Diversity Policies: Can They Overcome the Lagging Academic Achievement of Minority K-12 Students? (February, 1999)

Summary

The greatest barrier to increasing the UW-Madison minority enrollment rate is their lagging academic achievement in K-12 grades. This reduces the number of high achieving high school graduates whom this campus would like to enroll. Until larger numbers of minorities perform at higher academic levels, the “pipeline” of students who can compete academically with nontargeted students will prevent achieving even modest gains in minority enrollment.Recent data from the Wisconsin Student Assessment System document the lagging academic achievement of Blacks who constitute the largest targeted minority group in Wisconsin; they approximately equal the combined numbers of Native Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. The number of Blacks who perform well enough at the 10th grade to be considered successful applicants to UW-Madison (those who could compete academically with other nonminority students) is far fewer than diversity proponents would like this campus to have enrolled right now. The situation is even gloomier because the numbers of Blacks performing at high levels in the 8th and 4th grades are equally small. Consequently, the likelihood of reaching within the foreseeable future even modest increases in Black freshmen enrollment is dim indeed.

Introduction

Affirmative action/diversity programs at UW-Madison have failed to reach their enrollment, retention, and graduation goals for Black students. There is one hard-rock reason: the small number of Black students from Wisconsin high schools who are well-qualified for admission to UW-Madison. This deplorable fact is inescapable in the 1997-98 results of the Wisconsin Student Assessment System (WSAS) tests given to all 10th graders, 8th graders, and 4th graders.The WSAS is a comprehensive statewide program designed to provide information on what students know in the core academic areas and how well they can apply that knowledge. These tests cover knowledge and concepts in reading, math, science, and social studies. Four categories of “proficiency” are used to categorize the performance of students: Advanced, Proficient, Basic, and Minimal Performance. The focus here in on performance at the Advanced level. That level provides an indicator of achievement that would seemingly predict academic success at an institution such as UW-Madison.

Academic Performance of 10th Graders

In 1997-98 there were 69,660 10th graders of all races in Wisconsin public high schools. The proportions of kids who scored “Advanced” compares favorably with those for the United States as a whole.

The absolute numbers of Wisconsin 10th graders behind those percentages represents a substantial pool of prospects for UW-Madison. However, not many of the 5,011 10th graders score at the “Advanced” level. This means that the pool of Black Wisconsin prospects for UW-Madison is painfully small.

What can one conclude from these results? The analysis of the academic preparation of Black high school graduates, in the author’s “Barriers to Diversity: Inadequate Academic Preparation of Minority High School Graduates,” showed that once eligibility was taken into consideration, Black high school graduates from Wisconsin were either proportionately represented or overrepresented. The results developed here indicate that the problem of lagging Black achievement goes back to the high schools. It means that diversity programs at the UW-Madison, no matter how ambitious, strongly supported, and well-financed they may be, will continue to fail in meeting their enrollment, retention, and graduation goals. These goals cannot be met until there is a great increase in the number of Black Wisconsin high school students who are scholastically well qualified for admission to UW-Madison.

Academic Performance of 8th and 4th Graders

The situation is no better for Blacks tested in the 8th and 4th grades. Even though the number of 8th graders exceeds the number of 10th graders, and the number of 4th graders exceeds the number of 8th graders, the absolute numbers of Black students performing at the advanced level do not differ greatly from that for 10th graders. These results give no indication that the problem of lagging Black achievement is transitory. Ideally, it would diminish as younger generations performed at higher academic levels than older generations of students. But, that is not the case.

Conclusions

The barriers to diversity created by the lagging academic achievement of Black high school graduates and of Black students at the 10th, 8th, and 4th grades are depressingly large. How to overcome these barriers is perhaps one of society’s major challenges in the decades ahead. Solutions are difficult to come by until the public becomes alert to the problem and can seize upon some plan of action. At the moment, too few people appreciate the full dimensions of the lagging academic achievement of Blacks throughout the educational system.

Faculty, staff, and administrators must become aware of the threat to diversity posed by this analysis. Until they become concerned, it will be difficult to make the case to the public that drastic action must be taken to improve the academic performance of young Blacks. Perhaps charter schools, reforms in teacher certification, parental support programs, and the like will work. At the moment, nobody knows. But, in the meantime, the UW-Madison should attempt to do something more constructive than issuing still another “more of the same” diversity program. Faculty and administrators do no credit to themselves or this institution if they continue to hide from the underlying problem of lagging academic achievement.