<p>The Michigan article is year old news, since the decline in applications was noted last year at this time.</p>
<p>Its hard to place any meaning on it other than that if you require people to work harder at applying, some choose not to do it. By the way, ALL applications to UM fell, not just minority applications (although URM apps did fall by somewhat more than the rest of the pool).</p>
<p>I think more data and thought is needed before much of a conclusion can be drawn from this.</p>
<p>If you're shooting for Yale, celebrian, you might also look at Stanford.</p>
<p>Sybbie, that is a good point about financial aid. These are all things to consider and many of the students who need to look hardest at these different options get the least advising. There are probably colleges that would have given your daughter's friend significant financial aid to increase the campus diversity.</p>
<p>"Fourthly, I want to go somewhere where people will know I got in on merit, not on the color of my skin. It's not that I'm against AA, but rather I don't want people saying it's the reason,when I am a strong strong student."</p>
<p>You see, the way I look at it, a very large proportion of white students at the prestigious schools (those in the top 5% income bracket, which is usually about 50% of the student body, give or take) are in on Affirmative Action, but it masquerades as academic quality. It has to do with money and power. They attend good prep schools or good high schools, can afford the right ECs (and have the time for them!), can take the right curricula, have the right GCs, can afford extensive test prep if needed, and have parents with many years of education behind them, and their support. Kick out the joints from under them (starting at an early age), and a large proportion of them would never even approach Ivy-caliber schools. The reverse is true as well. The scholarship students at Exeter and Andover and etc. almost always fare quite well in the college competition. Spend $30k a year for 6 or 7 years on a kids' education (or buy the $750k house in the right neighborhood) and you earn the right to spend another $40k for another 4 years. </p>
<p>Strong students are TRAINED to be strong students. Yes, natural talent plays a role, but natural talent is much more highly spread across the population than you'd ever guess from prestigious college admissions. Some folks get to write their tickets with money. Some with power. Some have other desired characteristics. Luck of the draw.</p>
<p>But I'm not being cynical. Your responsibility - whether your chances are given to you as a result of money, or skin color, or your ability on the English Horn or in catching an elliptical spheroid, or just dumb luck - is to use those opportunities for the benefit of others. Don't worry about what other people say. Most of them they don't know what they are talking about anyway. When you use your talents and your gifts for the benefit of others, the tongues go silent pretty darn quick.</p>
<p>Celebrian:</p>
<p>I hope that you aim as high as you can without concerning yourself about what other people will say. A couple of the highest achieving students in my S's school are African-American. No one would dream of saying they act white or that they got into some colleges because they are URMs. And once you are in college, profs will not cut you any slack. You'll be judged on the quality of the work you turn in.
Many of the top colleges have lots more scholarship money to give out than colleges in tier 2 or 3; so your family will be better off if you apply to those than if you rein in your ambitions.</p>
<p>We have Black friends who are good students but not brillant. Even with merit aid and grants they are in a position they will have to take out loans.Some don't want to do it. I'm finding our Black friends have closer ties to home.They would rather go to the local university and maintain ties with friends than take out loans and try a new part of the country. They have closer bonds with friends than whites. And when I see the relationships that exsit I say who could blame them. These kids have great, safe friends, fun times, why leave that for the unknown or have to work hard at building new friends? Just how I see it with my kids friends.</p>
<p>Mini said,</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>It has to do with money and power. They attend good prep schools or good high schools, can afford the right ECs (and have the time for them!), can take the right curricula, have the right GCs, can afford extensive test prep if needed, and have parents with many years of education behind them, and their support. Kick out the joints from under them (starting at an early age), and a large proportion of them would never even approach Ivy-caliber schools. <<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>It is all RELATIVE. THERE AIN"T TOO MANY POOR BLACKS AT HARVARD OR THE IVIES.</p>
<p>Race based Affirmative Action has been corrupted, as well as the whole admissions process to the Ivies and the elites. The whole admissions process in the most selective and competitive colleges with the death of the "meritocracy", is based on preferential treatment, with the race factor for blacks as the biggest tipping factor rendering academic stats and excellence almost meaningless in many cases in favor of admissions for blacks. In many cases, it is only to satisfy a need to admit warm black bodies based on political and racial correctness, with complete disregard for the well-being of the black student. Nothing else even comes close. These actions by guilt ridden politically and racially correct whites, although well meaning from their viewpoints, do a harmful disservice to underprepared blacks. This causes more harm today than the Jim Crow laws of yesterday, because the racial academic performance gaps have worsen in recent years, by not solving its root causes with this use of the Band-Aid of race based AA..</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the wealth and power factors (politically correct power) are even more true for the blacks, who are admitted to the Ivies and Harvard, because they are the ones admitted with A LOWER DOUBLE STANDARD. This standard is lower for blacks than it is for whites and Asians. Harvard is a case in point, where there are few poor blacks in the entering class. Very few of these blacks qualify for the Pell grants given to low income students. There ain't too many poor blacks in the Ivies or Harvard. Over 90% of the blacks at Harvard, the Ivies and the elites are from the middle and upper economic classes with WEALTH AND POWER, admitted with race preferences and lowered standards. Why should underperforming and underachieving affluent blacks from economically privileged families who attended prep school, went on foreign travel with parents with graduate degrees and family incomes of more than $100k/year deservre a race preference in admissions over some higher performing white or Asian from dirt poor families with no privileges? Furthermore, 6% of Harvard's legacies are black, children of the rich, affluent and powerful black grads of Harvard, who were the beneficiaries of race based AA a generation ago. Why should these black legacies recieve a race preference or a double preference, based on the color of their black skin? Over 2/3 of the blacks at Harvard are from immigrant families from the Caribbean and Africa, and not from the descendants of Afro American slaves, the intended targets of AA to begin with. These blacks from recent immigrant families, many of them affluent, don't deserve AA, admited with lower standards.</p>
<p>It is hypocrisy at the highest level for those towing the poltically and racially correct line not to admit or acknowledge these aforementioned facts.</p>
<p>Mini, why don't you answer the questions above??</p>
<p>The title of my son's
"Why Penn" Essay is "Relationships"</p>
<p>"By the way, ALL applications to UM fell, not just minority applications (although URM apps did fall by somewhat more than the rest of the pool)."</p>
<p>Dadx - I think the article was referencing all State schools. Did apps drop off for the other state schools referenced? That article also mentioned black applications dropping for UPenn. Wasn't this before the Princeton announcement about low income relief?</p>
<p>Click on:</p>
<p>Originally published on Tuesday, November 23, 2004 in the News section of The Harvard Crimson. </p>
<p>State Schools See Drop in Diversity
By ALLISON A. FROST
Contributing Writer</p>
<p>This year has seen a significant drop in black enrollment in colleges nationwide, The Washington Post reported yesterday.
State flagship schools have been hit especially hard, but the trend has also affected Ivy League institutions like the University of Pennsylvania, where African American enrollment has fallen to 7 percent of their freshman class. Harvard, however, has avoided any dropoff this year. </p>
<p>Weve had a very good season at this point, Director of Undergraduate Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis 70-73 said. We dont have any new methods. The key to this is recruitment of strong candidates...It has been a real priority for 30 years. </p>
<p>The Colleges African American enrollment rose from 8.5 percent to 8.9 percent this year, though schools from the University of Michigan to the University of California at Berkeley saw their African American admissions decrease. At the University of Michigan, numbers fell from 7.4 percent last year to only 5.8 percent this year. </p>
<p>It is certainly something that has brought some national attention, University of Michigan Associate Director for Undergraduate Admissions Sally H. Lindsley said. I think that [the attention] is not necessarily a bad thing. </p>
<p>While McGrath Lewis emphasized Harvards history of successful recruiting, she also acknowledged the common difficulties for colleges in admissions. </p>
<p>I dont think were necessarily in a different state than other colleges, she said, adding that interest by ambitious colleges in attracting promising minority students may be outpacing the growth in the pool of candidates.</p>
<p>Part of the problem may be that not enough students are taking standardized tests that make them eligible to apply to top schools, Lindsley said. </p>
<p>According to the College Board, in 2003 only 1,877 African American students in the U.S. scored above 1300 on the SAT. </p>
<p>Some are worried about the effects on campus life if the trend continues. </p>
<p>Once you lose those numbers and that diversity, youre losing a well-rounded perspective on academics and student life, President of the Harvard Black Students Association Lawrence E. Adjah Jr. 06 said. They dont see as many people who look like them...thats a fact they cant ignore.</p>
<p>President of the Association of Black Harvard Women Helen O. Ogbara 05 worried that rising admissions costs and increased conservative politics after this years election might lead to continued declines in black admissions at public institutions.</p>
<p>McGrath Lewis said that Harvard admissions is not about numbers, but individuals.</p>
<p>Were looking for the most promising people, not a preordained mixture of people, she said. We want to make sure that nothing stands between us and the most promising students.</p>
<p>1.877 out of 150,000 black SAT I test takers in 2003 scored above 1300. Only 192 of these black test takers scored above 1450 and only 70 scored above 1500.</p>
<p>"1,877 African American students nationwide scored higher than 1300 out of a possible 1600 on the SAT last year, compared with nearly 150,000 students overall who achieved that score. Minority students with higher SAT scores have become the target of frenzied competition between state and private colleges."</p>
<p>The College Board released some numbers on high scorers on the SAT I by section, Math and Verbal looked at separately, disagregated by race in 1995, before the recentering of scores. The numbers from high composite scores (Math and Verbal looked at together) would be even lower for each racial group. </p>
<p>Stats on high score performance on the SAT I in 1995, Math and Verbal sections separately, disaggregated by race, are given n the book, "America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible" by Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, Simom and Schuster, 1997 in Chapter 14, titled "Higher Learning", in Table 4 labeled, "Number and Percent of Black, White, and Asian Students with High SAT Scores, 1981 and 1995".</p>
<p>Source; The College Board, Ethnic Data on Scoring, 1995, the figures and percentages for each score level are charted in the book and are given here.</p>
<p>For example, in 1995, for 103,872 Black test takers of the SAT 1 Test, in the Math, 107 Blacks scored between 750 and 800, 509 Blacks scored between 700 and 749, 1,437 Blacks scored between 650 and 699. Total > 650 for Blacks was 2,053 or 2.0% of all Black test takers. Total > 700 was 616 or 0.6% or six tenths of 1 percent. Total > 750 was 107 or 0.1% or one tenth of 1 percent.</p>
<p>In 1995, for 103,872 Black test takers, in the Verbal, 184 Blacks scored between 700 and 800, 465 Blacks scored between 650 and 699, and 1,115 Blacks scored between 600 and 649. Total > 600 was 1,764 or 1.7% of Black test takers. Total > 700 was 184 or 0.15% or less than two tenths of 1 percent. </p>
<p>In 1995, for 674,343 White test takers of the SAT 1 Test in the Math, 9,519 Whites scored between 750 and 800, 29,774 Whites scored between 700 and 749, and 51,306 Whites between 650 and 699. Total > 650 for Whites was 90,599 or 13.4% of all White test takers. Total > 700 was 39,293 or 5.8%. Total > 750 was 9,519 or 1.4%. </p>
<p>In 1995, for 674,343 White test takers of the SAT 1 Test, in the Verbal, 8,978 Whites scored between 700 and 800, 19,272 scored between 650 and 699, and 36,700 Whites scored between 600 and 649. Total > 600 was 64,950 or 9.6%.Total > 700 was 8,978 or 1.3%.</p>
<p>In 1995, for 81,514 Asian test takers of the SAT 1 Test in the Math, 3,827 Asians scored between 750 and 800, 7,758 Asians scored between 700 and 749, and 9,454 Asians scored between 650 and 699. Total > 650 for Asians 21,039 or 25.8%. Total > 700 was 11,585 or 14.2%. Total > 750 was 3,827 or 4.7%. </p>
<p>In 1995, for 81,514 Asian test takers of the SAT 1 Test in the Verbal, 1,476 Asians scored between 700 and 800, 2,513 Asians scored between 650 and 699, and 4,221 Asians scored between 600 and 649. Total > 600 was 8,190 or 10%. Total > 700 was 1,476 or 1.8%.</p>
<p>Therefore, in reference to the above data for 1995, Asians out perform the other two groups, Whites and Blacks, at the highest levels of the SAT 1 scores in terms of rate of attainment or percentage of the total group at each score level above 650, 700 and above in both the Math and the Verbal of the SAT 1 Test. In fact, in the 1999 data given by the College Board: Performance by Ethnic Groups, the rate of attainment or percentage of the total group at each score level above 650, 700, 750 and above has risen for the Asian group both independent of and relative to the other two groups, Whites and Blacks. </p>
<p>In 1995, there were only 107 Blacks with a Math score of 750 or above or 0.1% (one tenth of 1 percent) of the total number of Black test takers. There were 9,519 Whites with a Math score of 750 or above or 1.4% of the total number of White test takers. There were 3,827 Asians with a Math score of 750 or above or 4.7% of the total number of Asian test takers. Asians out perform Whites at 3.4 times the rate at which they score 750 or above (4.7% vs. 1.4%). Asians outperform Blacks at 47 times the rate at which they score 750 or above (4.7% vs. 0.1% or one tenth of one percent).</p>
<p>At the most selective colleges such as Caltech (average of 780 Math score), Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Harvey Mudd and others with over 750 Math score averages, there simply are not enough Black applicants (107 in all) in the total Black test taker group who meet the average SAT Math score at these elite schools even to fill a fraction of one percent of their student populations, let alone a quota or a goal of 7 to 10 percent or more of the student bodies for all the elite colleges and the several hundred competitive colleges in the nation which use race preferences for blacks, admitting over 10,000 blacks with a LOWER SAT I score standard than the rest of the class of whites and Asians. This gap may be as 200 to 500 points lower (2 1/2 standard deviations lower) for blacks than the median SAT score for whites and Asian Americans of each school Consequently, there is a huge test score gap that exists between the Blacks and Whites and even a bigger test score gap between Backs and Asians at the most selective colleges. The SAT 1 Test composite score for the most competitive or selective colleges are between 1450 to 1540 on average now in year 2004, 30 to 40 points higher than four to five years ago. This score rises upwards of 10 points for each of these schools for each subsequent year, therefore the test score gaps that exist between Blacks and Whites, and between Blacks and Asians are also increasing on a yearly basis because of increased competition amongst the highest scorers.</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>Not specific to college, but Time magazine, Nov. 29, 2004, has a good article on the achievement gap based on a study by Ronald Ferguson of the Harvard Kennedy School . One finding is to identify 9th graders who need more support. The program AVID mentioned in the article will be implemented in our school next year.</p>
<p>Poverty and Academic has very little correlation. There have been studies showing that impoverish students of one race do better on test and academically than rich students of another race. For example Vietnamese have a high rate of poverty comparable to that of blacks, but on academics Vietnamese Americans are accepted to univerities similar to rates of whites, even though most of them are impoverish. It is not because of AA, because nearlly all go to school where AA actually is against them. Example at the UC with NO AA, Vietnamese make up 5% of the population but only 1.5% of California population.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>Poverty and Academic has very little correlation. There have been studies showing that impoverish students of one race do better on test and academically than rich students of another race. For example Vietnamese have a high rate of poverty comparable to that of blacks, but on academics Vietnamese Americans are accepted to univerities similar to rates of whites, even though most of them are impoverish. It is not because of AA, because nearlly all go to school where AA actually is against them. Example at the UC with NO AA, Vietnamese make up 5% of the population but only 1.5% of California population. <<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>The flaming white liberal hypocrites will never acknowledge the above, although these facts are staring them in their faces. These facts debunks all their false arguments.</p>
<p>Factors That Correlate with Student Achievement</p>
<p>Before and Beyond School:
Birthweight
Lead poisoning
Hunger and nutrition
Reading to young children
Television watching
Parent availability
Student mobility
Parent participation</p>
<p>In School:
Rigor of curriculum
Teacher experience and attendance
Teacher preparation
Class size
Technology-assisted instruction
School safety</p>
<p>These are from an analysis of the disadvantages facing minority and low-income students that contribute to the achievement gap.</p>
<p>The short version:
<a href="http://www.ascd.org/publications/ed_lead/%5B/url%5D">http://www.ascd.org/publications/ed_lead/</a> Click on Why Does the Gap Persist? by Paul E. Barton</p>
<p>The long version:
<a href="http://www.ets.org/research/pic/parsing.pdf%5B/url%5D">www.ets.org/research/pic/parsing.pdf</a></p>
<p>SV2 but as I pointed out theire are ethnic groups who are highly impoverish yet seem to do just as well as non-impoverish groups, and even some rich minorities. If their was a strong correlation then this wouldn't be the case.</p>
<p>That study is flawed since it lumps all minorities and low-income people together. That can creat and error in analysis. Lumping so many different people together.</p>
<p>"For example Vietnamese have a high rate of poverty comparable to that of blacks, but on academics Vietnamese Americans are accepted to univerities similar to rates of whites, even though most of them are impoverish."</p>
<p>Is this because a high proportion of the impoverished students whom you mention have parents who are immigrants (and thus are self selected for having a strong work ethic and a strong interest in taking advantage of the US's opportunities) and also have parents who are professionals? I know that in some cases, immigrants may work low income jobs in the US, but in their original countries were highly educated professionals. They simply lack the English language skills to get professional jobs in the US.</p>
<p>Northstarmom said.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>Is this because a high proportion of the impoverished students whom you mention have parents who are immigrants (and thus are self selected for having a strong work ethic and a strong interest in taking advantage of the US's opportunities) and also have parents who are professionals? I know that in some cases, immigrants may work low income jobs in the US, but in their original countries were highly educated professionals. They simply lack the English language skills to get professional jobs in the US. <<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>C'mon Northstarmom.</p>
<p>There you go again, NSM! You are still in misbelief. </p>
<p>Again, there are HIGH scoring students who are also poor. They are Asian Americans.</p>
<p>The SAT and Racial Politics</p>
<p>[Although Atkinson says that the UC must set high standards, he also says that since California has a highly diverse racial and ethnic population, the UC must be careful to make sure that its standards do not unfairly discriminate against any students.16 According to Atkinsons logic, because he believes the SAT keeps African-American and Hispanic students out of the UC, the test thus discriminates against these groups, so therefore it must be eliminated. Of course, he does not say why poor Asian-American students, many of whom come from the same or similar neighborhoods and schools as African-American and Hispanic students, do just fine on the SAT. Addressing such a point would not be politically or racially correct.]</p>
<p>==========================================</p>
<p>Poor high achieving Asian Americans have become the torn on the sides of the racial engineers, who seek proportional racial representation to the American population in elite colleges. You cannot have this, if the college is to remain elite, no matter what standards or criteria you use for admissions. The one exception is to admit based soley on race alone or the color of one's skin, but standards are lowered and the school is not elite anymore. If one wanted proportional racial representation to the American population in colleges, one should attend the other colleges in America which do not use race as a factor in admissions, but don't go to the several hundred colleges which use race as factor to admit. One can attend the other 4000 institutions of higher learning in America, which do not use race as a factor for admissions. There is nothing wrong with doing this. Over 98% of Americans who received degrees attended these schools. There is ample opportunity for blacks, and URMs or a student of any race or ethnic group to attain a college education. </p>
<p>Students should attend schools for which they are academically prepared or fitted for. A student with 500 points below the SAT I mean of the school simply should not be in the school, because his chance of graduation is lessen, and if he graduates, he will graduate at the bottom of the class, taking the least rigorous courses of study. This causes an extreme disservice to this unprepared student, as well as to the better prepared student whom he displaced in the elite college.</p>
<p>45% of UC Berkeley, 40% of UCLA, 60% of UC Irvine, 35% of UC San Diego are Asian Americans. Asian Americans are 12% of California's population. Asian Americans are the biggest group in the jewels of the UC system, which consists of some of the most academically elite and competitive colleges in the nation, either public or private, as represented by the present racial and ethnic composition of its student body. Asian Americans still will be the biggest group in this system, no matter what the standards and criteria for admissions are, including the new "Comprehensive Review", using life's obstacles and experiences as a plus factor in admissions.</p>
<p>According to the racial enginneers, there are just plain TOO MANY Asian Americans in UC Berkeley, UCLA and the UC system, because race was eliminated as a factor for admissions with Prop 209. There are also too many Asian Americans in the Ivies at 15%, out of proportion to their 4% in the American population, but the Ivies have de facto limiting RACIAL quotas against Asian Americans, a most illustrious group of applicants, justified by achieving "diversity".</p>
<p>To all the Moms and Dads on this thread:</p>
<p>Academic performance is not all about being raised in the middle and upper economic classes. The performance of the poorest Asian Americans debunks your points about economic advantage. No one on this thread has addressed the following, because it is not POLITICALLY AND RACIALLY CORRECT. You are towing the politically correct line like a herd of sheep being lead to slaughter, without addressing these points. Academic performance may just be about the culture of the student, regardless of economic class and parental education. Asian Americans respect education as a family value, a cultural value and as a Confucian value, as written in the Confucian Analects, which all transcend economic class. These values permeate throughout all classes, from the peasantry to nobility in China. The scholar is held in higher esteem than all other individuals in society. Therefore academic achievement is more related to culture than anything else, including economic class.</p>
<p>HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN THE FOLLOWING? </p>
<p>The POOREST Asian Americans from family incomes of less than $20k/year with parents with a high school diploma or less outperform on the SAT I and achieve higher GPAs, and take more difficult courses than the richest blacks from family incomes of $100k/year and parents with college and graduate degrees. In fact, the poorest Asian Americans living in the poorest neighborhoods with black neighbors attending black schools outperform many whites in more affluent neighborhoods. That's the well known DARK secret that the politically correct refuse to acknowledge.</p>
<p>Source; The College Board</p>
<p>Fact #1</p>
<p>Black children from the wealthiest families have mean SAT scores lower than white children and Asian Americans from families below the poverty line.</p>
<p>Fact #2 </p>
<p>Black children of parents with graduate degrees have lower SAT scores than white and Asian American children of parents with a high-school diploma or less. </p>
<p>From the College Board data, you will discover that Asians mostly sit on top of the heap; that whites, Mexican Americans and blacks follow in that order. Some details prove interesting. For example, whites enjoy a verbal advantage over Asians that disappears at high levels of income and social advantage. Regrettably, the College Board no longer discloses these data. In 1996, they stopped publishing performance by income and parental education disaggregated by race and ethnicity.</p>
<p>Check out;</p>
<p>APPENDIX B. SAT 1995 DATA AND GRAPHS</p>
<p>1995 SAT Scores vs. Family Income</p>
<p>1995 SAT Scores vs. Parental Education </p>
<p>for the actual data to verify the facts above.</p>
<p>To better under the reasons for high academic performance by any racial or ethnic group, you must consider the facts above. </p>
<p>As far as the Nobel Prizes are concerned, Prof. Daniel C. Tsui, a Chinese American immigrant with illiterate peasant poverty striken parents fighting famine, floods, drought and political upheaval, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1998. He is a distinguished professor at Princeton today.</p>
<p>Please click on the following to read his autobiography and his road to the Nobel Prize:</p>
<p>Excerpts from his autobiography:</p>
<p>[My childhood memories are filled with the years of drought, flood and war which were constantly on the consciousness of the inhabitants of my over-populated village, but also with my parents' self-sacrificing love and the happy moments they created for me. Like most other villagers, my parents never had the opportunity to learn how to read and write. They suffered from their illiteracy and their suffering made them determined not to have their children follow the same path at any and whatever cost to them. In early 1951, my parents seized the first and perhaps the only opportunity to have me leave them and their village to pursue education in so far away a place that neither they nor I knew how far it truly was.]</p>
<p>[Many of my friends and esteemed colleagues had asked me: "Why did you choose to leave Bell Laboratories and go to Princeton University?". Even today, I do not know the answer. Was it to do with the schooling I missed in my childhood? Maybe. Perhaps it was the Confucius in me, the faint voice I often heard when I was alone, that the only meaningful life is a life of learning. What better way is there to learn than through teaching!]</p>
<p>Another statistic that is often left out is the presence of 2 adults in the household. It is hard enough to emphasize education when a family is poor, but when the family has the added precariousness of only one wage earner, it becomes even more difficult. It is particularly hard as children become teens because they are needed to help out in so many ways from earning a wage, to doing laundry, to helping little ones with homework. I know many of those duties go on in 2 parent/2 adult families as well, but the pressure to maintain the shild's income stream is not as severe.</p>
<p>Please click on:</p>
<p>AMERICA'S SCHOOLS </p>
<p>Education And Race</p>
<p>The National Review, Sept. 15, 1997</p>
<p>The performance of minority students in affluent areas refutes the prevailing educational shibboleths. </p>
<hr>
<h2>ARTHUR HU </h2>
<p>Mr. Hu is a writer living in Kirkland, Washington.. </p>
<p>DESEGREGATION is at a crossroads. As many analysts are declaring the integration experiment a failure, Harvard's desegregation guru, Gary Orfield, keeps telling us that minority education could be fixed if only we desegregated more. Educators and the media routinely slam city schools for poor minority performance while holding up affluent suburban districts as models because of their better test scores. Yet, if Orfield is right that segregated districts don't produce equal outcomes, no one has answered the more important question, which is whether ``integrated'' districts produce equal outcomes.
Oddly, while the courts have used inequality as the justification for busing, Orfield himself notes in his 1991 book The Closing Door that there isn't much direct evidence that busing creates more equality. Almost as a footnote, he concedes that you would have to examine data broken down by race within mixed districts to prove that busing actually resulted in better performance for minorities.
After some cursory research -- a few phone calls to local school districts, a ride on the Internet -- I tracked down reports that do chart test scores and grades against race, not only in the worst but also in the best districts. The reason that people like Gary Orfield don't have the numbers is that it's safer to uphold the myth that minorities will perform as well as their white peers in good suburban schools than to expose the reality that the racial gap exists even in the best suburbs.
Test scores and grades for blacks in integrated urban neighborhoods aren't any better than those in predominantly minority ghetto areas. Some affluent suburbs did no better than nearby urban areas, and even at the best suburban schools blacks on average lagged behind their white classmates. But a bigger secret is that even the poorest Asians tended to get better grades -- if not test scores -- than more affluent whites. Asians from poorer suburbs consistently outscored Euro-Americans in nearby more affluent suburbs. For all the talk about the superiority of schools in Japan or Korea, Asian-Americans are also nearly two years ahead in math, just as far ahead of their classmates as students in their ancestral lands are, even when they go to the same schools that fail other American minorities.
In short, predominantly minority schools have low test scores because minorities have lower test scores regardless of the segregation factor, not the other way around. And American schools would match Asian schools if they were dominated by Asian students. Perhaps that chilling reality is the reason that every newspaper I have contacted has chosen to ignore these data.
California's 1994 CLAS (California Learning Assessment System) test introduced massive multiculturalism and had several questions for which more than one answer was counted as correct. Yet nobody noticed that elementary-school blacks and Hispanics did just as poorly in predominantly minority areas of Oakland, East Palo Alto, and Alum Rock as in legally integrated San Francisco. At Grade 10, only 10 to 15 per cent of black students got 3 or better in math whether they went to integrated San Francisco, the segregated communities of Contra Costa County, Oakland, or Silicon Valley's Santa Clara County. Asians continue to stampede into Cupertino, home of the founders of Apple Computers, because of its excellent schools. But US News (April 21, 1997) highlighted the poor performance of blacks there, and they lagged the state average on the CLAS.
Meanwhile, the Asians of the Chinatown ghettos in San Francisco scored as well as children of affluent engineers in Santa Clara County. Asians in Santa Clara County scored as well as whites in posh San Ramon Valley or Cupertino. Asians in Cupertino scored as well as whites in Palo Alto, the best district in the Bay Area. Blacks in San Ramon Valley scored no better than state average for all races, while Asians there outscored every other race and community.
The Seattle Times annually slams Seattle's math scores (just the 50th-percentile for Washington as a whole) compared to suburban Bellevue's 67th-percentile performance, and highlights the race gap as an urban problem. But broken down by race, whites score at about 67 in either city, but blacks score worse in Bellevue, at 34 compared to 40 for Seattle. Seattle has an ``African-American Academy,'' but its test scores are virtually indistinguishable from the city average. Suburban inequality is much the same at nearby Issaquah (41) and Redmond (35), even though there are no minority ghettos in the suburbs, and there has never been any news coverage of racial differences in performance there. </p>
<p>Seattle is one of the few cities where Asians are so poor and white parents so highly educated that white students score better even in math. But Asians still have the highest grade-point average in the city. In the suburbs, Asian 8th-graders score 74 in 59th-percentile blue-collar Renton, hopping rungs over whites in 67th-percentile Bellevue. Asians in Bellevue score 82, equal to top-ranked Mercer Island's 83. Asians in Mercer Island score an astounding 90, not far below the average at the best Lakeside private school. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, nobody ever asks in print why fourth-graders in nearly all-white (but poor) Edmonds or Mukilteo scored only 34 to 44, as badly as Seattle's blacks. Nobody ever demanded that they be bused into richer school districts to remedy this inequity. </p>
<p>The Boston Globe also offered no explanation why black students who entered the Metco voluntary busing program from Boston with 50th-percentile scores didn't score as well as their new suburban classmates in 88th-percentile Newton. Yet the whites from working-class Revere or Brockton have an SAT average of 411 -- near the national black average. No Italian-American Revere youth dripping with gold chains and roaring upon his '82 firebird could expect that sending him to Newton for four years would turn him into Ivy League material. Yet the Harvard gurus remain mystified. </p>
<p>Fairfax County near Washington, D.C., has a 569 (1996) SAT math average, good enough for the University of California at Riverside. But Fairfax's black average of 465 isn't any better than <code>Can't we just get along'' Los Angeles. The black suburb of Prince George's County is among the top 30 per cent of U.S. counties in average household income. The school district proudly claims that its black students perform as well as their</code>counterparts'' throughout the state -- but that's only their black counterparts. Measured by Maryland's MSPAP (Maryland School Performance Assessment Program) test, it ranks as 22 of 24 districts in the state. </p>
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<p>It is widely accepted that test scores increase with family income. However, SAT breakdowns for 1995 show that even the most affluent blacks, from families with incomes over $70,000, have average scores of 426, lagging behind whites or Asians from families with incomes under $10,000. But Asians from families with incomes under $10,000 have average scores of 482, ranking them with whites from families making $40,000. And it is not just test scores. Oakland's poor school system highlighted its low 1.8 black GPA to justify Ebonics. But GPAs aren't any better in integrated Seattle or San Francisco. </p>
<p>Data books and health surveys all show that even in cities like Seattle, Boston, and San Francisco where the per-capita incomes of Asians are no higher than that of blacks, it is Asians, not whites, who have the best outcomes. The omission of Asians from the local news stories is probably deliberate because their statistics don't support the thesis that racism and poverty are the reasons for poor outcomes. As much as the activists continue to deplore the model-minority ``myth,'' except in the most distressed Asian refugee communities, Asians generally have the best grades and test scores; the lowest rates of special and remedial education, dropouts, and expulsion; the highest rates of attendance; and the lowest rates of arrest, teen pregnancy, AIDS, and substance abuse. </p>
<p>If civil rights can be measured by affirmative action, multiculturalism, and desegregation, then they have massively succeeded in almost every urban school district in the country. Compared with Asians, blacks in California are at or near parity among teacher hires, college faculty, staff, and principals, and they are twice as well represented among superintendents. American history books now look like African-American history books, even casting revolutionary sailors as blacks, while Asians are all but completely absent from indexes. Yet these nifty educational strategies have utterly failed to raise black grades and test scores. </p>
<p>Last year, with little fanfare, Lawrence Steinberg, B. Bradford Brown, and Sanford Dornbusch released a new book, Beyond the Classroom that offered a very different explanation from the standard <code>racism and poverty'' for why different groups perform differently in school.</code>Of all the demographic factors we studied in relation to school performance, ethnicity is the most important . . . In terms of school achievement, it is more advantageous to be Asian than to be wealthy, to have non-divorced parents, or to have a mother who is able to stay at home full time.'' They found that no matter which school they looked at, Asians got the best grades and test scores, and blacks and Hispanics the worst. The problem was not the schools, but the attitudes and habits of the students themselves. The underachievers didn't fear failure, didn't study as hard, skipped class more often, and blamed their failures on racism. The overachievers didn't tolerate failure, hung out with overachievers, spent the most time studying, and attributed their success to individual effort. </p>
<p>IRONICALLY, it is an even darker secret that blacks and Hispanics can succeed solely on the basis of merit. Brian D. Ray, President of the National Home Education Research Institute (NHERI) did a study that shows that minority home-schoolers are in the 80th- to 85th-percentile of home-schooling students. </p>
<p>There are formal schools where blacks and Hispanics do well, too. The December 2, 1995, Economist highlights the Barclay Elementary School in Baltimore. It adopted a severe prep-school curriculum and zero-tolerance approach toward spelling mistakes to get suburban-level 60th-percentile scores in a city where failure is the norm. Seattle's Zion private school boasts test scores above average with a largely black student body. The story of how Jaime Escalante fashioned a class of Advanced Placement calculus whiz kids out of a barrio school was made into a movie. </p>
<p>Whitney Young Magnet High in Chicago rivals many suburban schools. With a student body that is mostly black or Hispanic, it ranks above the 99th percentile among state high schools in 8th- and 10th-grade math and writing, and has ACT (American College Testing) averages that make it the equal of Asian-dominated Lowell in San Francisco. The best SAT scores in Georgia aren't in a rich white suburb, but at Davidson Fine Arts Magnet in Richmond with a 42 per cent black student body, near an Army Signal Corps base. </p>
<p>At the college level, Martin Vaern Bosangue of Mt. San Antonio Community College near Los Angeles found that black and Hispanic students who took a calculus workshop and studied more hours than whites and Asians who started with higher SAT math scores wound up getting better grades than even the Asians. </p>
<p>Economic and race-based interventions have never been shown to achieve the equality that was set as their justification in the first place. After all, the numbers that matter are not the percentage of blacks on the staff or in the classroom, but grade point average, reading and math test scores, and hours spent on homework and attendance. As Thomas Sowell and Lawrence Steinberg observe, if students of all races worked equally hard, their disparate rates of success and failure would plausibly lead to explanations based on, on the one hand, racism and poverty, or, on the other hand, innate superiority or inferiority. When they differ on every measure of effort, what else would you expect?</p>