Reprint from the Badger Herald, March 4, 1998Can the UW System’s new diversity plan achieve its goal by the year 2008 “to erase the gap in educational attainment . . . for underrepresented people of color in the UW System? A close reading of the recently-released draft report “Quality Through Diversity” offers little reason for optimism.
Why this pessimism? For the most part, the new plan differs little from a succession of earlier plans, dating back to 1972. Each plan set forth the same goal, that of eliminating the underrepresentation of minorities.
Each plan failed. The persistence of failure is not for lack of commitment, insufficient effort, or inadequate financial resources.
Rather, the UW System and Board of Regents have been unwilling to recognize that drastic action is required to increase the academic performance of all students in elementary and secondary schools. Only then can greater numbers of both minority and nonminority students qualify for the available postsecondary education, training, and employment opportunities.
“Quality Through Diversity” does admit the inadequacy of academic preparation for minorities. It indicates that K-12 students must begin earlier to prepare themselves academically for entry into UW System institutions. It proposes that the UW System should become a active partner in these efforts. Whether these small actions can substantially reduce the educational attainment gap is unlikely—-unless and until there is substantial improvement in K-12 schooling and academic achievement.
The focus of the new plan remains on the UW System, without much regard for the rest of the state’s variety of education, training, and employment opportunities. The dangers of this approach are apparent.
Conceivably, the UW-Madison, for example, might through more aggressive precollege, outreach, and recruitment programs increase its minority enrollment. But, until the numbers of academically qualified minority high school graduates increase substantially, institutions will find themselves competing with each other for the same limited number of students. As this occurs, there is an inevitable tendency to relax academic standards and in the process undercut the effectiveness of public funds invested in both K-12 and higher education.
What is needed is a larger, state-wide strategy that goes well beyond the UW System. Such a strategy must take a “systems approach” to the challenge of educating all students to higher levels while at the same time offering them a wide range of choices as they plan for their lives after high school graduation. This strategy has four elements:
- Major emphasis must be given to improving the academic performance of all students through the K-12 grades. Only then can larger numbers of minority students and larger numbers of students from lower income families, whether minority or nonminority, be equipped to take advantage of postsecondary opportunities in Wisconsin. Particular attention must be given to the Milwaukee area where the academic performance of the large minority population lags seriously. Minority students as early as the 3rd and 4th grades are already well behind nonminority students in reading, mathematics, science, and social studies. They fall even further behind as they move to the upper grades.
- The challenge of raising academic achievement is heightened by growing attention to national content standards in K-12 subjects, which call for higher levels of student performance. Producing these gains will require preparing teachers to teach to these new standards.
Eventually, as more high school graduate meet these standards, colleges and universities will have to raise their own standards. Implementing these standards and realigning what is taught as students move into postsecondary education is a task few people have thought much about.
- Needed gains in academic achievement cannot occur until K-12 schooling is viewed as part of a larger human investment strategy that links compulsory schooling more closely to postsecondary opportunities.
The reasons should be clear. Some high school graduates may want to enter an independent college or a public technical college. Others may want to go immediately into the labor force, perhaps after some brief training offered in a technical college or by an employer. Still others may want to enter a UW System campus.
Providing information on the array of opportunities, and what is required to take advantage of these opportunities, is a first step in helping students prepare themselves and in making wise choices.
- The Board of Regents and the UW System have an unparalleled opportunity to lead efforts that can improve student learning and enhance the ability of more students to take advantage of postsecondary educational opportunities.
They must join in making clear to everyone the serious problems associated with the underachievement of so many young people in the K-12 schools, especially in schools with large minority and low-income student populations.
They must send a message that the UW System by itself can do little to increase minority enrollment until the number of well-prepared minority graduates increases substantially.
They must urge that the full resources of the state be mobilized to deal with the state’s most serious problem, the serious academic underachievement of its most precious resource, its school age kids.
To conclude, the most fundamental shortcoming of the “Quality Through Diversity” plan is its failure to understand the fundamental problem, namely, inadequate academic preparation for college and for increasingly demanding technical jobs. Colleges and universities are incapable of making up for what students fail to learn in their K-12 schooling.
The small measures proposed, well-intentioned though they may be, are inadequate. Thus, the UW System’s goal of equal representation is unlikely to be realized.
If so, why wait for the year 2008 to confirm this inescapable prediction?