"but it's not clear what their missions are or why racial diversity is more important than other forms of diversity."
The mission is to maintain the power and status of these elite institutions and their alumni.
Ensuring the loyalty of black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) America requires a certain number of black faces. They need not be descendants of American slaves, just being black is good enough.
Further, the mythology of America as relates to race is powerful, and being able to lay claim to being anti-racist gives a lot of power over other whites.
Finally, these institutions are afraid having too many Asians. If Asians were 40% of the student body they would inevitably end up running the show. That would be against the interests of non-Asians. Even if the additional slots went to whites instead of blacks that would probably be desirable to Harvard.
Given all this, I don't think much is going to change. Workarounds will be found to keep the numbers basically the same. The political will isn't there to enforce Harvard being 40% Asian. While all of this is technically a violation of civil rights law, everyone understands that in practice civil rights law can be bent for the right interests.
I'm going to pass over whether this is "good for society". Even if affirmative action were bad for society, it might be good for Harvard (and Harvard might perceive it to be good and be wrong). "Society" doesn't make and enforce policy.
As to K-12 education reform, we've spent decades on that to no effect. Do we really think swarming K-12 with DEI bullshit is the solution. Cause that's what "we need to fix K-12 race gaps" is going to end up being.
Personally, I'd rather we just make this race stuff less salient. If blacks are going to close the gap they will have to do it themselves.
What comes after Race-Conscious Admissions? The question is elitist, only relevant in the top tier of private schools and a couple of prestigious State U's. Additionally, the problem for elite schools is not one of achieving social justice or promoting achievement, but creating a student body that "looks" more like a bowl of Mueslix, than a bowl of rice crispies, or choco crispies. Community colleges, aas well as 2nd tier, and 3rd tier state u's already address the achievement gap every day of the week. They have no need to engage in race conscious admissions, because their student communities naturally reflect the greater community. Unlike more elite schools who graduate nearly all incoming freshman at rates of 90 to 98 percent, these lesser institutions are saddled with the more onerous burden of race conscious concerns about who graduates and how quickly.
I believe that the gap between black and white children in K-12 starts before the children even attend preschool. I feel this difference originates in infancy and early childhood. A study in 2018 showed that "Language-based interactions between children 18 to 24 months of age and adults predicted intelligence quotient (IQ), verbal comprehension, and expressive and receptive language skills at 9 to 13 years old." Perhaps black inner city kids who grow up lacking enrichment in their environment are bringing the overall IQ scores of the black population down.
I feel that nurses should pay a visit to all homes after the birth of a baby and identify "at risk" families (black and white). Then services should be offered (parent education, drug/alcohol treatment...) to improve the environment for children in the home. Parents should be taught about the importance of language interaction with their infant, and to encourage creative play/limit screen time.
If race-conscious preferences are really ended it will be a great but difficult opportunity for blacks to go toe to toe with others based on skill and value instead of racist prejudices and victimhood. It will take a lot for blacks to gain equality because the Democratic Party has victimized them for about 58 years now (through welfare, failed schools, lawless cities and affirmative action (ie racism against whites and sexism against males).
History tells us that African-American students were able to find ways to excel even under Jim Crow. Baltimore’s Dunbar HS produced many great leaders including SC Justice Marshall. The difference was discipline and focus.
Disruptive students were punished, not accommodated. Standards were high and uncompromising. Students were expected to learn, given a fertile environment and they rose to the challenge. This light was snuffed out as too “elitist” in the post 1960s era.
Much as I hate to be that guy, almost none of the principles in these cases have any interest in doing what Clifton rightly says has to be done - the pipeline to prepare students. Public education is already perceived as failing and that was before two years of antics by teachers unions across the country.
If I remember correctly, one of the major drivers behind Ward Connerly's push to end affirmative action in California was its results. The program was great at admitting black students into UC Berkeley or UCLA but, too often, those students were ill-prepared and never graduated. Had they instead been steered toward a university within the Cal-State system, their chances of success would have been far higher.
The argument before the High Court is about the cart, at the expense of the horse. When school systems are "graduating" young people who are barely literate, debating admissions standards in the Ivy League is next-level missing the point.
If the problem as articulated is the need to fill the college pipeline, the implication is that school systems should focus resources on the top half of black kids (ranked by achievement). A lot of the comments here identify problems that result in a minority of black kids deeply underperforming white peers. But those kids are in the bottom half of black kids. The problem for black kids that are college eligible or that could be college eligible is quite different. And you could work on solutions for that problem by moving resources from the bottom half to the top half. But is that really what we want our educational systems to do in a world of limited resources? Put another way, is that originally articulated goal of filling the college pipeline really the thing to chase?
There are some hidden economic issues underlying this topic that are not well understood by most people paying for colleges. Private universities invariably enjoy non-profit status. Thus, there is no pressure from profit seeking owners. Boards of Trustees can choose to pursue a “mission” over profit. Having said that, the size of the endowment is a major influencer in decision making. It is a given that the endowment must never get smaller. It is helpful that the gains on the endowment and charitable contributions are not taxed. But, it is also important to the integrity of the endowments that the cost of running the college does not exceed the revenues.
If one has a mission to accept lots of lower income students while keeping the endowment from shrinking, one must charge more to the “middle and higher” income students than to the others. As long as the low cost loans keep coming to those not receiving income based scholarships, the scheme can keep going. Part of the scheme has been relying on foreign students who invariably pay full freight. Once the cost of attending gets too high for the “tuition payers”, there will be a reckoning. The most vulnerable schools will be those whose brand name and reputation are least valuable.
I predict there will be a significant number of lower reputation schools will be folding in the next decade or so.
DISTAR Reading K-2 is a proven solution if well implemented to ensure major gains by disadvantaged youngsters of any ethnicity. It could still be done. (I'm not recommending programs for the higher grades, but the K-2 program is very good.) Project Follow Through showed that very well. Mandatory after-school programs in reading and writing, one to two hours a day, would pick up a lot of failing youngsters, too. Finally, adding summer school would make a difference. Black kids tend to fall behind in summer.
There are now quite a few model systems that work to identify and develop talented black youngsters. These are successful charter schools. They can be imitated and disseminated and would help all youngsters.
It actually is not that complicated. Will it happen? Almost certainly not. But the solutions are there.
The most important thing that any President could do once in office would be to unceremoniously eliminate the DOE and work to establish a constitutional amendment to prevent its ever being reconstituted.
Your citing specific cases, such as Dunbar High, proves my point. Show me a program that establishes hundreds of Dunbar Highs in different parts of the country and I will grant that you may be on to something.
Thank You M. Roscoe. I’ll leave off the exclamation points, tho well-deserved. There was a bug in the system, or I would-a “liked” all the comments. I agreed with all-a them, most of them completely.
I’m not as well-read on this subject as I would prefer, but it’s been of great interest to me. As others have pointed out, there are deep problems in our education systems. From K to graduate-level. Just a few of the problems, many of them already in these comments (in no particular order):
==
Genetics - moot point, nothing can be done
Family structures - multi-problems, generations to fix; should work on
Cultures - until education is *highly* valued, not much possible, right?
Colleges/Universities - many problems but over-production of degrees is big one (the “degreed barista” problem)
Business - most jobs could be done with two-year degrees
Pay scales - nerds, computer and otherwise, get paid more, especially compared to non-college-educated
Teacher’s Unions - hope this goes without saying
Indoctrination - currently the raison d’etre of schools at all levels
Low quality of Education Colleges - mostly indoctrination/diploma mills
Low quality of Teachers – as a result of above
Low quality of Teachers – lowest GRE scores of all graduate occupations
Low quality of too many students to begin with
Definition of success – more money = more successful (nothing can be done)
&c., &c....
==
Possible solutions derived from other people (including commenters):
More money, in a few *select* instances
*Less* money in other instances
Eliminate Dept Of Education (for most part, due to totality of failures observed)
Eliminate Federal guarantees of student loans completely
Give businesses input to 2 (or 3?) -year schools’ curriculum, in return for financing
Vouchers/non-union Charter Schools/School Choice
Diversity in Colleges/Universities of *political views* (unfortunately, may be no way to accomplish due to privacy concerns; still there are DEI requirements currently)
Accredit Education Colleges/Universities at Federal level, or any other way than done now (dissolve current Accreditation institutions)
*Exciting advertisements* on value of education, particularly in select economic groups
Revamp welfare system (politically impossible)
Mandatory Service: One year (or preferably two) of service in Military/Peace Corps/Vista
==
Just IMO. A few thoughts collected along the way. Granted, most-a these “possible solutions” are fantasies at this time. Again. TYTY for article, M. Clifton. And TY to commenters.
I think a $14k average spend with $25k/kid for targeted communities takes care of the scale. I also don't see any better alternatives so why wouldn't we try the experimentation that would be part of a mass voucher program? I suspect we would see more provision of social services and structured participation that mimics an extended family for the underclass (Raj Chetty has done interesting work on what structures are effective). Most public schools won't change, nor do they need to. In a functioning community a public school is a source of pride and symbol of the community. But when the community is dysfunctional we need new ideas. Thanks for your work, the effort is appreciated.
There is very little appetite in modern America to solve the skills gap between black children and everyone else because black misery and underperformance is so profitable to so many people even tangentially associated with the educational establishment.
My wife, who is African, not African-American, is currently teaching first grade at a neighborhood public school here in Detroit. She will have 20-25 students on any given day.
Three or four of them are what we used to call "bad" kids: no discipline, no respect, no interest in learning. They are sent to school by the parents not to learn but to be bay-sat. The school administration accepts, and coddles these children because every set of buttocks that is filling a chair on "count day" is worth $10k + to the district. It is difficult to be suspended, and impossible to be expelled, no matter how egregious the behavior .
Those few bad kids get most of the teacher's attention, by default. The rest of the students try to get by with the scraps that are left once the disruptive knuckleheads have been dealt with.
For the limited time that is devoted to actual instruction, the public schools here are forced to use textbooks that seem to have as their main objective the desire to confuse the students and discourage learning, I am no genius, but I should be able to decipher first grade material, and I can't. The books are written by "experts" whose careers depend on the endless updating of their material, with copious amounts of interventions from early learning "specialists":, "achievement coaches" and so on. No one, absolutely no one cares about the implications of subjecting generations of children to this BS. They only care about checking boxes and advancing careers. The bulk of the credentialed professionals here in Detroit have long ago forgotten that the purpose of teaching used to be to provide children with the fundamental tools to go out into the world and be able to make their lives in it.
Then you have the parents...most of whom simply do not care one tiny little bit about their child's progress, or lack thereof. There are, clearly, exceptions, but they are, just as clearly, exceptions. And while having two parents who care and who are there might be preferable, that isn't necessary. My wife never knew her father, and grew up in a poverty that is simply unimaginable to anyone in America today, and yet she is now in Detroit, teaching English (her third language) to American children. The difference is that in Africa, schooling is a sought-after privilege, teachers are respected, bad behavior is not tolerated, and black African children are not schooled to believe that they are incapable of excellence because of their "victim" status.
School choice will help, as will the ending of all racial preference programs, but the biggest change will necessarily have to come from the parents themselves, who will have to discover the will to demand excellence from their children, teachers, and themselves, and not accept the permanent underclass status that is intrinsic to a culture of low expectations.
"but it's not clear what their missions are or why racial diversity is more important than other forms of diversity."
The mission is to maintain the power and status of these elite institutions and their alumni.
Ensuring the loyalty of black (and to a lesser extent Hispanic) America requires a certain number of black faces. They need not be descendants of American slaves, just being black is good enough.
Further, the mythology of America as relates to race is powerful, and being able to lay claim to being anti-racist gives a lot of power over other whites.
Finally, these institutions are afraid having too many Asians. If Asians were 40% of the student body they would inevitably end up running the show. That would be against the interests of non-Asians. Even if the additional slots went to whites instead of blacks that would probably be desirable to Harvard.
Given all this, I don't think much is going to change. Workarounds will be found to keep the numbers basically the same. The political will isn't there to enforce Harvard being 40% Asian. While all of this is technically a violation of civil rights law, everyone understands that in practice civil rights law can be bent for the right interests.
I'm going to pass over whether this is "good for society". Even if affirmative action were bad for society, it might be good for Harvard (and Harvard might perceive it to be good and be wrong). "Society" doesn't make and enforce policy.
As to K-12 education reform, we've spent decades on that to no effect. Do we really think swarming K-12 with DEI bullshit is the solution. Cause that's what "we need to fix K-12 race gaps" is going to end up being.
Personally, I'd rather we just make this race stuff less salient. If blacks are going to close the gap they will have to do it themselves.
What comes after Race-Conscious Admissions? The question is elitist, only relevant in the top tier of private schools and a couple of prestigious State U's. Additionally, the problem for elite schools is not one of achieving social justice or promoting achievement, but creating a student body that "looks" more like a bowl of Mueslix, than a bowl of rice crispies, or choco crispies. Community colleges, aas well as 2nd tier, and 3rd tier state u's already address the achievement gap every day of the week. They have no need to engage in race conscious admissions, because their student communities naturally reflect the greater community. Unlike more elite schools who graduate nearly all incoming freshman at rates of 90 to 98 percent, these lesser institutions are saddled with the more onerous burden of race conscious concerns about who graduates and how quickly.
I believe that the gap between black and white children in K-12 starts before the children even attend preschool. I feel this difference originates in infancy and early childhood. A study in 2018 showed that "Language-based interactions between children 18 to 24 months of age and adults predicted intelligence quotient (IQ), verbal comprehension, and expressive and receptive language skills at 9 to 13 years old." Perhaps black inner city kids who grow up lacking enrichment in their environment are bringing the overall IQ scores of the black population down.
I feel that nurses should pay a visit to all homes after the birth of a baby and identify "at risk" families (black and white). Then services should be offered (parent education, drug/alcohol treatment...) to improve the environment for children in the home. Parents should be taught about the importance of language interaction with their infant, and to encourage creative play/limit screen time.
https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/142/4/e20174276
Race conscious admission is code for giving points to people who don't make the grade. It's rewarding mediocrity and that is dangerous.
If race-conscious preferences are really ended it will be a great but difficult opportunity for blacks to go toe to toe with others based on skill and value instead of racist prejudices and victimhood. It will take a lot for blacks to gain equality because the Democratic Party has victimized them for about 58 years now (through welfare, failed schools, lawless cities and affirmative action (ie racism against whites and sexism against males).
History tells us that African-American students were able to find ways to excel even under Jim Crow. Baltimore’s Dunbar HS produced many great leaders including SC Justice Marshall. The difference was discipline and focus.
Disruptive students were punished, not accommodated. Standards were high and uncompromising. Students were expected to learn, given a fertile environment and they rose to the challenge. This light was snuffed out as too “elitist” in the post 1960s era.
Great article, Sir. I appreciate the data.
Much as I hate to be that guy, almost none of the principles in these cases have any interest in doing what Clifton rightly says has to be done - the pipeline to prepare students. Public education is already perceived as failing and that was before two years of antics by teachers unions across the country.
If I remember correctly, one of the major drivers behind Ward Connerly's push to end affirmative action in California was its results. The program was great at admitting black students into UC Berkeley or UCLA but, too often, those students were ill-prepared and never graduated. Had they instead been steered toward a university within the Cal-State system, their chances of success would have been far higher.
The argument before the High Court is about the cart, at the expense of the horse. When school systems are "graduating" young people who are barely literate, debating admissions standards in the Ivy League is next-level missing the point.
If the problem as articulated is the need to fill the college pipeline, the implication is that school systems should focus resources on the top half of black kids (ranked by achievement). A lot of the comments here identify problems that result in a minority of black kids deeply underperforming white peers. But those kids are in the bottom half of black kids. The problem for black kids that are college eligible or that could be college eligible is quite different. And you could work on solutions for that problem by moving resources from the bottom half to the top half. But is that really what we want our educational systems to do in a world of limited resources? Put another way, is that originally articulated goal of filling the college pipeline really the thing to chase?
There are some hidden economic issues underlying this topic that are not well understood by most people paying for colleges. Private universities invariably enjoy non-profit status. Thus, there is no pressure from profit seeking owners. Boards of Trustees can choose to pursue a “mission” over profit. Having said that, the size of the endowment is a major influencer in decision making. It is a given that the endowment must never get smaller. It is helpful that the gains on the endowment and charitable contributions are not taxed. But, it is also important to the integrity of the endowments that the cost of running the college does not exceed the revenues.
If one has a mission to accept lots of lower income students while keeping the endowment from shrinking, one must charge more to the “middle and higher” income students than to the others. As long as the low cost loans keep coming to those not receiving income based scholarships, the scheme can keep going. Part of the scheme has been relying on foreign students who invariably pay full freight. Once the cost of attending gets too high for the “tuition payers”, there will be a reckoning. The most vulnerable schools will be those whose brand name and reputation are least valuable.
I predict there will be a significant number of lower reputation schools will be folding in the next decade or so.
DISTAR Reading K-2 is a proven solution if well implemented to ensure major gains by disadvantaged youngsters of any ethnicity. It could still be done. (I'm not recommending programs for the higher grades, but the K-2 program is very good.) Project Follow Through showed that very well. Mandatory after-school programs in reading and writing, one to two hours a day, would pick up a lot of failing youngsters, too. Finally, adding summer school would make a difference. Black kids tend to fall behind in summer.
There are now quite a few model systems that work to identify and develop talented black youngsters. These are successful charter schools. They can be imitated and disseminated and would help all youngsters.
It actually is not that complicated. Will it happen? Almost certainly not. But the solutions are there.
The most important thing that any President could do once in office would be to unceremoniously eliminate the DOE and work to establish a constitutional amendment to prevent its ever being reconstituted.
Your citing specific cases, such as Dunbar High, proves my point. Show me a program that establishes hundreds of Dunbar Highs in different parts of the country and I will grant that you may be on to something.
Thank You M. Roscoe. I’ll leave off the exclamation points, tho well-deserved. There was a bug in the system, or I would-a “liked” all the comments. I agreed with all-a them, most of them completely.
I’m not as well-read on this subject as I would prefer, but it’s been of great interest to me. As others have pointed out, there are deep problems in our education systems. From K to graduate-level. Just a few of the problems, many of them already in these comments (in no particular order):
==
Genetics - moot point, nothing can be done
Family structures - multi-problems, generations to fix; should work on
Cultures - until education is *highly* valued, not much possible, right?
Colleges/Universities - many problems but over-production of degrees is big one (the “degreed barista” problem)
Business - most jobs could be done with two-year degrees
Pay scales - nerds, computer and otherwise, get paid more, especially compared to non-college-educated
Teacher’s Unions - hope this goes without saying
Indoctrination - currently the raison d’etre of schools at all levels
Low quality of Education Colleges - mostly indoctrination/diploma mills
Low quality of Teachers – as a result of above
Low quality of Teachers – lowest GRE scores of all graduate occupations
Low quality of too many students to begin with
Definition of success – more money = more successful (nothing can be done)
&c., &c....
==
Possible solutions derived from other people (including commenters):
More money, in a few *select* instances
*Less* money in other instances
Eliminate Dept Of Education (for most part, due to totality of failures observed)
Eliminate Federal guarantees of student loans completely
Give businesses input to 2 (or 3?) -year schools’ curriculum, in return for financing
Vouchers/non-union Charter Schools/School Choice
Diversity in Colleges/Universities of *political views* (unfortunately, may be no way to accomplish due to privacy concerns; still there are DEI requirements currently)
Accredit Education Colleges/Universities at Federal level, or any other way than done now (dissolve current Accreditation institutions)
Teach the teachers proven scientific methods of knowledge-transfer https://www.edutopia.org/ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55835996-uncommon-sense-teaching (note to self: need to study a lot more)
*Exciting advertisements* on value of education, particularly in select economic groups
Revamp welfare system (politically impossible)
Mandatory Service: One year (or preferably two) of service in Military/Peace Corps/Vista
==
Just IMO. A few thoughts collected along the way. Granted, most-a these “possible solutions” are fantasies at this time. Again. TYTY for article, M. Clifton. And TY to commenters.
I think a $14k average spend with $25k/kid for targeted communities takes care of the scale. I also don't see any better alternatives so why wouldn't we try the experimentation that would be part of a mass voucher program? I suspect we would see more provision of social services and structured participation that mimics an extended family for the underclass (Raj Chetty has done interesting work on what structures are effective). Most public schools won't change, nor do they need to. In a functioning community a public school is a source of pride and symbol of the community. But when the community is dysfunctional we need new ideas. Thanks for your work, the effort is appreciated.
There is very little appetite in modern America to solve the skills gap between black children and everyone else because black misery and underperformance is so profitable to so many people even tangentially associated with the educational establishment.
My wife, who is African, not African-American, is currently teaching first grade at a neighborhood public school here in Detroit. She will have 20-25 students on any given day.
Three or four of them are what we used to call "bad" kids: no discipline, no respect, no interest in learning. They are sent to school by the parents not to learn but to be bay-sat. The school administration accepts, and coddles these children because every set of buttocks that is filling a chair on "count day" is worth $10k + to the district. It is difficult to be suspended, and impossible to be expelled, no matter how egregious the behavior .
Those few bad kids get most of the teacher's attention, by default. The rest of the students try to get by with the scraps that are left once the disruptive knuckleheads have been dealt with.
For the limited time that is devoted to actual instruction, the public schools here are forced to use textbooks that seem to have as their main objective the desire to confuse the students and discourage learning, I am no genius, but I should be able to decipher first grade material, and I can't. The books are written by "experts" whose careers depend on the endless updating of their material, with copious amounts of interventions from early learning "specialists":, "achievement coaches" and so on. No one, absolutely no one cares about the implications of subjecting generations of children to this BS. They only care about checking boxes and advancing careers. The bulk of the credentialed professionals here in Detroit have long ago forgotten that the purpose of teaching used to be to provide children with the fundamental tools to go out into the world and be able to make their lives in it.
Then you have the parents...most of whom simply do not care one tiny little bit about their child's progress, or lack thereof. There are, clearly, exceptions, but they are, just as clearly, exceptions. And while having two parents who care and who are there might be preferable, that isn't necessary. My wife never knew her father, and grew up in a poverty that is simply unimaginable to anyone in America today, and yet she is now in Detroit, teaching English (her third language) to American children. The difference is that in Africa, schooling is a sought-after privilege, teachers are respected, bad behavior is not tolerated, and black African children are not schooled to believe that they are incapable of excellence because of their "victim" status.
School choice will help, as will the ending of all racial preference programs, but the biggest change will necessarily have to come from the parents themselves, who will have to discover the will to demand excellence from their children, teachers, and themselves, and not accept the permanent underclass status that is intrinsic to a culture of low expectations.
What a concept: Identify and problem and ask, "what is the solution to the problem?" Great piece. Thank you.