An Alternative Implementation Plan

Presented to the UW-Madison Faculty Senate, April,  1999I know that you are scheduled to take action on the proposed Resolutions in Support of the Draft UW-Madison Diversity Plan 2008 contained in Faculty Document 1428. Before doing so, I ask you to consider the Alternative Diversity Plan 2008 and the Resolution in Support of the Alternative Diversity Plan 2008. This Plan and the Resolution supporting it are described in the material you received at the door.

The Alternative Diversity Plan 2008 calls for modifying the goals of the UW System Board of Regents’ Plan 2008. The objective is to ensure that campus diversity efforts not only fit the mission of UW-Madison, but also reflect the difficulties of achieving greater race and ethnic diversity in our student body.The primary purpose of UW-Madison is described in the January 1999 report: New Directions: The Reaccreditation Project–A Self Study. It says: The primary purpose of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is to provide a learning environment in which faculty, staff, and students can discover, examine critically, preserve and transmit the knowledge, wisdom, and values that will help ensure the survival of this and future generations, and improve the quality of life for all. The university seeks to help students develop an understanding and to realize their highest potential of intellectual, physical and human development.

Pursuing this primary purpose is difficult and challenging. The quest for diversity, which is but one aspect of this larger purpose, must be informed by critically examining diversity policy and by what we have learned about the difficulties of realizing the goals of diversity policy.

The obvious fact is that after three decades of affirmative action/diversity programs, the UW-Madison has made little progress toward reaching these goals, particularly in minority enrollment. Rather than continuing the status quo approach of the past, we must rethink and redefine what we seek to achieve.

For these reasons, I developed the Alternative Diversity Plan 2008 and the accompanying Resolution you have before you today. The Plan and Resolution are my own creation.

• They reflect my professional interest in minority issues developed through my teaching and research in labor economics and the economics of education.
• They reflect my intensive involvement in campus discussions of diversity policy and programs over the past several years. For more details, see the goldenrod colored handout which references my Webpage (in New Findings…).
• They reflect my research during the past year to develop a better factual understanding of exactly how our diversity program works and the effects it produces.
• Above all, they reflect my deep and continuing concern about the seeming intractability of low academic achievement for so many targeted minorities, the difficulties young targeted minorities have securing good jobs in our knowledge intensive economy, and the continued discrimination faced by targeted minorities in many facets of life.

In this sesquicentennial year, the UW-Madison should be able to claim that its diversity program, embodied in the 1988 Madison Plan and the 1994 Madison Commitment, has lived up to the high expectations held for it—the high expectations for its success, by faculty, staff, students, and the general public. Unfortunately, this claim cannot be made.

Thus, we must rethink what we are doing. Specifically, we must refocus our efforts, concentrating on implementing the policies and programs outlined in the Alternative Diversity Plan 2008. This does not mean scrapping the various diversity programs. Rather, they are not sufficient.

We must do this, not for ourselves or for what tomorrow’s headlines may say. Rather, we must do it for the sake of the targeted minority students we are so keen to help and who so desperately need our help.

With these thoughts in mind, I ask you to consider the Alternative Diversity Plan 2008. I hope you will endorse the Resolution in support of that Plan. I trust that some Faculty Senator will move the Resolution as a substitute motion.

Thank you for your kindness in granting me permission to make this presentation.

Resolution in Support of the Alternative Diversity  Plan  2008

RESOLVED: The Faculty Senate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison endorses the goals of the Alternative Diversity Plan 2008, instructs the Chancellor and the University Committee to request that the goals of the UW System’s Plan 2008 be redefined for UW-Madison, and calls on the Chancellor and the University Committee, after discussion with UW System and the Board of Regents, to appoint a new and more broadly constituted committee to develop for the Faculty Senate a detailed diversity plan that is consistent with the redefined goals of Plan 2008 as they are described below.

The Alternative Diversity Plan

Background Document for the Faculty Senate, April,  1999

Rationale For This Alternative Diversity Plan

The primary purpose of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is to provide a learning environment in which faculty, staff, and students can discover, examine critically, preserve and transmit the knowledge, wisdom, and values that will help ensure the survival of this and future generations, and improve the quality of life for all. The university seeks to help students develop an understanding and to realize their highest potential of intellectual, physical and human development.
— Self Study for the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, January 1999.

The key to realizing this fundamental purpose of a world-class research university is to establish achievable goals, implement programs that will achieve those goals, provide for continuous evaluation of progress toward those goals, and ensure there is accountability for reaching those goals.The pursuit of diversity must rest on sound educational practices. It must admit students based on their academic credentials and their likely ability to succeed in graduating. It must be inclusive, extending beyond the traditional four race and ethnic groups. It must focus on students who can be characterized by their varied economic backgrounds, cultural orientations, social classes, and quality of prior schooling. Only through such a system of inclusion, fairness, and ability to graduate can all students enjoy the benefits of intellectual and social diversity that are central to a university education.

This Alternate Plan is also based on new research findings revealing that UW-Madison does give preferences to minority applicants based on race and ethnicity; though these preferences increase the number of entering freshmen, they lower 2nd year retention and 6th year graduation rates; minority underrepresentation and gaps in minority retention and graduation rates have not narrowed perceptibly over the past quarter century; the key barrier to increasing the presence of minority students at UW-Madison is the weak academic achievement of many of Wisconsin’s minority high school graduates; and the weak performance of these high school graduates reflects the even more troubling weak academic performance of K-12 minority students evident from recent state-wide testing of 4th, 8th, and 10th graders. The proposed Madison Plan 2008 fails to address these issues effectively.

A Redefined Set of Goals

In view of these findings, the diversity goals set forth by the UW System Board of Regents in its Plan 2008–Educational Quality Through Race and Ethnic Diversity, must be modified if UW-Madison is to develop a sound and successful educational program for promoting diversity. The seven modified goals are:

1. Enhance the academic quality of the entering freshman class by admitting students on the basis on their academic performance and promise rather than their race and ethnic background.
2. Build the K-12 pipeline by leading statewide efforts to improve K-12 education and student academic performance so that ever larger proportions of diverse students perform successfully through elementary, middle, and high schools, more of them graduate and are eligible for admission to college and particularly to UW-Madison, ever larger proportions of them are equipped academically to graduate from college, and substantially larger proportions of them pursue advanced education to augment the stock of teachers in K-12 schools, pursue academic and other professional careers, and fulfill their human aspirations and potential.
3. Increase the retention and graduation rates of students characterized by their diversity through strong academic and social support while they are enrolled, having admitted applicants who are most likely to graduate.
4. Increase the amount of financial aid available to needy students and reduce their reliance on loans.
5. Seek and hire the very best qualified people for faculty and academic staff positions, with additional attention to diversity–economic, cultural, and class–in the backgrounds of candidates for these positions, and contribute substantially to increasing the future availability of such individuals.
6. Foster an improved campus climate by emphasizing economic, cultural, class, and educational backgrounds in determining eligibility for admission, academic support, financial aid, and related assistance.
7. Improve accountability at UW-Madison in promoting Goals 1-6 by devising a accountability system that rewards and penalizes those responsible for implementing diversity policy and programs.

Why the Proposed Madison Plan 2008 Won’t Work

1. UW-Madison’s principal long-standing diversity goals, reiterated in the Madison Plan 2008 proposal, remain unmet, namely, decreasing the long-standing underrepresentation of entering targeted minorities, and narrowing the gaps in retention and graduation rates for targeted minorities. The proposed Plan fails to mention, much less analyze, why past progress toward these targets has been so negligible; nor does it provide any convincing assurances or indications about the likelihood of future progress under the proposed Plan.Is it educationally sound and morally appropriate to continue pursuing these goals by admitting substantial numbers of minority applicants whose prospects for graduating are less than 50-50? In view of the primary purpose of this university, the answer is “No.”
2. The Madison Plan 2008 proposal for infusing diversity into courses is a tacit admission that the ethnic studies course requirement implemented as part of the 1988 Madison Plan has failed in its objective of improving the campus climate for race and ethnic minorities.In recommending that diversity be incorporated into every course and that a required freshman course be established that will have a diversity component, do we not run the risk of sliding across the narrow line that separates indoctrination from instruction? Wouldn’t such a development impede progress toward the University’s primary purpose? The answer is “Yes.”
3. The Madison Plan 2008 proposal is similar to earlier diversity plans, representing a statement of hopes and aspirations rather than a document offering evidence that it can achieve its goals. Most important, it fails to provide:
   • Any indication of priorities among the array of proposals included in the Plan;
   • Objective quantitative measures to assess whether the Plan reaches its goals;
   • Accountability standards to judge the performance of those charged with implementing the Plan;
   • Documented evidence of the efficacy of the Plan’s many proposed programs;
   • Acknowledgement that preferential admission underpins the success of the Plan;
   • Any recognition that weaknesses in K-12 academic achievement of minorities make the Plan’s goals of increased minority representation impossible to realize.

The Key Elements of the Alternative Diversity Plan 2008

1. Improving the Pre-College Academic Preparation of Minority Youth. Lead statewide efforts to indicate clearly and forcefully that the UW-Madison cannot succeed in achieving greater inclusion of targeted minority students until substantially larger proportions of Wisconsin’s targeted minority high school graduates are prepared academically to succeed along with non-targeted students, and that they can be expected to graduate at the same rate as non-targeted students.Maintain high admission and academic standards at UW-Madison appropriate to a world class research university.

   Participate more actively in efforts to improve student learning in the K-12 grades and to ensure that effective pre-school programs are available to increase the readiness of young children for school.

   Emphasize the importance of learning and high academic achievement for all young people who aspire to attend UW-Madison.

2. Admissions Policies and Practices. State our admissions requirements correctly in materials going to potential applicants. Immediately revise campus admission material to include required placement in top half of high school graduating class, and to state that all applicants are evaluated by the same criteria.State more clearly and forcefully UW-Madison’s goal of admitting applicants whose academic records indicate they have the greatest likelihood of graduating in timely fashion. Revise Faculty Document on Admission Policy.

   Evaluate all applicants for admission on the basis of their academic performance and promise. Revise Faculty Document on Admission Policy, prohibiting the use of race and ethnicity in admissions decisions, and make appropriate changes in the procedures used by the Admissions Office.

   Cast a wide net to encourage well-qualified high school graduates to apply to UW-Madison, including students from historically underrepresented groups (race and ethnic minorities but also economically disadvantaged students and those who may have attended substandard high schools) as well as National Merit Scholars and top high school students everywhere. Write a new policy on recruitment strategies.

3. Academic Support for Students. Provide special academic help and financial aid to those students who need it, including students from all disadvantaged backgrounds. Revise procedures for determining eligibility for academic support and financial aid by eliminating race and ethnicity as qualifying factors.Develop a special academic support program for all disadvantaged students (economically disadvantaged, graduates of substandard schools, etc.) that would over the next decade eliminate the gaps in retention and graduation rates.

   Make intensive studies of these academic support programs so that we can learn how and to what extent the disadvantages of race and ethnicity, as well as economic and educational disadvantages, can be overcome, and prepare annual reports on the progress being made in reducing the gaps in retention and graduation rates.

   Adjust academic support programs based on the findings of these intensive studies and then monitor the effects of these adjustments.

4. Research on Diversity. Provide greater access to the available data, to developing new data, and to carrying out research that will increase this institutions’s understanding about the determinants of the academic success of different groups of students, and publish a series of reports describing this research and its results.