The 10 Percent Solution: 'Diversity' trumps Academic Preparation

June 16, 2004

Recently both Joanne Jacobs and Kimberly Swygert have weighed in on the topic of the "talented tenth."

Seems in Texas (and California and Florida) the powers-that-be decided to have a race-neutral university admissions policy--designed to nonetheless improve 'Diversity'--by accepting the top 10% of any high school class in the state, regardless of rigor.

While some folks say it's a success ('Diversity' is achieved), others say deserving students are shut out. Top-tier students in highly competitive schools, who are in the top quartile (but not the top decile) of their class, are effectively outranked by students with lesser qualifications who graduate at the top of their class at less competetive high schools.

We think the plan stinks.

Our objections are twofold: we oppose it on principle and in practice.

Flawed in Principle
As a matter of principle, we don't like to see the push for capital-d 'Diversity' affect any policy decision. Exactly what is 'Diversity' and why is it more important than more valid measures of academic preparation? Try as they might, the critics have failed to find any racial bias in standardized tests such as the SAT or the ACT or AP exams.

Yet none of these reliable measures matter when all one needs to do is look at class rank, which is a nice local metric, but meaningless as soon as you step outside the high school's front door. It is quite possible--and in our experience, likely--that the bottom-of-the-barrel of one elite school's graduating class bests the valedictorian at a lousy one.

It's a classic case of comparing apples to oranges. Even though we're comparing "Grade-A Fancy" apples to "Florida's Best" oranges, it makes the comparison no more valid.

Doomed to Fail in Practice
In the practical sense, we have intimate experience a number of lower-performing schools. Hypothetically, the top ten percent of students from these schools would be welcomed into the state university with open arms, even though I wonder about their chances in Community College, let alone a school like the University of Texas at Austin.

Why our pessimism? Simple, we just looked at how few students are considered "proficient" in math and reading. At one particular school, two percent were considered proficient in math in the latest round of testing.

Yes, that's two, as in "the integer less than three." Might we point out that two is a single digit number? Which means, in this case, that an additional eight percent would be welcomed into the university system, no questions asked?

And these students would be whisked away to compete on a "level playing field" with the best of the best from schools like Texas's equivalent of Groton or Exeter. Meanwhile, back at Groton and Exeter, the hapless schlubs only at the 89 percentile have been turned away.

The Bottom Line
The push for 'Diversity' which neglects valid measures of academic preparation is not only unfair to legitimately-qualified students, but it also dooms other artificially-boosted students to a grim "educational" experience (namely, failing out of a really good school).

This second group of students is most certainly largely made of blacks and hispanics, who get shafted (yet again) by the well-meaning plans of the annointed.