AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IS NOW ILLEGAL ON CALFORNIA CAMPUSES AND IT SHOWS

James Marshall didn't expect it would be easy, being one of just a handful of black students at the University of California, Berkeley's, high-ranking business school. It wasn't. But his payoff came at graduation - job interviews with some of the country's most prestigious firms. "It's about getting that set of rules: OK, this is how you engage an employer; this is how you get this job," says Marshall.

This fall, preliminary figures put 129 new black freshmen at Berkeley out of a class of about 4,000, slightly higher than last year, but still an extreme minority. About 11 percent of the class will be Hispanic, well out of step with a state where Hispanics make up about 30 percent of the population and are projected to be the largest ethnic group by 2011.

For Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, it's a disturbing trend in diverse California. "There are very talented people out there, I believe, who for a whole variety of reasons end up not coming to Berkeley, or to another of the flagship campuses in the UC system," he says.

"Where are the leaders going to come from?" asks Christopher Edley, dean of UC Berkeley's Boalt law school, where just nine black students are expected in the incoming class of 268. "It's been such a short period of time in which our universities have begun producing minority graduates in substantial numbers that to let the door swing shut now would really be a calamity of historic proportions."

Birgeneau, who took over the top job at Berkeley last year, has been outspoken in his dismay at enrollment figures and the need to change them. He questions whether voters intended these kinds of consequences when they passed Proposition 209, the 1996 ballot measure banning consideration of race in public hiring, contracting and education.

But Ward Connerly, the former UC regent who chaired the Proposition 209 campaign, bristles at the idea that there's a problem with race-blind policies. "I just don't understand why certain people have gotten themselves all worked up about who gets to go to Berkeley and UCLA as if that's the only path to a successful life in California, because it is not and the evidence is abundant that it is not," he said. Connerly, founder of a management and land-use consulting firm, is a graduate of Sacramento State University, one of the 23 campuses in the California State University system, the state's other four-year university system and the nation's largest, with about 400,000 students. Black and Hispanic enrollment is higher at CSU - there, black students comprised about 8 percent of the freshman class last fall.

Still, CSU Chancellor Charles Reed says he'd like to see those numbers increase. "I go out and visit public schools and talk to people and I figured out just walking around that students, parents and, frankly, a lot of teachers in the public schools really don't know what it takes to go to college," says Reed, whose staff has blanketed schools and libraries with a "How to Get to College" poster spelling out requirements. "I ask kids sometimes, 'Do you want to be a millionaire?' Everybody wants to be a millionaire. I say, 'It's not all that hard. All you have to do is get a college degree. You'll earn a million dollars over your lifetime more than someone who didn't.'"

Even though blacks, Hispanics and American Indians are underrepresented at Berkeley, the school is far from all-white. The expected freshman class will be about 47 percent Asian-American (a huge category encompassing ethnicities from Samoa to India) and 31 percent white. "We should all be extraordinarily proud of the achievement of Asian-Americans," says Birgeneau, "and we need to learn how to propagate that to other groups." Sharon Browne, principal attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has defended Proposition 209, says race-blind policies are working. She counters that students now are admitted into universities where they can compete effectively and says the old system papered over public school inequality.

After Proposition 209, UC poured millions into outreach programs, partnering with high schools to help students prepare for college. "I'm seeing what's happening as a result of Proposition 209 as a positive improvement," says Browne. "It starts at the lower grades, but it has that cascading effect and eventually, when these students who are really being well-grounded in K-12 start applying to the UCs, I think we're going to see that, yes, race does not matter in California at all."

Looking at UC systemwide, admissions are up slightly for black students since 1997, with fewer black students going to Berkeley and UCLA and more going to newer branches of the 10-campus system. No single factor affects UC enrollment - for one thing fees have soared. At Boalt, for instance, Edley is looking into restructuring financial aid packages to offset hikes.

But one obstacle is "the absence of a community of learners who share their commitment to excellence, who look like them, who can encourage them not to give up when the going gets tough," says Winston Doby, UC's vice president for student affairs....

From an administrative point of view, Haas Acting Dean Richard Lyons says having so few black students shortchanges everyone - and puts Haas at a competitive disadvantage in a diverse marketplace. The school's doing what it can to change that, he says, but Proposition 209 is a constraint....."

More here





WHAT THE PEOPLE THINK ABOUT THE SCHOOLS

The following survey taken in Queensland shows that the people know that their public schools are not working and they know that lack of discipline is a large part of the problem. I am sure you would get similar results from such a survey almost anywhere in the Western world today. One result of the situation in Australia is that parents send 40% of their teenagers to private schools

Queensland's education system is facing a crisis of confidence among the public. While Premier Peter Beattie says the legacy of his leadership will be the establishment of a Smart State, an overwhelming majority of survey respondents believe schools are failing the basics. Only 17 per cent said they thought the Queensland school curriculum adequately taught the "3Rs" of reading, writing and arithmetic. Fewer than one in five (19 per cent) believe the curriculum adequately prepares school-leavers for work.

Education Minister Rod Welford defended the system, saying the state's students consistently achieved above national benchmarks in the 3Rs at Years 3, 5 and 7.

But small-business leader Ian Baldock shares readers' frustrations. "We see far too many young people who simply cannot add up," said Mr Baldock, executive director of the Queensland Retail Traders and Shopkeepers Association. "Our members find young people often have no idea of basic arithmetic . . . some of these kids cannot string a sentence together."

Les Gomes, owner of Professional Tutoring Service, said maths and English tuition were in high demand: "I think it's the class sizes that's made it very difficult for students to get that individual attention." .... Just over a third (36 per cent) rated the performance of teachers as good or excellent, while 32 per cent said it was average and 13 per cent thought it was poor or worse.

Queensland Teachers Union president Steve Ryan said criticism of the curriculum was probably based more on perception than reality: "We believe we are preparing students well for work. "While it's important that children can spell and add up, the reality is that they have things like spellcheck, which can have an impact, and the curriculum is much broader than just the 3Rs."

Comments on the survey forms suggest many readers believe teachers face a struggle to teach effectively while battling misbehaviour. More than half (55 per cent) of respondents would like to see corporal punishment, banned in 1992, reintroduced.

Source

***************************

For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

Comments? Email me here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

***************************