EXTRA! EXTRA! Did ETS Suppress Research About Class-Based Diversity?

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning that a prominent education researcher and former vice president of the Educational Testing Service charges that ETS suppressed promising research that would have allowed colleges to achieve greater diversity without considering race or ethnicity.

Anthony P. Carnevale, a former vice president for assessment, equity, and careers at ETS, says he and other ETS researchers concluded in the summer of 1999 that it was theoretically possible for selective colleges to maintain or increase their black and Hispanic enrollments without giving extra consideration to applicants based on their ethnicity or race.

The researchers had developed a formula for using students’ background data to identify “strivers” — those who had overcome adversity to an impressive extent — and had fine-tuned the formula to a point where it showed the promise of producing larger black and Hispanic enrollments at selective colleges than were being obtained through race-conscious admissions, Mr. Carnevale says.

Mr. Carnevale alleges that College Board officials put pressure on ETS to squelch the entire “striver” line of research, mainly because they did not like how it added a new layer to the interpretation of SAT scores and feared that it would give federal courts reason to question colleges’ need for race-conscious admissions policies. The researchers never got a chance to determine conclusively — and then demonstrate to ETS and the College Board — that they had found what they were looking for: a way to achieve racial and ethnic diversity at selective colleges without using affirmative action.

College Board and ETS officials, or at least some of them, deny these charges; Mr. Carnevale and his supporters respond to these denials; and so you should read the whole article in order to weigh the charges and replies for yourself. It is quite clear, however, that Carnevale’s research was opposed by those who saw it as a threat to racial preferences.

At a March 2000 meeting involving representatives of ETS and various higher-education associations and civil-rights groups, it became clear that many on hand were concerned about what impact the striver research might have on the battles over affirmative action in higher education that were being fought in the federal courts. The flagship universities of Georgia, Michigan, Texas, and Washington had all been made the targets of lawsuits challenging their race-conscious admissions policies, and the fear was that the U.S. Supreme Court, which seemed destined to review one of the cases, would strike down such policies if it was convinced that viable race-neutral alternatives were available.

“There were concerns about a backlash use of the study,” Nancy S. Cole, who was then president of ETS, recalled this week.

As a result, the research was cut off at the knees and killed. Interesting that an admissions formula that could have produced racial and ethnic diversity without racial and ethnic preferences was, and is, regarded as a “backlash.”

Interesting, but not surprising, since it is clear that the leaders of the race industry are not really interested in diversity and not really interested in rewarding high-achieving “strivers” regardless of race.

Theodore M. Shaw, who attended the meeting as associate director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (and who is now the organization’s president), said, “I know what my concerns were then because they would be my concerns now.” He said that “class inequality and race inequality are not completely identical issues,” and because even many black students from upper-income families lag behind their white peers, he fears that the replacement of race-based affirmative action with class-based affirmative action would result in many such black students’ being shut out of selective colleges.

“In absolute numbers,” Mr. Shaw noted this week, “there are more poor white students in this country than there are poor black students.”

At least Shaw is forthright. As we’ve seen here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, he’s interested in finding and rewarding disadvantaged “strivers” whom conventional assessment methods overlook only if they’re black. He wants even blacks who are not disadvantaged and who are not particularly good students (“many black students from upper-income families lag behind their white peers”) given preference over whites, Asians, etc., who are disadvantaged and who are better students.

Welcome to the new “civil rights” movement.

Say What? (3)

  1. Chetly Zarko November 2, 2006 at 12:51 pm | | Reply

    Important “news”, but not really surprising or new.

    I have good information that LSAC has done the same regarding law school data. I’m certain Dr. Richard Sander encountered data access problems from them as well. There was also good data from UC-Berkeley undergrad as early as 1990, I believe, that never got pursued (until Prop 209). And of course there is the Gurin-U-Michigan data withholding.

  2. David Sklenar November 15, 2006 at 2:02 am | | Reply

    I’m not surprised at the ETS’ and College Board’s unwillingness to promote this promising method. The SAT, as well as the entire AP curriculum, posses certain race and gender biases which often times prevent minorities from pursuing higher education. Something needs to change.

  3. Southerngal November 15, 2006 at 12:51 pm | | Reply

    You people are hypocrites. First you claim you want admissions based on uniform merits, now you support research on strivers who still have lower test scores and grades but have overcome adversity. You only support whatever brings down the house of affirmative action even when it contradicts your own arguments

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