So .. it’s 100 years?

Did the authors, suggest a timeline themselves?

IMHO, the African-American community itself is asking hard questions (e.g,, the Cosby speeches).

Also, the recent book by Juan Williams, concerned about the very high birth rate by the unmarried and single — a strong indicator of future poverty because single-parent families do not have the stronger financial base of traditional, two-parent families.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/...?z=y&EAN=9780307338235&itm=1

If you have no goals, no deadlines — you have no reason to change, IMHO. Mr. Williams points out a situation that is unsustainable, unworkable, and impossible to fund in the long-term.

L.L., at 7:10 am EDT on September 18, 2006

Justice O’Connor

Good story, Scott. I have a few comments, the first of which is minor but leads into the others. While you state that folks in the academy did not pay much attention to Justice O’Conner’s time limit, I did speak about it with fellow presidents (Mary Ann Coleman, Larry Faulkner, and the late Kermit Hall) in an interview with Margaret Warner on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer the day of the decision. What I said follows:

“I think there’s one element we haven’t mentioned tonight, Margaret, and that is that the court said that a narrowly tailored remedy should be time limited and look forward to the day when we wouldn’t need affirmative action. I think it behooves us now to work very hard over the next decades, keeping the tool of affirmative action in the tool chest, to make sure that all students have equal access to very strong preparation for post-secondary education.”

My point was simple, and it did not of course go to the issue addressed by the authors of the new study (income growth among African-Americans and the correlation between income and characteristics such as SAT score performance that bear on admission to highly selective institutions). I would agree with the authors that income alone can’t do it. But I would urge that we take every possible measure in the schools, and in pre-school programs for that matter, to make sure that all young people have a good shot at being well prepared for college-level work and for the college and financial aid application processes.

I have two other observations. First, only the last column in the chart of projected outcomes over the next quarter of a century is legally relevant (I think), because the Supreme Court decision that O’Conner wrote applied only to public institutions, invoking the governmental interest in seeing public institutions secure the educational benefits of diversity.

Second, I think there remain some grounds for optimism in this new economic study. I would observe that the authors project that income growth among African-Americans may be expected to drive, at UVA and Penn State, an 80% increase, from 5% TO 9%, in African-American representation through the posited needs-blinds admissions in 2025 against the posited 2000 baseline. That leaves us several percentage points short of black representation under the currently permissible parameters of affirmative action.

So here are my grounds for optimism. I’m sure that most of us will readily agree with the authors’ conclusion that income growth alone can’t close the gap in African-American representation at highly selective institutions. But there remains the challenge I spoke of on the NewsHours, which would call for a concerted effort at all levels of our educational system to provide equal access to good preparation for post-secondary education and to achieve deeper understanding as well of the obstacles to academic success that members of underrepresented groups encounter (extensions, for instance, of the pioneering studies of Uri Treisman and others).

I would not be blithely optimistic. There are certainly grounds for pessimism here if one is inclined to pessimism. But I would take the findings of this economic study above all as an urgent call to all of us in higher education and in the schools to redouble our efforts in other domains and not simply to depend on projected income growth among minority populations to even the playing field.

Daniel Mark Fogel, President at University of Vermont, at 9:01 am EDT on September 18, 2006

The problem with the open enrollment idea or any type of voucher educational system is that there is only a limited supply of seats in “high quality” schools. And just like now, even if kids had vouchers, those schools will cream the best students off the top and leave the rest to attend the schools that are left. So the social stratification (and the academic disparities that result) just continues as it is. Even if the worst schools close, you are still going to have major disparities between schools in terms of resources. the types of students who attend them and achievement. The solution to the education problem and the achievement gap is to improve public education. The reality is that there is no public or moral will to do so. Folks are content will making sure that their own kid gets a good education, not recognizing that contributing their money to education is a public good that benefits society as a whole. Until people (us) and politicians want to change the way schools are funded, teachers are distributed, and examine their own expectations for poor students and students of color, these problems will continue and affirmative action will be needed. We cannot always blame poor people and students of color for their plight-to suggest that within the political, social, economic framework that exists, the most vulnerable of our society can simply change their own condition is absurd. (some do but we need to be concerned about the masses.) The idea of private responsibility must be embedded within a system of public responsibility that provides a sound foundation and basis for their achievement. Currently, That does not exist. If you have any doubt, take a ride through any impoverished neighborhood in this country and you will wonder how any child could make it out of there as an academic success. Affirmative action provides an opportunity for those students who under certain conditions show great promise but did not “score” like others in other situations. That child needs a chance to compete at a high level in selective colleges. (Remember that test scores simply suggest “potential"-something that all students possess. All of them, even those with highest test scores, still need the proper environment to succeed.) Once he gets in, it’s all on him to succeed. But he needs the chance to help his community and the generations of people in his own family line will benefit and society will benefit.

Andy, at 10:35 am EDT on September 18, 2006

“If you have any doubt, take a ride through any impoverished neighborhood in this country and you will wonder how any child could make it out of there as an academic success. Affirmative action provides an opportunity for those students who under certain conditions show great promise but did not “score” like others in other situations.”

This goes to the heart of my problem with affirmative action. If you want to help poor and disadvantaged people, help poor and disadvantaged people. affirmative action, though, takes into account one factor and one factor only — race. Sure, schools look for overcoming obstacles in a kid’s personal statement and coming from poverty, but that’s not the core of Grutter, Hopwood, Gratz, and the rest of the lawsuits over the program. The boost from that is not the same as the boost you get just because of your race.

Drive through the backwoods of Appalachia, and you’ll see neighborhoods that don’t send kids to Ivy Schools on a regular basis. If a person born there is an underrepresented minority they’ll get affirmative action. If that person is born is Greenwich, Connecticut, however, they’ll also get affirmative action. This controversy has popped up at elite schools (for instance the dispute at Harvard a couple years ago) because of the fact a large proportion of the beneficiaries of the program attending the school were not from families originally even from the U.S., much less from families that struggled in an inner-city ghetto.

The public school system needs better funding, but the fact of the matter is the amount of money tossed at it has increased over the past few decades. What’s hindered it is the efficiency with which it’s spent. That needs to improve, but that also means cutting overhead and cutting people who aren’t competent (I’m sorry, I went through a public school system and I have a ton of respect for dedicated teachers, but there are people who should not be there).

Will it lead to stratification? Maybe, but if the students aren’t studying equally, if some place a higher value on school than other, isn’t trying to avoid stratification between those students just delaying the inevitable? Good schools have a limited capacity right now, but 1.) if this continues, why worry about kids from poor schools leaving to go to them? 2.) if it was your kid in an inner-city public school, would you keep him there to avoid social stratification?

SB, at 11:45 am EDT on September 18, 2006

Affirmative action is not simply about race in terms of the color of people’s skin. It is about the social consequences that accompany race. FYI-over 70% of all African American students attend schools in the 10 largest urban school districts in this country. So what does this mean? Well, over 70% of all African American students are likely to attend schools that are highly segregated, highly concentrated in poverty, lower tax bases, fewer resources, fewer high quality teachers (since these districts cannot afford to pay them the highest salaries)-you get my drift. So when admissions programs receive applications from black students, there is a great likelihood that they attended schools with above characteristics-hardly a level playing field for them as a group. Another tidbit of info about the Michigan cases and affirmative action in general-there is a myth that the “unqualified” student of color took the “seat” (as if she owned it) of some qualified white student in the undergrad case. The reality is that there were only 30-something or 40 black students with lower test scores than the plantiff who were admitted. There were over 1000 WHITE STUDENTS with lower test scores than the plantiff who were admitted. So who took “her seat?” Quitely likely some “unqualified” white student. Get behind the numbers and don’t believe the myths-there just aren’t enough black and latino students applying to these types of schools to make this type of a difference. And on some level, all of these students are qualified-everybody cannot get in.

Final point-my child does in fact attend a school that is at least 50% poverty level. We choose to send her there though we can afford otherwise (I’m a prof; he’s a high school principal). Our presence and the presence of the other middle class families in this school makes the school better because teachers and principals feel that they must work up to the level of expectations of mid class people. That raises the level of expectations and school experiences for the poor children that attend this school. If you have concentrated race and povery in schools, it changes the level of expectations of all those involved-parents, students, teachers, communities, politicians.

Andy, at 12:55 pm EDT on September 18, 2006

Clarification

Justice O’Connor’s 25-year comment was not a time limit, it was an aspiration. This needs to be clarified because some would have the public believe it was a limit of some sort. Based on what we see in this article, it looks as though her comment was an optimistic aspiration or that the issues that get in the way of achieving it are so systemic and entrenched that it is a hard one to achieve. For those who like to put nose to the grindstone, it means work harder, be more creative, do whatever is necessary to make sure that students underrepresented in college make it to college at significantly higher rates than they currently do. Perhaps that effort would make success within the 20+ time frame more likely than our achievements now make it out to be.

Maricela Oliva, at 3:45 pm EDT on September 18, 2006

White women reference?

Does anyone have the reference for affirmative action benefiting mainly white women? I’ve heard this stated quite a bit but I’ve never been able to find the original study. My understanding is that with the current “overrepresentation” of women at universities, the bar for women is actually higher now.

PC, at 5:35 pm EDT on September 18, 2006

Open Enrollment

The problem with the open enrollment idea or any type of voucher is that it encourages abandonment of schools that most need funding and support. If you want to read more thoughts on this, see http://luxuriouschoices.blogspot.com/2006/07/stuck-in-middle-again.html

kgotthardt, at 7:45 pm EDT on September 18, 2006