Jewish World Review Dec. 6, 1999 /27 Kislev, 5760
Nat Hentoff
When we refuse to buy the 'otherly-challenged' excuse
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
THREE STATES have figured out a way to increase college admissions for
minorities without depending on what has become traditional affirmative
action.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush has proposed that the top 20 percent of high school
graduates be automatically admitted to public colleges and universities, no
matter what their SAT scores. In California, the top 4 percent of each high
school's graduating class will now automatically get into the University of
California system.
In Texas, the top-ranking 10 percent of every graduating class are being
admitted to any of the public campuses they prefer.
In an illuminating Nov. 24 New York Times article, Jodi Wilgoren includes
a number of questions about the future of this approach, which other states
are considering.
In Texas, the percentage of blacks and Hispanics in freshman classes on
most of the selective campuses has increased. And at the demanding
University of Texas at Austin, this year 4.1 percent of those enrolled were
black -- the same as in 1996, when race- and ethnic-based affirmative
action was in place. Hispanic enrollment is close to what it was in 1996.
As Wilgoren notes, also benefiting are poorly prepared "rural white
students," many of whom had found selective campuses beyond their
reach. So too, I suspect, are poor and working-class white youngsters in
the cities.
A question not sufficiently emphasized in the article, however, is what
happens to the 90 percent left in Texas high schools with low-level courses
and underachieving teachers? Will those students continue to believe they
are incapable of trying for top-ranking colleges -- or any college?
Some of the 10-percenters in Austin are facing the unsettling fact that they
were poorly prepared. Says one student: "All the stuff I should have done
in high school, I'm doing now. . . . It's a humbling experience. I never felt
slow or dumb before."
On the other hand, he and some of the other challenged students may well
make the grade -- especially those in the new smaller classes at the huge
49,000-student Austin campus. In a class for 50 premedical students, in
which SAT scores average 200 points below the university average, these
students get intensive instruction and seminars in study skills.
David Laude, who is in charge of this targeted group, says: "If I see even a
hint of a student having a problem, if somebody does badly on a quiz, I call
them into my office."
More such smaller individualized classes are necessary, but they're
expensive. "We just can't afford it," a dean ruefully says.
But in only a few public schools I have reported on -- from elementary
grades on up -- is it a standard practice to be on top of each student's
progress, or lack of it. One elementary school principal in Brooklyn had
regular progress reports of every student in the school on his desk, but I
have not seen another like him.
While some 10-percenters will get their degrees, some will keep on feeling
"dumb" if colleges in Texas, California and Florida do not provide the
resources to make up for poor education in the lower schools.
In Texas, the 10-percenters get in regardless of their scores on
standardized tests. How they do in the next four years may provide
answers to whether the increasingly criticized SAT scores actually predict
success in college. As for graduate schools, they are not included in the 10
percent program.
But without more small classes specifically geared for students who need
to make up for what they didn't get in high school, there will be no clear
answer to the predictability of SAT scores in any of the three states.
Toward the end of Jodi Wilgoren's article, there is an augury of what can
happen to make students of all backgrounds succeed. At the Austin
campus, calculus professor Phillip Uri Treisman is in charge of a center
conducting research on how to get college administrators involved in
learning how to educate teachers and principals from kindergarten through
the 12th grade.
This is already happening in California after traditional affirmative action
was struck down by the voters. Why do colleges and universities around
the country have to wait for the courts or the voters to reach out -- and
down?
The automatic admission of a particular percentage of high school
graduates ought not to disguise what has to be done to remedy the failure
of the schools below to do what they're paid by us to
do.
JWR contributor Nat Hentoff is a First Ammendment authority and author of numerous books. Send your comments to him by clicking here.
11/29/99: Expelling 'Huck Finn'
11/22/99: Pleading the First
11/16/99: Goal of diversity needs rethinking?
11/08/99: Prosecution in darkness
11/02/99: The accuracy that's owed to readers
10/26/99: Disappeared Americans
10/18/99: The blue wall of silence
10/11/99: Bill Bradley's speech tax
10/04/99: 'Technicalities' that keep us free
09/27/99: Our 'Americanism'-ignorant generation
09/20/99: ACLU better clean up its act
09/13/99: A professor of infanticide at Princeton
09/07/99: The Big Apple's Rotten Policing
08/23/99: Lawyerly ethics
08/16/99: To Get a Supreme Court Seat
08/02/99: What are the poor people doing tonight?
07/26/99: Lady Hillary and the press
©1999, NEA
|