NJ Education Report

Today’s New York Times has an article on an affirmative action case that the U.S. Supreme Court will probably hear this term. In this case a white student from Texas, Abigail Fisher, says that the University of Texas denied her admission because of her race. A 2003 Supreme Court decision (Grutter vs. Bollinger, 5-4) held that public universities couldn’t use a quota system to ensure racial diversity, but they could take race into account, which is the system currently used in Texas. At the time of Grutter, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor predicted that the need for such considerations would last about 25 years.

Yet here we are, nine years later and the Court will decide whether any racial consideration discriminates against white students. Have we come such a long way that race is no longer relevant to pre-college academic achievement?

American colleges and universities have a long ignoble history of discrimination. Example: for many years selective school used rigorous academic tests to determine admissions. However, during the 1920’s and 1930’s, many East European Jews arrived in America and started getting into Ivy League Schools in disproportionate numbers. In 1925 Harvard discovered to its horror that Jews constituted 28% of its freshman class so it instituted a 15% quota, even requiring photos of applicants to order to weed out those with Semitic features. Yale restricted Jewish admissions to 10%. New Jersey’s own Princeton only had 3.6% of Jews in its 1924 freshman class, but decided that this was excessive and set a quota of 2%. (That’s one reason why my parents and all their friends went to Brooklyn College. No quota there!)

On the other hand, Princeton didn’t allow blacks in until 1945. Everything’s relative.

Here’s a question. If the Court rules that affirmative action based on race is unconstitutional (the Times article suggests that this may be the decision, especially since Justice Elena Kagan recused herself because she worked on this issue as a solicitor general), will the next step be to bar affirmative action based on socio-economic stature? After all, it’s not that hard to imagine a scenario where an Abigail Fisher argues that she is unfairly deprived of admission because she has wealthier parents than someone else who got additional considerations because of an impoverished background.

In other words, if colleges can’t use race as a way to ensure diversity on campuses, can they still cut kids from economically-deprived backgrounds a little slack because they lack the educational advantages of rich kids? And what about K-12 programs — not to mention the federal competition Race to the Top — that aspire to compensate children for the educational deprivations of poverty through intensive remediation and enrichment?

This question has particular resonance in New Jersey, where we remain the 4th or 5th (depending upon whom you ask) most segregated school system in America, not only by race but also by socio-economics. The recently released standardized test scores show that while there’s been some improvement in the achievement gap between minorities and white kids, the gap in achievement between poor and wealthier kids remains intractable.

Here’s Ed. Comm. Cerf’s discussion:

On the NJASK (New Jersey Assessment of Knowledge and Skills), the state test administered to students in grades 3-8 in math and language arts literacy (LAL), there is a significant proficiency gap between economically disadvantaged students – students eligible for free and reduced price lunch (FRPL) – and students not eligible for free and reduced price lunch (non-FRPL). In both subjects, this percentage point gap has remained relatively constant or has widened since 2005.

NJ’s segregation of poor students into different districts than wealthier students is merely an echo of our home rule charm/affliction, sometimes termed “municipal madness.” Remember, 566 municipalities and 591 school districts. For every wealthy school district (or town) there’s a poor one down the road, a pattern seen in every one of our 21 counties. In Burlington, rich kids might go to Moorestown High and poor kids might go to Willingboro High. In Camden County rich kids might go to Cherry Hill and poor kids go to Camden. In Essex County, there’s South Orange-Maplewood and East Orange. You get the idea.

New Jersey, despite its infrastructure of segregated public schools, is highly regarded for its own affirmative actions to promote equity and access. The list of both proposed and enacted governmental and legislative remedies is long: the School Funding Reform Act (which is supposed to adjust school aid based on wealth), our Abbott district preschool programs, the reorganization of the NJ DOE, Gov. Christie’s decision to focus charter school expansion on poor urban districts, the Interdistrict Public School Choice Program, the Opportunity Scholarship Act. All these initiatives are intended to expand access and resources for children who, by accident of zip code, are locked into failing school districts.

In fact, in spite of the recent vitriol spewing from both sides of the aisle in the Statehouse, we’re pretty much united by a shared conviction that kids from all sections of the socio-economic spectrum deserve access to high quality education and that our poorest kids — who are of minority backgrounds more often than not — need extra support and resources.*

Affirmative action doesn’t solve all NJ’s educational woes, but our poor kids would be far worse off without these measures. The Supreme Court can often circumscribe its decisions. Let’s hope that the Justices take a peek outside of First Street NE in D.C. before they start barring affirmative action.

*I’m intentionally ignoring Sen. Mike Doherty’s bone-headed “fair school funding” bill, which is fair as long your parents are rich.