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More Breathtaking Educational Research...

If your heart is weak or you?re easily shocked you may want to take two aspirin and sit down before reading the following, but two education researchers recently presented another dose (here?s the first one I discussed) of shocking, shocking findings at the convention of the American Education Research Association.

It appears ? are you sure you?re ready for this? ? that highly desired, highly selective elite colleges actually strive to enroll the brightest students and that as a result the proportion of their entering classes with high SAT scores has actually been increasing! Wow! Who?d a thunk? We are in debt to Catherine L. Horn, of the University of Houston, and John T. Yun, of the University of California at Santa Barbara, for unearthing this explosive data, especially because of its ominous implications for our subject, affirmative action. (These findings were reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education, here, and InsideHigherEd, here. My quotes are from the latter, since it requires no subscription.)

Well, I?m sure you can all see why higher education researchers are so concerned about the surprising fact that high scoring students are in increasing demand in selective colleges. But for anyone to whom the frightening implications of this demand for quality are not apparent:

The shift is ?extreme,? Horn said, ?suggesting a real shift in admissions toward very high-scoring individuals.?

Raising the issue in this way is sensitive for supporters of affirmative action, even if they are skeptics of standardized testing. As Horn noted, two of the Supreme Court justices most critical of affirmative action, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, wrote a dissent in the Michigan law case in which they pointed out that the law school could easily have a diverse class without affirmative action. They said that a law school like Michigan?s could set admissions policies that were relatively open or relatively elitist, and that the former would result in more diversity than the latter. If Michigan really wants diversity, the justices said, it could just lower standards.

?No one would argue that a university could set up a lower general admission standard and then impose heightened requirements only on black applicants,? the justices wrote. ?Similarly, a university may not maintain a high admission standard and grant exemptions to favored races. The Law School, of its own choosing, and for its own purposes, maintains an exclusionary admissions system that it knows produces racially disproportionate results. Racial discrimination is not a permissible solution to the self-inflicted wounds of this elitist admissions policy.?

But don?t worry. Horn hastened to add that she did not agree with the Thomas-Scalia view. ?They are implying, she said, a strict dichotomy between academic rigor and diversity ? a dichotomy she called ?a false one.??

It could be, I suppose, that Horn sees a dichotomy but not a ?strict? one. Perhaps she?s a loose constructionist when it comes to interpreting dichotomies. In any event, she made it clear that she was not endorsing any lowering of standards in order to achieve ?diversity.?

?What we?re talking about,? she insisted, ?is a reconceptualization of merit.?

ADDENDUM

I?m reminded, as I often am when encountering explanations of this sort, of Gen. McClellan?s explanation after one of his retreats that he wasn?t retreating but merely changing his base (rather like ?redeployment? out of Iraq). These arguments are frequently good for morale ... of one?s opponents.

The spirits of the Confederate soldiers were good. Northern newspapers had reported McClellan?s description of his withdrawal to the James as a ?change of base?, and when the story got to the men, they would loudly laugh at the loser of a dog fight and call out: ?Look at him changing his base!?

ADDENDUM II

A few more points about this latest research. Scholars on another panel at the convention addressed Justice O?Connor?s hope or prediction or evasion or whatever that affirmative action would no longer be needed in 25 years. And their conclusion: ?The unanimous opinion: no chance in hell.?

Scholars examined a range of demographic and educational data showing how little progress has been made in narrowing key gaps in the educational opportunities available to black and Latino students. Given how slowly American education changes, they said, the idea that the need for affirmative action will disappear in 20 years is almost impossible to imagine.

I think those two unremarkable sentences in the InsideHigherEd article unwittingly make two very large arguments that should both be flatly rejected.

They implicitly assume that there?s no difference between ?educational opportunities? and educational achievement. They assume, that is, that disproportionate educational achievement among different groups is a reflection of correspondingly disproportionate ?educational opportunities? available to those groups. Elite U, it follows, denies ?educational opportunities? to blacks by requiring hight SAT scores.

In addition, they assume that preferential treatment will be necessary until all groups are identical in all respects. As Yun (Horn?s co-author) put it,

For O?Connor?s vision to work in 20 years, minority and non-minority students would need to be ?virtually indistinguishable? on a range of academic qualities, and the gaps in educational opportunity are too wide today for that to be viable.

This is rather like saying that colleges shouldn?t rely on admissions tests until all applicants have ?virtually indistinguishable? IQs and academic preparation.

Finally (at least for now), in addressing the effect on ?diversity? of the elite colleges? emphasis on high test scores, the Chronicle of Higher Education article linked above reports the following:

The researchers say that, by focusing so heavily on high scorers, the elite colleges they examined are ignoring promising minority students with lesser scores, increasing the competition for high-scoring minority students, and potentially ?simply ?pricing? themselves out of the ?market? for a more diverse learning environment.?

But is that necessarily bad? Doesn?t academic freedom protect the choice of these elite schools to value what they regard as academic excellence over whatever benefits marginally increased pigmentary ?diversity? might provide? Moreover, and more important, I would think, to those so worried about a lack of ?diversity? in the Ivies, if the Ivies are ?ignoring promising minority students with lesser scores,? that means those students are available to provide ?diversity? at the many excellent institutions that, so far, haven?t made the U.S. News A-list. That, you?d think, would be regarded as a Good Thing, both to the institutions and to the more properly matched (i.e., not mismatched) minority students.

Full post as published by Discriminations on March 26, 2008 (boomark / email).