – 33 pages)
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After you read Affirmative-Action Programs for Minority Students: Right in Theory, Wrong in Practice (excepted at TaxProf Blog), you may come away as amazed as I was. Proponents of race preferences contort themselves into strange positions to justify the practice and avoid stating the obvious.
The article is adapted from the four authors’ new book, Taming the River: Negotiating the Academic, Financial, and Social Currents in Selective Colleges and Universities. “Critics” of skin color preferences have three basic arguments, they contend: 1) the practice is reverse discrimination; 2) the practice creates a mismatch between students and their respective schools; and 3) the practice creates a stigma for students admitted under preferences.
Reverse discrimination is a term some people use to distinguish between discrimination against whites and discrimination against blacks. Obviously, there is no difference. Racial discrimination is racial discrimination, and regardless of what the Supreme Court says, it should be illegal in all contexts.
The authors admit that minority students at 28 colleges and universities they studied tended to have test scores below the school’s average. “Such results assume that minority-group SAT scores fall below the institutional average because admissions officers trade off test scores against other criteria associated with their desire to recruit more minority students — the essence of affirmative action.”
In the name of skin deep-only diversity, schools admit minority students, who tend to have lower grades and scores than the rest. You can debate whether the practice is justified, but there is no debate that the practice goes on at colleges and universities across the country.
Strangely, the authors assert that “black and Latino students with relatively low SAT scores do no better or worse than their counterparts who scored at or above the average for their institutions,” but admit to finding a “significant effect of institutional affirmative action on the grade performance of black and Latino students…A sizable minority-majority test-score gap within any given institution appears to create a social context that makes it more difficult for minority students to perform academically.”
In other words, race preferences harm minority students not because students who “benefited” have lower qualifications and are less prepared for their respective academic settings; they harm minorities because of how others perceive them and how they perceive themselves. Let me say it another way. Race preferences, which tend to produce large gaps in scores between minorities and other students, lower minority achievement by creating a stigma and a sort of stereotype threat, both of which affect a minority student’s ability to perform.
Don’t laugh. They’re quite serious.
The authors believe the inherent weakness of skin color preferences isn’t about academic gaps and institutional mismatch. It’s how race preferences are administered.
An easier way to eliminate “reverse” discrimination, the gap, the mismatch, and the stigma would be to remove race from the equation altogether and admit well-qualified students, regardless of race.
But that would make too much sense.
I echo Roger Clegg’s sentiment. When attempting to refute the mismatch theory, the authors cite William Bowen’s and Derek Bok’s The Shape of the River, which defends racial preferences, while ignoring the more well researched work of Richard Sander, who said that law school race-based preferences result in fewer black lawyers, because blacks admitted under these conditions are placed in schools that exceed their levels of preparation. As a result, they failed the bar exam at higher rates.
Also, I recommend picking up a copy of a book that critiques Bowen’s and Bok’s thesis, Getting Under the Skin of “Diversity”: Searching for the Color-Blind Ideal, by Larry Purdy.
The four authors, like most preference proponents, support lowered standards for minorities to satisfy some arbitrary notion of diversity. Their solution to problems stemming from this practice is simply to put a different spin on what’s actually happening. Athletic and legacy preference beneficiaries don’t suffer similar problems as race preference beneficiaries, contend the authors, so there’s “no good reason that affirmative-action programs for minority students cannot be run in the same way.” (I say get rid of athletic and legacy preferences, too.)
Like all roads that lead to a very hot place, this one is paved with good intentions.
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In a 2004 study called A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools (PDF), University of California law professor Richard Sander posited that law school race-based preferences result in fewer black lawyers, because blacks admitted under these conditions are placed in schools that exceed their levels of preparation. As a result, they failed the bar exam at higher rates.
In 2007, Sander asked the State Bar’s Committee of Bar Examiners for historical data on past bar exams, and the committee refused. Sander asked the state’s highest court to compel the committee to release the data. Last week the court denied his request and said he should refile in the appropriate court, citing privacy concerns. (Law.com)
We’ll post a PDF copy of the opinion when it’s available.
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Common sense says a student probably won’t perform well if he’s placed in an academic environment for which he’s unprepared.
I guess it takes a panel of researchers to make it official. Inside Higher Ed reports that researchers addressed the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last week, and the topic of discussion was the so-called mismatch theory.
According to this theory, a minority majoring in science does not perform well (relative to white students) when placed in a college that far exceeds the student’s preparation. (I’m guessing this holds true for lesser qualified students no matter what their major.) UCLA law professor Richard Sander found that black and Hispanic students “have far greater success rates in science when they enroll in the California’s less selective campuses.”
In 2004, Sander contended that law school race-based preferences result in fewer black lawyers. Why? Because blacks admitted to law schools under racial preferences are placed in schools that exceed their preparation. These students would perform better academically if preferences didn’t play a role in law school admissions. Download A Systemic Analysis of Affirmative Action in American Law Schools in PDF.
Read more about the mismatch theory at Inside Higher Ed.
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