"A lot of the backlash against affirmative action is based on fear and negative connotations attached to the term, not the idea. We cannot afford as a nation to take steps backward that limit individuals from achieving access to education, employment and their civil rights."
That's John Burnett, writing to the editor in today's Times about the Supreme Court's decision this week to uphold Michigan's ban on affirmative action in state universities (turns out most justices feel it's up to the states to decide, not the court).
Here we are 149 years after the abolition of slavery. And yet many of our students of color are still dependent on policies like affirmative action (or, as John Burnett's university prefers to call it, a diversity and inclusion plan) to get into college. Where affirmative action has been outlawed, like in California, numbers of black and Latino applicants has dropped significantly, especially at the most prestigious schools.
In an attempt to provide economic diversity on campus, many top universities have been looking at other kinds of data, such as family income or whether a student is the first to go to college. President Obama has also announced that getting more low-income students into college will be a priority for his administration.
We applaud any efforts to get underserved populations into higher education, but we also hope that these well-intended folk are analyzing what truly works to get them there: high-quality preschool, caring parents and guardians, development of character strengths like grit and curiosity, early and frequent discussions about college. (We cannot recommend highly enough Paul Tough's book, "How Children Succeed," a veritable anti-poverty and education primer which describes the research into and value of many of these approaches).
We are very taken with a program we just discovered called the Schuler Scholar Program, which selects promising 7th and 8th graders in underserved areas (mostly in Lake County, Ill.) and provides academic and social coaching all through high school, gets them admitted to elite schools like Harvard, Dartmouth and Pomona, then provides mentoring and more coaching all through college. So far, nearly 800 students have been chosen as Scholars.
That may very well be 800 more first-generation and low-income students who have gone or will go to elite schools than might not have attended at all.
