An Alternative Diversity Plan

Presented to the UW System Board of Regents, March, 1998The alternative diversity plan offered here (Part One) is intended to help rethink the UW System’s more than 25-year commitment to race/ethnic diversity in undergraduate enrollment. Its author argues for shifting the targeting of diversity programs from the minority population to the “economically disadvantaged” population. Such a shift would help ensure that more, low achieving, economically disadvantaged students, who include many minorities, are academically prepared for postsecondary education, training, and employment opportunities. This approach assumes that achieving diversity in the UW System depends on educational quality, not the reverse, as the title of the UW System plan suggests. The solution is a much-needed statewide effort to improve the K-12 educational system for all students. Finally, the author also argues that applicants to postsecondary education should be admitted on the basis of their academic achievement, without regard to race/ethnicity. In short, discrimination in admissions on the basis of race/ethnicity is not only unfair but also illegal, and this practice, where used, should cease.

The commentary (Part Two) on the UW System’s new diversity plan begins by discussing a series of questions about the nature of the plan. Are educational quality and diversity linked? Is the plan’s goal attainable? What does diversity mean? What is the target population? Why not target the economically disadvantaged? Can the plan’s success be measured? Will the plan permit discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, and ancestry? The second part of the paper proposes an alternate, four-part strategy that calls for (1) improving the academic performance of all students in K-12 schools, (2) achieving even higher levels of academic performance through the educational system, (3) adopting a “systems approach” to change, and (4) exerting UW Regent and System leadership to promote systematic change.

Refocusing the Diversity Plan (Part One)

Toward Educational Excellence — Diversity Through Improved Quality

The University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents faces an important challenge in crafting a renewal of its 10-year-old Design for Diversity program. It recently released a draft of its new plan, called “Quality Through Diversity — Plan 2008: Educational Quality Through Racial and Ethnic Diversity” (02/02/98). This draft plan is now being refined and in May will be considered for approval by the Board.The proposed plan departs from the UW System’s earlier affirmative action/diversity plans in several constructive ways. It is based on extensive consultation with the UW System’s many constituencies. It avoids detailed goals for minority enrollment. It places responsibility on the campuses to develop programs that will help realize the plan’s goal. It puts more emphasis on increasing the number of high school graduates who are academically equipped to enter the UW System. These are all improvements but they do not go far enough.

After studying this plan, I believe it needs to be refocused in the following ways:

The Board of Regents and the UW System should provide bold leadership to help improve student learning, for minorities and nonminorities alike in the K-12 schools, improvements that will lead to smoother transitions from K-12 education to postsecondary education, training, and job opportunities for all students.

The Board of Regents and the UW System should reaffirm its historic commitment to human rights and equal treatment for all, regardless of race or ethnic background, at a time when diversity programs in the nation’s colleges and universities are being questioned for failing to achieve their goals, practicing discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity, and producing more divisiveness than unity among race/ethnic groups.

What Needs to be Changed?

Diversity policies and programs must be redefined and reshaped to contribute more effectively to the educational excellence not only of the University of Wisconsin System but also the rest of the state’s educational enterprise, from K-12 to postsecondary education and job training opportunities. To realize this goal, a new plan should focus on five objectives:

1. To enhance the academic performance of all K-12 students, particularly those students from minority populations and economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
2. To increase the number of Wisconsin high school students who graduate and are qualified to pursue postsecondary education opportunities, with particular attention to students from minority populations and economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
3. To increase the number of qualified high school graduates who enroll at the postsecondary institutions where their likelihood of academic success is greatest.
4. To lower the financial barriers that prevent academically talented, economically disadvantaged students from attending postsecondary institutions.
5. To develop evaluation strategies and then careful evaluations of diversity policies and programs.

What is Wrong?

A major concern arises from the very title of the draft plan which stresses that educational quality results from diversity. Yet, the plan itself suggests, though not forcefully enough, that to achieve diversity, educational quality in the K-12 grades must improve. Until that occurs, attempts to reach numerical race/ethnic diversity are unlikely to be realized.Like all earlier plans, the new proposal promises more than it can deliver. Its goal for the year 2008 — to “erase the gap in educational attainment by bringing participation and graduation rates for underrepresented people of color in the UW System to the levels of the student body as a whole” — is highly unrealistic.

In fact, current and past affirmative action/diversity policies and programs for undergraduate students have fallen well short of their enrollment objectives. Though some gains have been made, the results are disappointing. The policies and programs have failed to produce their promised increases in minority enrollments. They have failed to produce their promised increases in minority retention rates and minority graduation rates. Finally, they seem to have failed to improve race/ethnic relations or create campus environments that are more tolerant and accepting of individual and group differences.

These persistent failures are not for lack of commitment, insufficient effort, reliance on untested initiatives, or even inadequate funding. Rather, the problem stems from the woefully small numbers of the state’s minority high school graduates who are now, and are likely to be in the near future, competitive applicants to UW System institutions and to other postsecondary institutions in the state. Despite a quarter century of substantial expenditures on diversity programs, it is hard to see any visible benefits.

A key criticism of diversity programs is their failure to identify the root cause of the lower academic achievement of minorities. The problem, which first appears in the early elementary grades, is not the result of race/ethnicity but rather a reflection of social, cultural, and economic disadvantages. This conclusion is justified by the abundant research on the causes and consequences of poverty — including the importance of education. By continuing to emphasize race/ethnicity alone, diversity programs deflect attention from the need to raise the academic achievement of economically disadvantaged K-12 students, many but not all of whom are minorities. Thus, the difficulties experienced in attracting to college more minorities and more of the economically disadvantaged is simply another reflection of the academic achievement deficit that begins so early in the lives of too many children.

Current diversity programs also do not square with the University of Wisconsin’s historic commitment to human rights. This commitment requires that individuals be given equal opportunities, without regard to their race and ethnicity, to take advantage of opportunities the University of Wisconsin offers — to learn, to increase their understanding of others, and to advance themselves as individuals.

For these reasons and more, a new direction must be charted. [For a more detailed critique of the plan and a preliminary discussion of new directions, please see the following document: “Assessing the UW System’s New Diversity Plan: A Commentary on Quality Through Diversity.”]

What Must Be Done?

1. The UW System should join forces with the rest of the postsecondary education sector, employers, state officials, and the public schools, and with students, parents, and community organizations, to launch a state-wide campaign to improve the quality of K-12 education. The purpose is to make certain that student academic achievement increases, especially for the minority population and economically disadvantaged students, so that ever-greater proportions of these high school graduates can take advantage of postsecondary education, training, and employment opportunities, and so that more of them will meet UW System admission standards and be academically competitive with nonminority college and university students. This formidable task requires viewing the UW System as an interrelated part of the state’s entire K-16 educational system. Exactly what must be done to improve student learning is difficult for me to say. It is clear, however, that the UW Board of Regents and the UW System must forcefully indicate their concern and join with others in finding solutions.
2. The UW System should collaborate with Wisconsin’s Technical College System, its private independent colleges and universities, and its many employers to develop more accessible and improved information describing the array of postsecondary education, training, and work opportunities available. The new information should also explain the prerequisites, so that students can better prepare themselves to take advantage of the opportunities that are most appropriate to their preparation and interests.
3. The UW System should mount efforts to interest and enroll more of the state’s academically talented high school graduates, (e.g., National Merit scholars, valedictorians, etc.), a group which may include minority students and economically disadvantaged students, who may not be aware of their opportunities, do not believe these opportunities are options for them, or are prevented from attending college because they and their parents cannot afford the costs of college.
4. The UW System should strengthen admission processes by applying the same admissions criteria to all applicants, without respect to their race/ethnicity, ancestry, or national origin. The different criteria now applied to minority applications do increase the number of minority students. However, they also appear to have an adverse effect on minority student retention and graduation rates, which are the ultimate measures of a diversity program’s success.
5. The UW System should maintain the academic quality and integrity of its various campuses by requiring that members of “special outreach groups” (e.g., veterans, older returning students, minorities, the physically disabled, and others) who receive “special consideration” in the admissions process meet a standard that exceeds the “reasonable probability of success” (retention and graduation) criterion that is now applied. This change will help to ensure that all applicants admitted are matched more closely to the educational opportunities appropriate to their academic preparation and achievement.
6. The UW System should join the state’s other postsecondary institutions in seeking additional state funding that will provide increased financial aid to help new high school graduates from economically disadvantaged backgrounds overcome the financial barriers to attending college. The intent is to stimulate the academic achievement of K-12 students by providing assurances of of financial aid for academically able, new high school graduates.

How to Measure Accomplishments?

1. The Board of Regents should review its own Regent Policy Documents pertaining to diversity and related matters (e.g., admissions policy) to ensure their consistency in language and meaning. They documents should give campuses appropriate guidance in structuring their diversity programs, and indicate more clearly the Board’s need for measures of performance and accountability. In this review, the Board should give particular attention to possible discrimination, based on race/ethnicity and related characteristics, in admissions decisions and in programs, and services offered by UW System institutions. These revisions should be ready for consideration by the Board in October 1998.
2. The UW System should immediately initiate studies that will rigorously evaluate the array of policies and programs employed under the soon-to-be-concluded, 10 year-old Design for Diversity plan. Evidence on what worked and how well it worked is essential in accurately evaluating the academic effectiveness and the cost-effectiveness of diversity policies and programs. The UW System, which prides itself on its approach to diversity, should be leading the way in research on this subject. Proposals for these studies should be formulated by September 1998 so that such research can commence shortly thereafter. Completion should be scheduled for April 1999. The results of these studies should be widely distributed.
3. The UW System should undertake more systematic efforts to implement recommendations 1-6 listed above and evaluate their outcomes so that it can learn more about the effectiveness of these initiatives as they unfold and, in the process, build the evidence needed to evaluate the relative effectiveness of these initiatives. It should develop immediately an agenda to implement each recommendation, indicating a time line, the individuals responsible, specific measures of accomplishment, and plans for evaluating the effectiveness of both these initiatives and those individuals responsible for planning, implementing, and assessing them. To initiate this process, the UW System should report back to the Board of Regents in December on its progress in responding to the full range of recommendations. Fuller reports should be scheduled for the June 1999 meeting of the Board, and regularly thereafter as appropriate.
4. The UW System should make a greater effort to enlist the expert knowledge and skills of individual UW System faculty members in formulating diversity policies and programs and in evaluating these policies and programs. A plan for doing so should be developed by the end of the year and reported to the Board of Regents.

What Next?

Can the UW System breathe new life into the Wisconsin Idea, that the boundaries of the campus are the boundaries of the state? This unique concept has produced enormous benefits for Wisconsin and its people, while at the same time it has strengthened the university. Can the UW System revive this idea, by offering appropriate leadership? Such leadership would help ensure improvements in the quality of K-12 education. This challenge calls for improving the learning of all students. It includes not only students from both minority populations and economically disadvantaged backgrounds, but also the state’s very brightest high school students. Only if learning improves across the board will more high school graduates, regardless of their personal characteristics or circumstances, be adequately prepared academically to benefit from the available postsecondary education opportunities.This is the time for the UW System and the Board of Regents to join with others in crafting a meaningful and well-coordinated strategy to help improve the foundation of the state’s education, training, and employment system, grades K-12.

Can the UW System launch a dialogue with faculty, teachers, students, parents, and citizens on race relations, human rights, and academic excellence in Wisconsin’s educational system? In the K-12 schools, how can the focus of attention be shifted from concerns about race to concerns about raising academic achievement? In higher education, what can be done to dispel suspicions voiced by many students, faculty, and other citizens that diversity policies and programs practice discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity? How long will it be before specific explanations are offered about how the admissions system works and whether it involves discrimination that favors minority applicants? Discrimination is clearly illegal, as specified in Board of Regents Policy Documents and also in Wisconsin Statutes Ch. 36.12, enacted in 1989:

“No student may be denied admission to, participation in or the benefits of, or be discriminated against in any service, program, course or facility of the system or its institutions or centers because of the student’s race, color, creed, religion, sex, national origin, disability, ancestry, age, sexual orientation, pregnancy, marital status or parental status.”

The UW Board of Regents has a unique opportunity to explain more openly and honestly the extent to which discriminatory practices are a part of its diversity program and how these practices are justified.Can the UW System reaffirm its long-term commitment to safeguarding fundamental human rights? That commitment goes back more than 46 years. Interestingly, it preceding by two years the awakening of national concern about human rights, prompted by the historic 1954 school desegregation decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education. Though few may remember it, the UW Board of Regents made the following pronouncement in 1952:

The Regents are unanimous in their beliefs that the faculty and officers of the University of Wisconsin, throughout the long years of its history, have made an outstanding record in the safeguarding of human rights. Our University has historically served, regardless of race or creed, all who have sought its instruction. Its students now include members of all groups and segments of society, accepting each other and learning together. The Regents are proud of the ability of any student on our campus to gain recognition upon his or her individual merits, and are pleased with the growth of understanding on our campus — an understanding so sorely needed in America and the world. Therefore, be it resolved: that the University of Wisconsin shall in all its branches and activities maintain the fullest respect and protection of the Constitutional rights of all citizens and students regardless of race, color, sect, or creed; and any violation thereof shall immediately be reported to the administration and the Regents for appropriate action to the end that any such violation of Constitutional rights shall be promptly and fully corrected, and future violation prevented.

— From University of Wisconsin Regent Document 1041, May 19, 1952, approved at the Regent’s Regular Board Meeting August 9, 1952.

Concluding Comments

The time has come for the Board of Regents to rethink and refocus the UW System’s 25 year-old commitment to diversity policies and programs. The UW System’s goal, shared by the people of the State of Wisconsin, remains that of opening up effective and appropriate educational opportunities for all students. A new beginning is required to help realize this important goal.