Embargoed for Release

For information contact: Shep Ranbom/Kristen Spargo

May 21, 1999

8:00 A.M. Pacific Time (202) 467-8344

National Experts To Examine Body of Evidence

Supporting Affirmative Action Policies on College Campuses

New Report Cites Benefits of Diversity, Imperfections in Testing and the Impact

of Race-Neutral Policies on Equal Educational Opportunity and Access

PALO ALTO, CA. – May 21, 1999 – Court challenges in Michigan, California, and Washington and a new ballot initiative in Florida are likely to draw more attention in the next few months to whether the nation will continue its long-term commitment to affirmative action. In an effort to bring objective, research-based evidence into the debate, a group of 200 legal scholars, lawyers, and social scientists released today a new report that strongly supports affirmative action and diversity programs on college campuses.

The report, "Compelling Interest: Examining the Evidence on Racial Dynamics in Higher Education" dispels the misconception that past racial inequities have been adequately addressed and urges the nation’s colleges and universities to support interventions that encourage diversity and counter the effects of racial discrimination. The report argues persuasively in favor of strategies that look beyond test scores in making admissions decisions and that consider race as an important factor for admission to college and graduate education.

"Based on the evidence, Americans are mistaken if they believe that only colorblindness will achieve true equality. We urge the courts of justice and public opinion and the nation’s campuses to open their eyes to the real, tangible, and sometimes positive effects of race on learning. We urge the nation to look at the hard facts and adopt a more inclusive and accurate definition of merit than is common today," says Kenji Hakuta, professor of education at Stanford University and co-chair of the Panel on Racial Dynamics in Colleges and Universities.

The report focuses on four key areas in which the dynamics of race influence higher education policy, practices, and opportunities.

Limitations of Standardized Tests –The public believes that assessments based on merit are fairly precise and scientific measures and any departure from this approach results in unfair discrimination against more deserving candidates. However, according the research, standardized tests are neither fair nor are they comprehensive measures of merit even though they have been used to limit minority participation in higher education.

"The factors that determine merit and capacity for success – a mixture of ability, talent, and motivation, are not measured by standardized tests," the report says. In reaching its conclusions, the report presents law school data indicating that as many as 88 percent of minority law school students who would have been denied opportunity to enter law school based on law school admissions test results were able to successfully pass the bar and enter the profession. Differential performance on standardized tests among racial and ethnic groups, the research says, is attributable to environmental and societal factors that do not reflect a student’s level of achievement nor his or her capacity to achieve.

Race and Views of Fairness – The dominant ideology in the United States is one that espouses a belief in widespread opportunity, individual responsibility for achievement, and an equitable application of justice. According to this dominant ideology, fairness requires treating people as individuals. However, research suggests that race influences social perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors in ways that place members of minority groups at a disadvantage. Studies conducted on unintentional racial biases, group identity processes, group competition, and group dominance motives demonstrate the need for affirmative action. The challenge for future research on diversity in higher education will be to establish how educational institutions can recognize individual merit, while also acknowledging the importance society places on group membership.

The Educational Benefits of Diversity – Racially diverse environments, when properly nurtured, can lead to quantitative gains as well as qualitative gains in educational outcomes for all students. Among other benefits, cross-racial interaction increases students’ acceptance of students from other cultures, their participation in community service activities and in other areas of civic participation, retention rates, overall satisfaction with college, intellectual and social self concepts, and their commitment to the goal of racial understanding. Given the proper institutional commitment, diversity can play a central role in fulfilling higher education's mission to prepare the future leaders of an increasingly diverse society.

Inequality in Access and Opportunity – According to the evidence, low-income and minority children in the United States have significantly less access to quality schooling. Children who live and attend schools in concentrated pockets of poverty are almost exclusively Black, Hispanic, and Native American and are served by schools that have fewer resources, less-prepared teachers, fewer college-preparation courses, and more crowded conditions. Minority students are disproportionately tracked in lower-level courses with limited content, producing a significantly negative effect on their opportunity to learn. Contrary to popular perception, interventions such as Head Start, the TRIO programs, and campus-based support programs for poor and minority students are neither massive nor ubiquitous. Therefore, it is unrealistic to rely on these programs alone to remedy the racial and ethnic inequities in educational access and opportunity that persist today.

The report urges that the nation continue to support much-needed interventions to address past and current effects of racial discrimination. It calls on university admissions officers to take into account the relative intellectual and civic contributions an applicant will make to the university and its broader community and to use broader definitions of merit and multiple ways to identifying talent. These broad indicators, the report says, "produces a more intellectually dynamic university environment than that produced by a reliance on numerical indicators."

Admissions and campus diversity policies should not only consider what the individual can bring to the community, but they should also "reflect the salience and negative consequences of race in our society," the report says. "Recognizing group membership as well as individual merit in the selection process will enhance perceptions of fairness and reduce ambiguity about the extent to which selection was deserved."

The report also calls on institutions of higher education to expand its commitment to diversity to include the composition of student, faculty, and administrative staff, a more inclusive curriculum, and a structured and continuing dialogue on race relations.

The report was written by: Shana Levin of Claremont McKenna College; Jeff Milem of the University of Maryland; William Trent of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana; and Linda Wightman of the University of North Carolina, Greensboro.

The American Educational Research Association and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University provided the funding for the project.

The report can be ordered from: Daria Witt-Sandis, Panel on Racial Dynamics in Colleges and Universities, Center for the Comparative Studies on Race and Ethnicity, Building 240, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, (650) 725-8411, and (650) 723-8528 (fax). The text of the executive summary is available in html format at: http://www.stanford.edu/~hakuta/racial_dynamics/conference.htm

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