What Role Should Race Play on Admissions?

choi

William A Galston, What Role Should Race Play on Admissions?  'Holistic' policy puts Asian-Americans at a disadvantage, and they're fighting back. Wall Street Journal, Oct 5, 20922, at page 15 (column "Politics and Idea")
https://www.wsj.com/articles/wha ... -scores-11664893496

Note: William A Galston of Brookings Institution was professor (1988- 2005), the Saul Stern Professor (2002-2005) and Acting Dean (2004-2005) at the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland a College Park. He is Jewish.

'------------------------------------
At the end of the month, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case that tests the use of race as a factor in college admissions. The plaintiff, Students for Fair Admissions, claims that “holistic” policies used by Harvard, the University of North Carolina and many other top schools have unfairly reduced the share of high-achieving Asian students who would have been admitted otherwise. The group charges Harvard with using evaluations of attributes such as “positive personality,” likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected” to reject Asian students and argues that these evaluations reflect anti-Asian stereotypes and bias.

For Jews, this case evokes painful memories from a century ago. As the children of Jewish immigrants excelled in public schools, they began knocking at the doors of top colleges, and their ranks quickly swelled. At Harvard, the share of Jews in entering classes rose from 7% in 1900 to 27.6% in 1925. Although Harvard’s trustees were reluctant to endorse an explicitly discriminatory policy, they did adopt new, highly subjective criteria of “character” and “fitness” to dilute the impact of high academic achievement. Between 1925 and 1935, the number of Jews at Harvard fell by half.

Other elite schools adopted similar measures, with similar results. These policies persisted into the 1950s (in the case of Yale, even longer). until elite institutions turned to admissions based on achievement, as measured by grade-point averages, and academic promise, as measured by instruments such as SAT. Jews took advantage of this shift. And as the 1965 immigration reform began to diversify America's population in unprecedented way, the sons and daughters of upwardly mobile strivers-- many from East Asia and the Indian subcontinent-- followed Jews into elite institutions and esteemed professions.

The Voting Rights Act, enacted the same year as immigration reform, was a landmark in the struggle for political equality and inclusion for blacks. But social and economic equality depended on access to selective educational institutions. For reasons that remain disputed, admissions policy based on GPAs and SAT scores disadvantage black students, and pressure grew for new policies that would lean against these outcomes.

Two generations after these historic reforms, the beneficiaries of these changes are clashing.

In Fairfax County, Va, the admissions process at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology yielded an incoming class composed of 73% Asian students, 8% white, 3% Hispanic and only 1% black in 2020. Following the nationwide protests over George Floyd's murder, the school changed its entrance criteria by adopting a "holistic review" process. The results were immediate and striking: The black share of the new entering class rose to 7%, Hispanic to 11% and white to 23%, while Asian-Americans fell to 54%. In February 2022, a federal district judge ruled against the new admissions process, finding that it discriminates Asian0American students. The case is now on appeal to the Fourth Circuit [based in Richmond, Va].

In 2020 San Francisco school board changed the basis of admissions from grades and test scores to a lottery system for Lowell High School, an elite pubic school. Earlier this year, a public revolt spearheaded by Asian American families led to the recall of three board members who had voted in favor of the shift. After new members were appointed by Mayor London Breed, they created a narrow majority that voted to reinstate the merit-based admission process.

And last week New York City's School chancellor reversed a pandemic-era shift from grades to test scores to a lottery for admissions to selective high schools. As n Virginia and San Francisco, black and Hispanic parents pushed to reduce reliance on grades and text scores while Asian-Americans defended the selective criteria that had rewarded their children's achievement.

While each local controversy is distinctive, the commonalities are clear. Groups whose children lose out in selective admissions process insist that the system is unfair because it doesn't take into account past discrimination and current disadvantage. Groups whose children do well insist with equal fervor that it is only fair to reward students' hard work and parents' high expectations.

One thing is clear: So long as some parents and advocacy groups tacitly define fairness as proportional representation in selective educational institutions, this struggle will continue until the court clarify what's constitutionally permissible in admissions and what isn't.