"Race-Neutral" Policies for College Admission May Reduce Minority Representation on California Campuses

Posted January 9, 2002
By News editor

Attempts to use "race-neutral" models in place of affirmative action to determine college admissions in California are likely to result in declining minority representation on most campuses, according to a new study released in a leading national education research journal by researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Boston College, and the University of Iowa.

The study's chief author Daniel Koretz and his colleagues used a simplified model of the University of California admissions process and real test scores to examine the impact of attempts to roll back affirmative action in postsecondary admissions on eight California campuses. Their report, "Testing and Diversity in Postsecondary Education: The Case of California," was released this week by the Education Policy Analysis Archives, an on-line research journal based in the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University.

"None of the alternative admissions models analyzed could replicate the composition of the student population that was in place before the termination of affirmative action in California," the study concluded. "Giving preference to students on the basis of other socioeconomic or demographic variables had only modest effects on the representation of black and Hispanic students; none that we examined brought minority students to proportional representation."

Impact on minority enrollment was greatest at schools with models based on the most-selective admission standards -- UCLA and Berkeley. But minority representation also declined at six other less-selective campuses within the UC System.

The study, which used data compiled from students who took the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) from 1995 to 1998, was conducted by Daniel Koretz and Cathy Horn of the Harvard Graduate School of Education; Michael Russell and Kelly Shasby of Boston College and Chingwei David Shin of the University of Iowa.

Daniel Koretz is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education whose research focuses on educational assessment, particularly as a tool of education policy, the effects of alternative systems of college admissions, new methods of evaluating progress in high-stakes testing programs, and the application of value-added methods to educational accountability. Koretz is a senior researcher with the Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST), a collaborative effort of several universities and research organizations funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

EPAA was founded in 1993 by Gene V Glass, Professor of Education at Arizona State University, who serves as the journal's editor. Editorial Board members include leading education policy researchers from the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Spain and Venezuela.

The Education Policy Studies Laboratory (EPSL) at ASU offers high quality analyses of national education policy issues and provides an analytical resource for educators, journalists, and citizens. The EPSL includes four specialized research units and the on-line journal Education Policy Analysis Archives. The research units conduct and coordinate original research in areas such as student performance standards, assessment, curriculum, commercialism in schools, and language policy issues. The EPSL and two of its research units are directed by Professor Alex Molnar of the ASU College of Education.