Reprint from Isthmus
It’s tough making progress toward race and ethnic diversity at large public universities like the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For several decades, preferential admission for minority applicants, remedial and academic support for these students, exclusive financial-aid awards, and programs aimed at creating a less “hostile” campus environment have been in place.
The sad but unacknowledged truth is that these diversity programs have fallen far short of their goals, particularly for blacks. Now, a new ten-year diversity plan, “Madison Plan 2008: Educational Quality Through Racial and Ethnic Diversity,” is being developed at UW-Madison. The chief shortcoming is that, like earlier plans, it fails to identify, much less attack, the root cause of low minority enrollment in college. That is, the inadequate academic preparation of so many of Wisconsin’s minority high school graduates.To be effective, any plan must recognize that diversity in higher education cannot be achieved unless educational quality prevails in the K-12 grades. Until the pool of high-achieving minority high school graduates is greatly expanded, even modest campus minority recruitment goals will be difficult to achieve.
Consider the American College Testing data for 1996-97 high school graduates in Wisconsin. No more than 160 of the state’s approximate 2,200 black high school graduates could have been admitted to UW-Madison under a color-blind admission standard. By contrast, 13,000 of the state’s more than 50,000 white high school graduates met this standard.
Newer evidence from the 1997-98 Wisconsin Student Assessment System further illustrates the performance gap. In grades 4, 8, and 10, black students lagged far behind whites in every subject area: reading, math, science, and social studies. For example, of Wisconsin’s almost 58,000 white 10th graders, 30% received “advanced” scores (the highest category) in reading and social studies, while 9% were judged “advanced” in math and 10% in science.
In contrast, of Wisconsin 5,011 black 10th graders, only 4% received “advanced” scores in reading and social studies, and less than 1% did so in math and science. The situation was no different in the lower grades.
Eliminating these gaps in academic achievement requires finding workable remedies for minority kids in their very first years of school. In fact, action must be taken even earlier.
What seems to be required is some combination of better parenting, better communities, better schools, better teaching, and above all higher scholastic standards at all grade levels.
Moreover, students of all race and ethnic groups must take more responsibility for their own learning. After all, nobody can learn for anyone else. Learning must be done by individual students, by themselves when they can do it, and with additional help when that is required. Local programs, such as Schools of Hope, are already providing such help.
UW-Madison has tried through a succession of much-heralded diversity programs to increase targeted minority enrollment (blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and southeast Asians) and reduce their “underrepresentation” relative to non-targeted students (whites and Asian Americans).
Yet, the gaps between the two groups remain stubbornly unchanged, in freshman enrollment rates, second-year retention rates, and six-year graduation rates. All because the UW refuses to acknowledge the origins of the problem in the K-12 years.
Unfortunately, UW-Madison’s new 10-year diversity plan is a recycled version of past plans: numerous goals, many recommendations, and lots of different programs. Nowhere does it address head-on the huge gap in academic achievement.
Reality is that neither UW-Madison nor the broader UW System by themselves can do much directly to improve the academic performance of K-12 minority students. Yet, they can publicize the serious gaps in academic achievement and thereby shape public opinion and influence public policy.
For example, they can join in a statewide push to improve student learning throughout the K-12 grades. They can press for higher performance standards in the schools. They can urge expanded Head Start-type programs so that young minority children are better prepared when they begin kindergarten.
But, they must also state clearly that UW-Madison’s diversity efforts will continue to fail until minority academic achievement rises.
Faculty and administrators can contribute more directly by upgrading teacher training and by encouraging their students to provide academic help to minority students in nearby schools. They can also contribute by changing campus admission policies, as the University of Massachusetts at Amherst just did, so that all applicants are judged by a common standard, namely, academic achievement rather than skin color.
Until faculty and administrators confront the facts on black achievement in the K-12 years, they will continue their exercise in self deception, concocting elaborate new diversity programs that are unlikely to be any more successful than previous plans.
Even more important, they will fail to serve the young blacks they wish so desperately to help and who so desperately need their help.