Archive for Socioeconomic AA
For those who deny the link between “affirmative action” and lowered standards, look no further than this lead sentence in a USA Today article:
“Colleges and universities should adopt affirmative-action policies based on socioeconomic status, argues a new report that finds the most disadvantaged students on average score 784 points lower on the SAT than those from the wealthiest, most educated families.”
Richard Kahlenberg, author of the report, says schools should lower standards for “disadvantaged students,” whose average SAT score is a whopping 784 points lower than the so-called wealthy. If affirmative action didn’t involve lowered standards, individuals admitted under the policy would have scores similar to those in the general pool, but that’s not the case. Widening the pool of qualified applicants was affirmative action’s original intent, but the policy quickly morphed into rigging the game for members of certain racial groups, to redress past discrimination and racial imbalances.
Preferring lower-income students over higher-income students isn’t illegal (yet) or as unpalatable (to some) as preferring people over others based on race.
Filed under: Socioeconomic AA | |Comments off
An article in Education Week addressed school districts replacing race-based school assignment plans with income-based plans, in light of Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
Parents sued the district for assigning students based on race, a policy they said violated their rights to equal protection of the laws. Although the district claimed it used race only as a tie-breaker, the court declared the practice unconstitutional.
More school districts are opting to “integrate” schools based on income. An excerpt:
“Many experts believe the composition of a school’s student body affects achievement. If black and Hispanic students, who are more likely to be poor, go to the same schools as their better-off white peers, the thinking goes, they’ll all do better and aspire to higher education. But since the Supreme Court essentially blocked a race-conscious path to racial diversity, some integration advocates are looking to socioeconomic status to reach the same goal.
“Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a Washington-based research and public-policy organization, is a champion of socioeconomic integration of schools. He argues that educating students of different social and economic levels in the same classrooms is a powerful tool for increasing achievement.
“‘In most cases, low-income students in school districts with socioeconomic programs are doing better than low-income students in segregated school districts,’ he said in an interview.
“Socioeconomic integration is a better approach, Mr. Kahlenberg argues, than two of the four turnaround strategies—replacing principals and staff members and moving to charter school governance—that the U.S. Department of Education requires districts that receive federal economic-stimulus funds to choose from for low-performing schools.”
Kahlenberg echoes the idea that middle-class values rub off, that low-income parents will watch and learn from higher-income parents. He also believes children from low-income homes will learn better if surrounded by higher-income children. Is it true? Yes, according to “Does Segregation Still Matter? The Impact of Student Composition on Academic Achievement in High School.” (74 pages in PDF)
The researchers found that for all students in their study, regardless of race, social class, or academic background, they learn more on average attending schools with high social class students than low social class students.
While this may be the case, it must be balanced with liberty. For now, Americans are free to take up residence in any state and any neighborhood. Most want to send their children to the closest school. As the government coerces them to send children to schools outside the neighborhood, they either deal with it, move, send kids to private or parochial schools, or homeschool them.
There’s a limit to what the government can do about academic gaps among children and academic performance levels across schools. Brown v. Board of Education (1954) declared unconstitutional laws that established separate schools based on race. That a school is majority black in 2010 does not mean someone’s rights are being violated. Brown restricted the government from setting up separate schools based on race; it didn’t require the government to eliminate segregated schools. This is a major misunderstanding of the Brown case. Self-segregation is a different animal than government-mandated segregation.
Courts subsequently interpreted Brown to require the government to proactively eliminate segregated schools. When schools assign students based on race, they’re violating the spirit of Brown. Unfortunately, too many people fail to grasp the concept, including those with authority and power.
(Top image source: Andy Manis for Education Week)
Filed under: Achievement Gap, Socioeconomic AA | |2 Comments
In the previous post, I blogged about a New York Times story highlighting Chicago’s new plan to consider social and economic factors while assigning students to magnet and selective government schools.
The Chronicle of Higher Education cites a new study that purportedly shows the main reason students quit college is financial. In this context, the Chronicle asks scholars and experts whether schools should admit students based on socioeconomic status rather than skin color.
The Center for Equal Opportunity’s Roger Clegg says no. “[I]f people are dropping out of college for financial reasons, that certainly would argue for better need-based aid for those admitted,” but not for preferences.
Diversity proponents tend to focus on skin color, but Clegg notes that socioeconomic preferences may provide the so-called educational benefits schools seek, but “without the ugliness, divisiveness, and myriad other costs” of racial preferences.
Contrast Clegg’s answer with NAACP chairman Julian Bond’s, who wants everyone to know that poverty is not a proxy for race. He supports socioeconomic considerations in admissions, but believes the government should retain racial preferences and discrimination.
Oddly, Bond evokes the murder of Bill Cosby’s son to bolster his support for racial preferences and to show “how feeble the Cosbys’s great wealth was in protecting their son against this ugly virus.”
Is Bond saying that discriminating against whites and lowering standards for blacks protects blacks from violent crime committed by “racist” whites? Interesting, since most crimes of violence against blacks are committed by other blacks.
Bond’s bringing up the murder of Cosby’s son in such a context is irrelevant, disingenuous, puzzling, and nutty.
Pope Center director George Leef believes admitting students based on socioeconomic status could raise the drop-out rate.
“Students who struggle in college because they can’t handle the combination of course work and part-time employment will not have an easier time if they’re enrolled at a more-selective institution, where the work is usually more difficult and the costs greater…Class-based affirmative action merely shuffles a small number of students from poorer families up into more-prestigious colleges, where they receive an education that isn’t necessarily any better than they’d have received elsewhere.”
Lee Bollinger, former president of the University of Michigan, parrots the pro-preferences line, but attempts to obscure his skin color-diversity obsession.
“One thing I’m concerned about is that we not be forced to make a false choice between admission policies that focus on wealth and class and those that seek to achieve greater diversity based on race and ethnicity,” he said. We want our colleges and universities to reflect many kinds of diversity, and we cannot assume that focusing on one will address the other.”
Bollinger was the defendant in two racial preferences cases that reached the Supreme Court. Michigan awarded minority students applying to the school an automatic 20 points just for being minorities (Gratz v. Bollinger). The court ruled this practice unconstitutional.
Calling Bollinger’s remarks insincere, plaintiff Jennifer Gratz said that during the trial, he tried his best to characterize her as a “rich white girl,” although she says she grew up in a low to moderate income home.
“I don’t believe anything will ever reach the level of importance that racial diversity does in the mind of Lee Bollinger.”
To quote a Supreme Court justice, I concur.
Filed under: Jennifer Gratz, Socioeconomic AA | |Comments off
Racial preferences proponents in Chicago are panicking, if you believe this story, over a plan to consider a student’s socioeconomic status rather than his skin color when assigning to magnet and selective government schools.
In recent years, courts have ordered school districts to keep race out of the assignment equation. For instance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled two years ago that schools in Jefferson County, Kentucky, and Seattle, Washington, could not use race as a tiebreaker when assigning students. Bureaucrats must be subtler about discriminating and preferring certain races over others.
On the other hand, California’s First District Court of Appeal ruled earlier this year that Berkeley Unified School District’s race-based assignment plan did not violate the state’s ban on racial preferences.
A 1980 consent decree, which allowed Chicago to assign students by race, was vacated in September. Affected schools will consider socioeconomic and legacy factors to assign students. Minority parents fear (strong word) the change will negatively impact their children. An excerpt:
“The data obtained by the Chicago News Cooperative shows that where race was not used as a factor in admissions, 85 percent of either black or white students would have to change schools to achieve an even distribution between the two groups across the entire school system. But in schools where race is allowed to be a factor in admissions, only 62 percent of either black or white students would have to change schools.
“Similarly, to achieve a balanced mix of black and Hispanic students throughout the district, 69 percent of either group would have to move at schools where race is considered in admissions. Where race is not taken into account, 81 percent of such students would have to switch schools.
The practical challenges to school integration are substantial, in part because white students make up only about 9 percent of the public school population, compared to a white population of 31.5 percent in the city. But at magnet, gifted, classical and selective-enrollment schools, 17 percent of the students are white, nearly double their presence throughout the public school system, according to data from the Illinois State Board of Education.”
After all, a balanced mix of races is what’s most important. According to “research,” the performance of lower-income students can be improved when they attend classes with higher-income students. But there’s a problem. The majority of students in Chicago are from low-income homes.
This is one of the reasons some racial preferences proponents prefer race-based assignments over socioeconomic status assignments. Is socioeconomic preference, or poverty, to be precise, a proxy for race?
Filed under: Legacy Preferences, Socioeconomic AA | |Comments off
…Ohio State University (OSU) intends to cast a “deeper and wider net” to admit more black students. Does this mean the school will lower standards to admit more black students? The former is commendable; the latter is known as racial preferences.
OSU is reaching out to black students in 15 inner-city high schools in select cities to bring diversity to the campus. (Source) Not a bad idea. How the idea is executed will determine whether it’s bad.
Admissions officers will facilitate the process by helping prospective students file applications, and OSU is waiving the application fee. According to the article, the school will work with students “with high academic abilities…” Excellent! “…and aspirations.” Hmmm…is aspirations code for racial preferences?
The percentage of black freshmen at OSU dropped after the Supreme Court restricted race-based admissions in 2003, and the school presumably is looking for ways to attract blacks without lowering standards or discriminating against non-blacks. (The presumption probably is unwarranted, but I’m giving OSU the benefit of the doubt.) But OSU offers race-based scholarships. Doesn’t that run afoul of the law?
The Supreme Court decided two racial preferences cases in 2003. In Gratz v. Bollinger, the court held that the University of Michigan’s racial quota admissions system wasn’t narrowly tailored to achieve the desired skin deep-only diversity, and this use of race (point system) violated the Equal Protection clause. In other words, schools may use race to admit students, as long as the process is narrowly tailored, whatever that means. In Grutter v. Bollinger, the court held that the University of Michigan’s law school racial preference policy was narrowly tailored to pass Equal Protection muster and furthered the “compelling interest” of the government to bestow racial diversity benefits upon students. To admit lesser qualified black students, the law school considers “soft variables” in addition to grades and scores.
Back to The Ohio State University. The school could attract more “underrepresented” minorities by offering scholarships based on socio-economic status rather than race. They’d achieve their racial diversity ends while helping all students, regardless of race. Right?
Naïve, I know. Idealistic, too.
Filed under: Diversity, Quotas, Socioeconomic AA | |Comments off
Americans of Asian descent account for about 12 percent of California’s population, yet they account for 40 percent of all undergraduates at the University of California at Los Angeles, 43 percent at Berkeley, 50 percent at San Diego, and 54 percent at Irvine.
The American Civil Rights Institute’s (ACRI) Ward Connerly has written about UC’s efforts to “tinker” with admissions. A UC administrator told him “unless the university took steps to ‘guide’ admissions decisions, UC would be dominated by Asians. When I asked, ‘What would be wrong with that?’ I got an answer that speaks volumes about the underlying philosophy at many universities with regard to Asian enrollment.
“The UC administrator told me that Asians are ‘too dull – they study, study, study.’ He then said, ‘If you ever say I said this, I will have to deny it.’ I won’t betray the individual’s anonymity because to do so would put him in a world of trouble. Yet, it is time to confront the not-so-subtle hand of discrimination against Asians that masquerades as ‘building diversity’ at many campuses.”
UCLA professor Mitchell Chang noted the “dull” stereotype. Students of Asian descent may be “disproportionately less likely to participate in certain kinds of extracurricular activities,” and the admissions committee may be biased against “academic nerd” types. (Source)
It should come as no surprise that elite schools discriminate against students of Asian descent. Princeton University released a study that showed these students were much more likely to be rejected than other students. A black student with 1150s and a white student with 1460s had the same chances of getting in as an Asian student with 1600s, top scores. Download the 11-page Power Point study (PDF).
Is this an indication of elite schools keeping numbers down because Asians are “too dull – they study, study, study,” or because these students would overrun schools but for lower standards for preferred minorities, and, as it turns out, whites? Even more damning is this (emphasis added):
“He also found some indications that while rich students make up an increasingly large share of the entering freshman classes, the top private schools appeared to be giving admissions edges to low-income minorities, but not necessarily low-income white students.”
So much for class-based affirmative action, which would help lower income students of any race. The numbers bear out the truth: schools significantly are lowering standards for blacks, moderately for whites, and not at all for Asians. But this practice may change. Three years ago, an Asian student with perfect SAT scores filed a complaint alleging that Princeton discriminated against him by rejecting his application. The article reports that the Department of Education is investigating Princeton.
Spokesman Cass Cliatt said, “Princeton considers factors such as interest in and demonstrated commitment to a particular field of study or extracurricular activity, exceptional skills and talents, experiences and background, status as an alumni child or Princeton faculty or staff child, athletic achievement, musical or artistic talent, geographic or socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, any unique circumstances, and a range of other factors.”
Terms like “experiences and background” and “any unique circumstances” typically refer to noncognitive factors designed to give preferred minorities with lower grades and scores an admissions boost.
Nevertheless, the study shows that whites are given an edge as well. The question is, will Americans of Asian descent rise up against this practice?
Filed under: Diversity, Socioeconomic AA, UC, Ward Connerly | |Comments off
In the you-won’t-believe-this department, we have a story about the son of the Dallas School Superintendent benefiting from a preference program. (Source)
Michael Hinojosa earns over $300,000 a year, and his son Michael participated in a program for disadvantaged students. The program is run by a contractor the Dallas Independent School District paid $1.6 million. The program targets low-income students, which in most cases is a euphemism for “minorities,” and Hinojosa and son are racial minorities.
This episode is but one of several unintended consequences of preference programs, whether they’re created for low-income students or specifically for racial minorities. Racial minorities whose families have the means benefit from the program because they are racial minorities and presumed to be from low-income families. Otherwise, how would Hinojosa’s son have benefited from such a program?
“We actually actively recruited Michael Hinojosa because programs like this don’t work when they’re exclusionary,” said program director Michael Martinez. “It’s best when you’ve got first-generation kids sitting next to the valedictorian.”
First-generation status (and appearances) trumps financial need? Apparently so.
Filed under: Socioeconomic AA | |Comments off
Do you know why race preference proponents don’t like socioeconomic affirmative action? Because it doesn’t “improve diversity.” So said preference supporters last week at a debate about race- and class-based preferences.
I support class-based affirmative action for the same reason I don’t like race- and sex-based preferences. Widening the pool of lower-income candidates so they’ll have access to educational resources and financial aid is a good thing. “Widening the pool” is affirmative action. Lowering academic standards so as to admit more lower-income students is a bad thing.
Diverse Education reports on a recent debate about class-based affirmative action and race-based preferences. More here.
John McWhorter, one of the debaters, has seen first-hand what happens when schools lower standards for minorities. “If you set the bar low, that is the kind of performance you will get,” he said. “[Moreover] there is no evidence that the presence of Black and Latino students significantly improves education.” McWhorter supports class-based affirmative action.
Class-based affirmative action supporter Dalton Conley, said the so-called wealth gap between students is larger than the racial gap. Tackling the former gap would benefit more people.
Julian Bond, chair of the NAACP, gets his terms wrong, as preference proponents often do. “Affirmative action resulted from an American consensus,” he said, “a remedy for past racial injustices. Changes in our society, not least in the election of our first African-American president, do not signal a change in our racial temperature so significant that race-conscious affirmative action can now be discarded.”
Affirmative action in its truest sense was designed to widen the pool of people considered for jobs and admissions, not as a racial spoils system, which it has become.
Filed under: Socioeconomic AA | |1 Comment
John McWhorter, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and Mary Frances Berry, history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, discussed the future of race preferences. Specifically, the two talked about whether the election of the nation’s first biracial president has rendered “affirmative action” unnecessary. Listen to the show here.
Berry rallies around the same justification for lowered standards for blacks: diversity. McWhorter supports socioeconomic affirmative action, which would benefit people of all races. He opposes preferences for people who happen to have a certain skin color and who “benefit” from this policy whether they want to or not.
In January, McWhorter discussed the same topic on NPR with panelists Dahlia Lithwick and BAMN’s Shanta Driver. In that interview, McWhorter raised an important point. He wondered whether it was “really such a tragedy” if, in the absence of race-based admissions, a black student gets a degree from the University of California at San Diego rather than UC Berkeley.
In my view, race preferences are immoral, should be illegal, and are unnecessary no matter who’s sitting in the White House.
Filed under: Socioeconomic AA | |Comments off
Victor Merina, a senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism, has penned an article about the American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly, “who can match his multiracial background with the biracial Obama.” (Source)
Merina, like so many others, uses the terms affirmative action and race preferences interchangeably, when they are not synonymous. Affirmative action is casting a “wider net” to include more qualified minorities into a hiring or admissions pool. Race preferences involve lowering standards for minorities in an effort to recruit more of them, inevitably discriminating against Asian and white applicants.
Nevertheless, Mesina correctly notes that to those of us who support Connerly, “he is the champion of equality.” Connerly and others will continue their crusade to dismantle race preferences and keep a close watch on President Barack Obama, whose view on race preferences is indeed “cloudy,” although he appears to support some form of socioeconomic preferences.
In 2010, voters in Missouri, Arizona, Colorado (and perhaps Oklahoma) may get to choose whether their state and local governments are allowed to consider factors like race when hiring, contracting, and admitting. Connerly and others are hopeful Obama chooses to push class-based preferences.
“He may not want to go there as fast as I do,” Connerly said, “but he’s given every indication that’s the direction he wants to go.”
Filed under: Barack Obama, Socioeconomic AA, Ward Connerly | |1 Comment
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