OPINION & EDITORIAL
The pitfalls of holistic admissions
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Also by Mike Hahn:
- Recent polls reveal... absolutely nothing (December 4, 2007)
- 'Right to bear arms' stands up to scrutiny (November 27, 2007)
- Democrats play dangerous game (November 20, 2007)
- The pitfalls of holistic admissions (November 13, 2007)
Related Stories:
- UW's lack of diversity result of poor public schools (March 15, 2007)
- The race for System diversity (September 4, 2006)
- UW admissions policy lacks transparency (February 6, 2007)
- We need a second opinion (February 13, 2007)
- Education system fails black pupils (October 8, 2007)
by Mike Hahn
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
In a column I wrote last semester I referred to the new UW holistic admissions policy as racist. I think that the policy adopted by the Board of Regents seeks to solve a legitimate problem — a lack of diversity on UW System campuses — but does so without addressing any of the underlying causes of why minority students in Wisconsin are unprepared for college.
According to recently released U.S. Department of Education statistics, black and Hispanic students in Wisconsin have the lowest reading test scores in the United States. To make matters worse, the achievement gap between white and minority students is also the highest in the nation.
Why is the achievement gap so vast? Well, it is really for a number of reasons. In Milwaukee, for example, the Milwaukee Public Schools' graduation rate ranks among the lowest in the nation. According to the Manhattan Institute, the graduation rate from MPS high schools ranked 95th out of the 100 largest school districts in the nation, with a paltry 45 percent of students graduating. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction statistics put the 2003 MPS graduation rate slightly higher at 61 percent, a meager statistic nonetheless.
What do any of those statistics have to do with holistic admissions? Plenty.
While the Board of Regents has time and time again asserted that the new admissions policy looks at race as only a small part of an applicant's overall readiness for college, it is unquestionable that the effect of holistic admissions will be an immediate increase in the number of black and Hispanic students in the UW System. Rather than focusing on the reasons minority students are not better represented in the UW System — namely lower graduation rates and much lower basic reading skills — the regents decided to take a superficial and ultimately ineffective approach to the situation.
The goal of the Board of Regents, and many other well-intentioned people, is to fix the surface problem of a lack of diversity in our public universities and then pat themselves on the back for making the UW System "look" more like the state of Wisconsin or the nation in its racial makeup. As I have said before, if the regents were serious about improving diversity in the UW System, they would be working with the state DPI and MPS and other school districts with large minority enrollment to help close the achievement gap and actually prepare minority students for college.
Let's face a very serious truth: If our schools are failing to educate minority students, changing admissions policies will not help minority students succeed in college. On the contrary, guaranteeing that more minority students will enter the UW System without a similar guarantee that those same students will actually be leaving high school with the skills necessary to succeed at the collegiate level is irresponsible at the least.
While it is true that the holistic admissions criteria still include academic proficiency, it is also true that those measures are weighted the same as race combined with other factors. Given the new standards used to determine admission into the UW System, it is not unreasonable to assume students who are ill-prepared for college will be or have been accepted. This is a major problem for the state.
The whole issue of the holistic admissions policy is emblematic of another phenomenon in education: namely "social promotion." We all know what this practice is: passing along students who aren't really ready for the next level of education because we don't want to hurt their self-esteems and so they can be with their friends. This practice doesn't help the struggling student and ultimately hurts the entire class as time is spent helping the student who should be a grade behind instead of teaching the next lesson to the students who are ready. Yes, this sounds a bit harsh, and I know that it is not easy to for some people to hear, but can you honestly say what we are doing now is working?
We have a public school system in Wisconsin that fails to teach minority students how to read. If they are failing the exact same tests that their white peers are passing in other school districts, something has gone terribly wrong. Sadly, I don't have some magic answer as to how to fix the crisis. The state mandates that reading specialists be hired in all 426 school districts across the state — the only instructional position that is mandated, by the way — yet the achievement gap only gets worse. Should we spend more money on K-12 education? I doubt very much that will help if we don't first identify the root cause of why minorities in our state are so far behind academically.
The problem going forward isn't that holistic admissions alone are racist. The problem is that it seeks to solve a problem — the fact that minorities in Wisconsin are not accepted into college — in the most superficial and damaging way possible: by simply changing the standards. Once again the state has effectively turned a blind eye to the issue of a racial achievement gap in our public schools. It's not necessarily that the regents or other state leaders — such as Gov. Doyle, Speaker Huebsch and Sen. Decker — don't care enough about minorities, it's that to do anything substantive about the issue requires some frank and honest discussion about race and culture in the United States, and for many politicians, that's just not a subject they are willing to touch.
And that's a shame, because the longer we put this discussion off the worse the achievement gap will get and the more kids we will condemn to a cycle of poverty and underachievement.
Mike Hahn (mhahn@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in history and political science.
Anonymous (November 13, 2007 @ 1:32am):
You realize nearly every peer instiution of this school uses holistic admissions? And don't you think it cheapens the discourse to have a stereotypical left vs right debate on the matter? In fact, very few conservatives oppose holistic admissions. Rather, it is popular to critique race based admissions/quotas, not allowing a school to admit a few extra oboe players or 6'7 centers.
Anonymous (November 13, 2007 @ 8:33am):
Mike,
Once again you're a breath of fresh air in an otherwise pedestrian paper. The problem is at the K-12 level, not at the UW System level. To admit students who are much more likely to fail here is counterproductive for those students and for the students who would have otherwise been admitted. It's time to have a completely race-blind admissions policy here at UW.
Anonymous (November 13, 2007 @ 8:57am):
What exactly is a "lack of diversity?" Do we need to be surrounded by multiple skin tones to have a complete education?
Without white-tan, tan, dark tan, and brown, I just cannot get my mind to focus. Thank you for the diversity in pigmentation.
Personally, I think Madison should consider upping the quota on red heads. The ginger kids are not well represented.
Anonymous (November 13, 2007 @ 9:30am):
"The problem is that it seeks to solve a problem -- the fact that minorities in Wisconsin are not accepted into college -- in the most superficial and damaging way possible: by simply changing the standards."
-Well said. It is completely riddiculous that a minority student that struggled in high school, does not come close to the academic standards, and is prone to possible failure can be accepted. There are plenty of applications of students meeting all academic criteria, whether black, white, green, yello, or tan, those are the students that should be accepted. This is a school, academics should decide admissions, not skin color.
And to the 8:57 post - you made my day.
Oliver Kiefer (November 13, 2007 @ 10:16am):
I would disagree that holistic admissions don't have a place in determining who gets accepted to this university, but I think that Mr. Hahn is absolutely correct in noting that the problem with diversity on campus starts in K-12 education.
On holistic admissions, I have to point out that the policy isn't just about race. I got into this university based on the holistic admissions policy, and I'm a middle-class white kid from Madison. Holistic admissions helped me because although my GPA and class rank weren't the best, I had a number of extra-curriculars that demonstrated leadership and community service. All of that is considered with holistic admissions, and in my opinion should play an equal factor to grades.
On the issue of dropout rates, etc. I find it refreshing to hear a prominent voice of the Republican Party on campus talking about the need to fix the funding of public education in our state. Mr. Hahn notes that, "I doubt very much that will help if we don't first identify the root cause of why minorities in our state are so far behind academically."
But Mr. Hahn has already identified the problem in this very column. Reading, and most specifically 3rd grade reading scores, are the most telling statistic of future graduation rates. The Dept. of Corrections even uses 3rd grade reading test scores to predict how many incarcerations our state will see in the next decade. That's how strong the correlation is.
Bottom line: If a kid is reading at grade level in 3rd grade, they are significantly more likely to graduate high school and significantly less likely to commit a felony.
Now that we've addressed the problem, we need to find a solution. The good news here is that the solution has also already been found.
Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) is a program that was started ten years ago in Wisconsin. It provides grants for schools to lower class sizes in core academic subject areas (reading, math, etc.) to a ratio of no more than 15:1. Read that again, no classes with more than 15 students.
We all hear that small class sizes are important to learning, but has SAGE really worked? In fact it has. And for which demographic has SAGE had the biggest impact? African American males.
All of this data (and there is a plethora of it) is available on the Dept. of Public Instruction's website. If you have some time, I suggest that you check it out.
It seems to me as though we have identified the REAL problem with our lack of diversity, and we have found a SOLUTION that has made a measurable impact. The issue now is adequately funding this proven program. Unfortunately, the Republicans in the Assembly don't seem to want to make this investment in Wisconsin's future.
I can only hope that 2008 will bring people to the legislature who want to fully fund SAGE in all K-3 classrooms across Wisconsin. It's time to end our war on public education, it's time to move forward again. We have the tools to do it, will the Assembly make it happen?
Anonymous (November 13, 2007 @ 10:35am):
Why should and institution of higher learning even try to revamp its admissions policies to make up for the shortcomings of K-12 schools. That is where the problem starts, not at the collegiate level. If you can't get them to succeed in 6th grade, how could you expect them to graduate high school, let alone go to college?
Anonymous (November 13, 2007 @ 11:57am):
Too bad there isn't some way to determine one's learning potential outside of their previous academic success. IQ tests are somewhat subjective, but they could at least give the most likely successful students the shot that they deserve.
Just being black does not mean that K-12 let you down or that the man disadvantaged you. You might just have to look in the mirror and accept that you're dumb as a rock, just like the white kids who couldn't get in.
Anonymous (November 13, 2007 @ 1:39pm):
While Mr. Hahn admirably draws attention to the disparities of the K-12 system, he fails to raise such an obvious point: Public education is "failing" students because it relies on standardized tests.
Most standardized tests are reading-based scantron exams, because these are the easiest to administer and score. Since they require a minimal level of reading, they cannot be administered until a child has (supposedly) reached a 3rd grade level.
For all the disputes over education, no critic is going to argue that the ages of 5-8 are a critical time for the development of reading skills. To catch the students that are falling behind in developing them, we need a more comprehensive methods of evaluation, rather than a bubble sheet that tells us what we suspected once it's already too late.
Erik (November 13, 2007 @ 2:11pm):
Thank you, it needed to be said.
Michael Johnson (November 13, 2007 @ 3:00pm):
I find it funny that everyone posting assumes that Madison is just accepting anyone. We all know Madison does not accept 2.5 GPAs and 16 on the ACT, so why does Hahn and the people posting here think they do? Just your usually conservative scare tactics on race in higher education.I mean out of nearly 42 thousand students, only 500 are African American, and at best maybe 150 are from Wisconsin. Yet Hahn would have you believe black and brown students make up 75 percent of the campus! For anyone who keeps up with the news, you should check the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel articles about Fortune 500 companies recruiters leaving UW because the student body is not diverse enough to meet the growing unique needs of their customers, as well as a study showing how even though minority admission has increased at UW, UWM and Marquette overall minority enrollment is down.(And for all you UW students pay close attention to your arch rivals at Marquette, because even with higher tuition, and being a Jesuit private university, they have higher minority enrollment than UW and UWM the state's largest public universities.) Also look into a scandal a few years back here at UW, when a black student sued UW for using his likeness in ads for the school. I mean come on, they added him all over a picture of Camp Randall to make it seem like the school is more diverse than it actually is!
I do give him credit for bringing up that:
"I doubt very much that will help if we don't first identify the root cause of why minorities in our state are so far behind academically."
Yet anyone who walks into a classroom anywhere in America knows exactly why, but Hahn, being the conservative he is, will not say the obvious as it would effect all his other political views. We need smaller class sizes, which means we need more teachers, which means we need more money. But because of the Nassian views on education that conservatives take, that likely wont happen in the foreseeable future. Also, lets remember, bad education is a by product of poverty, not a by product of being a minority. I wouldn't be surprised if Hahn's next article is about cutting funding for public schools.
Anonymous (November 13, 2007 @ 3:16pm):
I disagree with Oliver on the use of holistic admissions, but he's right on about the importance of strong support for K-3 education. And this is coming from a staunch conservative.
Mike Hahn (November 13, 2007 @ 5:00pm):
Mr. Johnson,
If you were to actually go back and actually read my article I have absolutely no problem with minorities being admitted to the University. The holistic admissions policy as it is set up will bring in a greater number of minority students than before and I have no particular problem with that. It is quite disturbing really that you would insinuate that I and my fellow conservatives are somehow fearful of increasing minority enrollment in the UW System.
The truth is that I do want to see an increase in the number of minority students in the UW System, but not because admissions standards have been changed. My goal in writing this column was to address the fact that our public school system is failing our minority students in Wisconsin. That is the reason we have such low numbers in the UW System, not a formerly racist or biased admissions policy.
I also disagree that simply lowering the class size will work to fix the current problem. It may indeed be part of the equation, but we also need to address other factors that are preventing students from learning. Finally, I have never advocated the defunding of education. My hesitation in increasing spending isn't that I am hostile to education it's that I want to ensure that the money being spent is spent in an effective way that increases our students' ability to learn.
Anonymous (November 13, 2007 @ 5:39pm):
The problem is not that minorities are not getting accepted into UW schools, the problem is that minorities are not *applying* to UW schools. Highschool dropouts from Milwaukee public schools are probably not going to even make the effort to apply to college. Affirmative action does not entail accepting students who never apply; the students who do apply are, black or white, much more closely related to each other than to highschool dropouts in terms of academic achievement. Affirmative action draws minorities from a pool of applicants who are otherwise similar and could easily be decided by the flip of a coin (yes, college admissions *can* be quite arbirtray).
We absolutely must improve our public schools, but that does not directly apply to the issue of affirmative action.
Anonymous (November 13, 2007 @ 6:37pm):
'Public education is "failing" students because it relies on standardized tests.'
The students, and their parents, are failing to give a damn. They care more about flashy sneakers than homework.
Anonymous (November 13, 2007 @ 7:17pm):
Mr. Hahn,
While I agree that increasing the performance of Wisconsin public schools at the K-12 levels is essential to increasing equality in our society, I see absolutely no reason that this should be the exclusive remedy. Your piece jumps from 'increased performance from K-12 is important' to 'increased performance in the public schools is the only remedy and holistic admissions are futile' without any legitimate explanation.
Just because k-12 education needs to be fixed doesn't mean that holistic admissions doesn't have a place in the process as well.
You speculate that students admitted to the university through these more flexible standards aren't prepared, and insinuate their presence at the university will be detrimental to other students. How single-minded and self-interested. First, you offer nothing but a vague anecdote to support the idea that letting in students based on something more than pure academic standards "hurt[s] the entire class." Second, it appears to never even cross your mind that students admitted under such standards may bring benefits to the university as a whole.
The failure of the elementary education in this state is no excuse to not explore other options. When the reader subtracts your worthwhile comments on funding K-12 education, they are left with nothing but a hollow opposition to holistic admissions.
Michael Johnson (November 13, 2007 @ 9:44pm):
Mr Hahn,
Forgive me if made a blanket generalization regarding conservatives and education, but it would seem that the conservative stand on education is fairly narrow minded towards admission evolution. I don't believe holistic admissions allows for under qualified students to being accepted, i think those admissions practices allow for a wider range of life experiences and educational practices to be admitted to American universities and honestly i don't think anyone thinks that UW is racist, possible just narrow minded in its understanding of the entire education spectrum that high school students possess. Personally, I don't think that conservatives will accept any fundamental change in public education, and will always find some odd reason why not to fund public education, and instead push for more choice schooling. There was an article this past Sunday in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the failures of choice and a study from the right leaning Wisconsin Policy Institute supporting that position. It might be worth a read. Finally, please just call a spade a spade, and admit that poverty is causing the education system to falter, because of a lack of jobs, resources, and fathers to instill discipline, and stop saying we need to find the culprit for poor education when it's staring you in the face.
Oliver Kiefer (November 14, 2007 @ 1:07am):
"It may indeed be part of the equation, but we also need to address other factors that are preventing students from learning. Finally, I have never advocated the defunding of education. My hesitation in increasing spending isn't that I am hostile to education it's that I want to ensure that the money being spent is spent in an effective way that increases our students' ability to learn."
Mike - the SAGE program (15:1 class sizes) works. Ask the CIO of the MMSD, ask the people at DPI who look at these numbers daily.
Also, what other factors are you talking about? If there are some, lay them out. I think I've done a more than ample job of laying out my arguments for SAGE, but you haven't given a viable alternative. You've hidden behind "it might be part of the equation."
I haven't shied away from admitting that you were right when we've disagreed in the past, but for once I'd like to see you do the same. SAGE works. It gets kids to graduate and stay out of trouble, and it uses taxpayer dollars wisely.
It's time to get on board with this one, I hope you encourage your fellow conservatives to do the same.
Best,
-Oliver Kiefer
Anonymous (February 25, 2008 @ 3:05pm):
Wait...
The reason for low minority enrollments is...Low minority graduation rates? Your statement is like saying: People get colds because of sneezing. You can't define the root of a problem with a symptom. WHY are graduation rates low? Take a shot at that one!
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