Rotten Education Isn't Preordained

Walter E. Williams
 
Black politicians, civil rights leaders and their white liberal advocates have little or no interest in doing anything effective to deal with what’s no less than an education crisis among black students. In city after city with large black populations, such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., less than 10% of students test proficient in reading and math. For example, in 2016, in 13 Baltimore high schools, not a single student tested proficient in math. In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient in math. Citywide, only 15% of Baltimore students passed the state’s English test. Despite these academic deficiencies, about 70% of the students graduate and are conferred a high school diploma.

Ballou High School is in Washington, D.C. Five percent of its students test proficient in reading and 1% test proficient in math. In 2017, all 189 students in Ballou High School’s senior class applied to college. All 189 members of the graduating class of 2017 were accepted to universities. In November 2017, an investigation showed that half of Ballou’s 2017 graduates had more than three months of unexcused absences. One in five of the graduating class was absent more than present, therefore missing more than 90 days of school.

Examples of academic underachievement can be seen at predominantly black public schools across the nation, but that’s only part of the story. The strangest part of this is that poor academic performance is accepted and tolerated by black politicians, civil rights organizations and white liberals. Poor performance is often blamed on finances; however, the poorest performing schools have the highest per pupil spending. New York, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore rank among the nation’s highest in per pupil educational spending.

The underachievement story is compounded by the gross dishonesty of colleges that admit many of these students. I cannot imagine that students who are not proficient in reading and math can do real college work. In a futile attempt to make up for 12 years of rotten education, colleges put these students in remedial courses. They also design courses with little or no true academic content. Colleges have their own agendas. They want the money that comes from admitting these students. Also, they want to make their diversity and multiculturalism administrators happy.

Poor black education is not preordained. Dr. Thomas Sowell has examined schools in New York City and student performance on the NY State English Language Arts Test in 2016-17. Thirty percent of Brooklyn’s William Floyd elementary school third graders scored well below proficient in English and language arts, but at Success Academy charter school in the same building, only one did. At William Floyd, 36% were below proficient, with 24% being proficient and none testing above proficient. By contrast, at Success Academy, only 17% of third graders were below proficient, with 70% being proficient and 11% being above proficient. Among Success Academy’s fourth graders, 51% and 43%, respectively, scored proficient and above proficient, while their William Floyd counterparts scored 23% and 6%, respectively. Similar high performance can be found in some other Manhattan charter schools such as KIPP Infinity Middle School.

Liberals tell us that racial integration is a necessary condition for black academic excellence. Public charter schools such as those mentioned above belie that vision. Sowell points out that only 39% of students in all New York state schools who were recently tested scored at the “proficient” level in math, but 100% of the students at the Crown Heights Success Academy tested proficient where blacks and Hispanics constitute 90% of the student body.

There’s little question that many charter schools provide superior educational opportunities for black youngsters. The New York Times wrote, “Over 100,000 students in hundreds of the city’s charter schools are doing well on state tests, and tens of thousands of children are on waiting lists for spots.” But here’s New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s take on charter schools, expressing the interests of the education establishment: “Get away from high-stakes testing, get away from charter schools. No federal funding for charter schools.”

Black people cannot afford to buy into any attack on education alternatives. Charter schools across the nation offer a way out of the educational abyss.

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Testing Affirmative Action

Even though Harvard won the first round in its battle with Students for Fair Admissions, a case challenging the university’s affirmative action policy, the judge did not address the deep and difficult issues that racial preferences involve. For lawyers and judges who will grapple with this issue in the future, we would like to advance some new ideas based on empirical research on the evaluation process.

The Supreme Court has said repeatedly that racial discrimination by the government is permissible only to meet a “compelling state interest.” Beginning with the Bakke case in 1978, the Court said that the educational benefits of a racially diverse student body could be a compelling interest.

In 2013, in its first encounter with Fisher v. University of Texas, the Court reiterated the educational value of diversity because it may produce “enhanced classroom dialogue and the lessening of racial isolation and stereotypes.”

However, the Court found that the lower courts hadn’t analyzed the university’s claims closely enough. It sent the case back for the lower courts “to determine whether the university had proved “that its plan is narrowly tailored to achieve the educational benefits that flow from diversity.”

The lower courts decided that UT had made such a showing, and in Fisher II (2016), the Supreme Court accepted that finding by a 4-3 vote. It repeated that the standard of review in racial preference cases is strict scrutiny, which “requires the university to demonstrate with clarity that…its use of [a racial] classification is necessary…to the accomplishment of its purpose.’”

And it further stated that “no deference is owed when determining whether the use of race is narrowly tailored to achieve the university’s permissible goals.” Merely “asserting an interest in the educational benefits of diversity writ large is insufficient. A university’s goals cannot be elusory or amorphous—they must be sufficiently measurable to permit judicial scrutiny of the policies adopted to reach them.”

A university that employs racial preferences therefore has a continuing duty “to identify the effects, both positive and negative, of the affirmative-action measures it deems necessary.” Each university that grants racial preferences has a heavy burden of proving that its program actually does produce such benefits.

We want to help courts objectively determine (1) whether universities’ affirmative action programs do produce such benefits, and (2) to what extent race is actually used in the admission decision process. George Dent is a professor of law and Hal Arkes is an expert in the field of judgment and decision-making (“JDM”). We employed knowledge from our fields to see whether the race preferences in admissions at UT and other universities currently satisfy the Supreme Court’s demand for proof that they are “narrowly tailored to achieve the educational benefits that flow from diversity.” We contend that they do not.

The JDM literature on evaluation distinguishes between holistic ratings and disaggregated ratings. As an example, the Olympic ice skating competition was once judged using two criteria: presentation and technical merit, each criterion being judged on a 1 to 6 scale. Because each criterion was scored separately, this scheme is termed “disaggregated.”

In such schemes, the disaggregated scores are combined to yield a final score. For example, each disaggregated rating could first be multiplied by a weight to indicate the importance the Olympic committee gave it, and the two resulting products could be added together. If the judges instead provided only a single score that took into account both criteria, the process would be “holistic.”

The University of Texas used a holistic “Personal Achievement Score” (PAS) to evaluate applicants. A reader assigns each applicant a single score based on the applicant’s potential contributions to the student body, including

the applicant’s leadership experience, extracurricular activities, awards/honors, community service, and other “special circumstances.” “Special circumstances” include the socioeconomic status of the applicant’s family, the socioeconomic status of the applicant’s school, the applicant’s family responsibilities, whether the applicant lives in a single-parent home, the applicant’s SAT score in relation to the average SAT score at the applicant’s school, the language spoken at the applicant’s home, and, finally, the applicant’s race.

Two important results from the JDM literature are as follows: (1) Disaggregated ratings generally make much more accurate predictions than do holistic ratings, even when the holistic ratings are done by experts; (2) Because it is so difficult to articulate accurately how much influence one has placed on each component of a holistic rating, disaggregating a holistic rating into its components will reveal precisely how much each component is responsible for a university’s admission decision.

The transparency of disaggregated analyses contrasts with the opacity of UT’s process. If a reader of an applicant’s file gives a PAS rating of 4, for example, it is impossible to know the basis for that rating. Was the work experience particularly influential to that rating? Perhaps it was the applicant’s race. With disaggregated ratings, it becomes easy to ascertain if race is merely a “factor of a factor of a factor” or is instead the dominating factor in university admissions decisions. We urge that judges in racial preference admission cases should insist that the university submit disaggregated ratings for scrutiny.

A method that many universities offer to show the educational benefits of student diversity are “self-report” studies. That is, they ask students if they learn better in racially diverse classes. Most students report that they do. The JDM literature shows, however, that self-report studies are of little or no value.

Each university that grants racial preferences has a heavy burden of proving that its program actually does produce such benefits.

For example, even the most naive undergraduate who takes the seven-week regimen at the University of Michigan’s Intergroup Relations, Conflict, and Community Program stressing the benefits of diversity will definitely know whether to endorse this self-report item: “The University’s emphasis on diversity fosters more group divisions than understanding.” Such “evidence” is not a good measure of the benefits of diversity.

On the other hand, it would not be difficult for a university to measure the true educational effects of diversity. It could simply run a course with multiple sections with different levels of racial diversity, give students from all sections the same tests, and see whether students in the racially diverse sections performed substantially better. Since improved classroom discussion is one supposed benefit of diversity, sessions of each section could be recorded and then rated by disinterested evaluators for the quality of discussion.

Remember that the burden is on the university to show “that its plan is narrowly tailored to achieve the educational benefits that flow from diversity.” Courts should require universities to conduct serious studies and produce concrete evidence of actual educational benefits from their racial preferences in admissions. Unsupported claims that diversity promotes cross-racial understanding and breaks down stereotypes should not suffice.

The Supreme Court has held that courts must strictly scrutinize systems that give preferences to people based on their race. We believe that in doing that, judges need to insist on disaggregated data and evidence that the school has truly proven that “diverse” classrooms lead to better education. So far, they have not. There is no excuse for this failure.

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BC intends to hold classes on campus, as other colleges wrestle with decisions on fall semester

Boston College intends to resume classes on campus this fall, school officials said Tuesday, becoming one of the larger universities in the area to announce plans to bring students back amid the coronavirus outbreak.

The news came as Boston University disclosed that it faces a budget shortfall of between $70 million and $150 million and will suspend contributions to employee retirement accounts for the next year. It is also considering furloughs and layoffs, president Bob Brown told the school.

Higher education officials across the country are struggling with how to conduct classes, and are asking faculty to prepare for multiple scenarios and sweating over predictions that the COVID-19 crisis could decimate their finances.

“This is painful," Brown wrote to BU faculty and staff. "It is not my desire to balance the budget by reducing the workforce, but it may well have to be part of the plan we put in place to protect the university’s future.”

The financial toll on universities is expected to be significant during the next academic year, even if they are able to bring most of their students back to campus. Money-making conferences and events have been canceled, and institutions must invest in coronavirus testing kits and safety equipment and increase the cleaning of dormitories and classrooms. If some or all of their students study from home this fall, colleges will lose money on room and board.

Brown said canceling retirement contributions will save the university $84 million in the upcoming fiscal year.

BU is developing plans for both in-person and online classes but hasn’t made a decision yet on how undergraduates, specifically, will start the fall semester. The university is uncertain about how many students will enroll, which is adding to its budgetary worries.

“We are a tuition-dependent institution; our ability to maintain our financial health will depend on the number of students who actually enroll in the fall and spring,” Brown said.

Boston College president William Leahy, meanwhile, couched his announcement about the reopening in caution, saying that administrators will continue to review the situation in coming months, but that the plan is for classes to resume on campus on Aug. 31.

“In its long history, Boston College has had to deal with a range of serious issues, including the Great Depression, two World Wars, and the attacks of September 11. Our university has already responded to the coronavirus with grace, generosity, and commitment; and I remain confident that it will continue to do so in the months and year ahead,” Leahy wrote.

Boston College had about 400 students remain on campus this spring after most others returned home in mid-March, according to college spokesman Jack Dunn. Many were international students who could not return home due to travel restrictions. That situation became an unexpected exercise in how to operate a campus safely during the pandemic, he said. Administrators learned how to create social distancing in the dining facilities, sanitize bathrooms and common areas in dorms, and use technology for meetings, Dunn said.

Leahy said the college’s health services department has already developed testing and isolation procedures in response to the virus and officials plan to continue to refine plans and policies as the fall draws near, particularly around contact tracing and treatment. The school has about 14,600 undergraduate and graduate students.

Michael Serazio, a communications professor at BC, greeted the news with relief. “I’m desperately clinging to that hope that we can have the students back on campus in fall,” he said Tuesday.

Serazio said the unprecedented switch to online education reminded him how much is lost when people are far apart.

“The energy, the conversation, the inspiration that takes place in a room together is essential, I think, to teaching and learning,” he said.

Marilynn Johnson, a history professor, said she is gearing up for a long summer of planning, because the college has asked its faculty to be prepared to teach online or in person. There is also a possibility, she said, that the semester would begin in person but end online, if cases of the virus spike again.

“Like most of the faculty, we’re concerned about what that planning involves,” Johnson said, adding that she expects more guidance from the administration over the summer.

One big question is Thanksgiving break, when students normally return home and, even in good times, often bring germs back to campus. Notre Dame University announced this week that it will open its campus this fall but start two weeks early so that students will not need to return after Thanksgiving.

In the fall, Johnson is teaching two classes of about 15 students each, one on violence in American history and the other about the history of social movements. She hopes they can meet in classrooms that hold twice that many people, so everyone can spread out.

“That wouldn’t be something that I would be terribly worried about, unless the virus really takes off again,” Johnson said.

Some of her colleagues plan to continue to teach online, she said, due to health concerns for them or their families.

Across the country universities are developing plans for the fall, though few have announced definitive decisions about whether students will be able to return on campus.

The California state university announced earlier this month that it would hold fall classes online.

University of Massachusetts Amherst chancellor Kumble R. Subbaswamy told students on Tuesday that he expected the classes to be a combination of online and in-person.

The campus, which enrolls more than 28,000 students, is trying to figure out how many students can safely be housed in the dorms and attend classes in person, while meeting the public health requirements, Subbaswamy said.

The university is looking at a variety of options, including whether to bring freshmen and seniors back — or perhaps those students who need to take laboratory or studio classes and must have access to equipment. The campus will likely have to be transformed and dining services may be offered outside in the early fall or students will have to manage with bagged meals to avoid congregating inside, Subbaswamy said.

Some UMass Amherst officials are working on proposals for how to ensure that students socialize safely at night and on the weekends, while other departments are ordering plexiglass to curtail the spread of germs, he said.

Among other area schools, the president of Northeastern is planning for students to return to campus in the fall, but the school will enact a range of new policies to help protect students and faculty from the virus, he has said.

Other schools have tentatively come to different conclusions. For instance, Cape Cod Community College has said its entire fall semester will be online. Others are still wrestling with the decision.

Will Holmes, a parent of an incoming freshman at Boston College, said Tuesday’s announcement was good news.

His son has spent the final weeks of his senior year of high school online and the prospect of starting college that way was daunting, said Holmes, who grew up in the Boston area, but now lives in California.

Holmes said he does not think BC would announce a plan to bring students to campus in the fall if it were not possible, but also understands that the situation might change by August.

"Fingers crossed that it ends up working out and it’s the smart thing to do," Holmes said.

But Timmy Facciola, who graduated this month from the college, said he is skeptical that BC can safely reopen.

Facciola said he is watching Harvard, a trend-setter in higher education, which has said it is preparing for many, if not all, of its classes to be delivered remotely in the fall.

“I think maybe BC was trying to just chime in and make an update and they know they can’t make a decision now,” he said. “I don’t think it’s the last call.”

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