The Education Pendulum

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DÉJÀ VU: THE ACCESS/SUCCESS PENDULUM.

GÁDARA, PATRICIA

ORFIELD, GARY

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. 10/14/2010, Vol. 27 Issue 18,

p20-21. 2p.

Article

*RIGHT to education

*ACADEMIC achievement -- United States

*HISTORY of education policy

*EDUCATION -- United States

*EDUCATION of minorities

*AMERICAN civil rights movement

*AFFIRMATIVE action programs in education

*UNIVERSITY & college admission

UNITED States

912910 Other provincial and territorial public administration

913910 Other local, municipal and regional public administration

611310 Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools

In this article the authors discuss access to education and academic

achievement for minority students in the U.S. They offer a brief

history of U.S. educational policy for African-American and Latino

students which includes a discussion of the Civil Rights movement,

affirmative action, and college admissions standards and financial

aid. They argue that the increasing minority student population

makes it imperative that both academic success and access are a

focus of U.S. educational policy.

Professors of education and co-direct The Civil Rights

Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, University of California, Los

Angeles

1487

1557-5411

55123480

Academic Search Complete

DÉJÀ VU: THE ACCESS/SUCCESS PENDULUM

As higher education renews its focus on college completion, we should be mindful about past

failure to hold steadfast to access and success

In education, reform tends to follow cycles, often bouncing from one extreme to another without considering

the possibility of incorporating multiple perspectives simultaneously. Policies aimed at helping more

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underrepresented students enter college and complete degrees have bounced from one pole to another,

embracing access as the primary goal without giving adequate attention to successful completion, which

results in many underrepresented students coming through the campus gate but relatively few leaving with

degrees.

There has been considerable publicity lately about the U.S.'s declining rankings in international

comparisons of young people with college degrees. Today, we are not among the top 10 developed

countries for degree attainment, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development,

with flat completion rates placing us so low in the rankings, Americans are waking up to the fact that

something must be done to increase the rate at which our youth gain degrees -- especially youth of color --

if the U.S. is to remain competitive in international markets. Just 21 percent of African Americans and an

appalling 12 percent of Latinos have completed a degree by age 29. The Obama administration has set an

ambitious goal for the U.S. to lead the world in the percentage of adults with a college degree by 2020, but

this will require that we pay attention to both access and success in ways that we haven't before.

Breaking Down Barriers

Much of the first half of the 20th century was characterized by a long march toward providing equal access

to a basic education to African-Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and, to some extent, Asian students.

Up to midcentury, these groups fought just to gain access to schools with equal resources. Importantly,

many of the court rulings that resulted in the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, which promised

access to the same schools for all children regardless of color, were decisions about access in higher

education, such as the Sweatt v. Painter decision of 1950 that opened access to the University of Texas law

school for students of color. Having been denied access to an equal education, it was logical that all efforts

would be concentrated on the access issue during this period, culminating in Brown, the 1964 Civil Rights

Act, the 1965 Higher Education Act and the creation of Work-Study under the War on Poverty. The barriers

were supposed to fall and the students were to have the resources to enroll.

By 1975-76, an African-American or Latino high school graduate had an equal chance of attending college

as a White high school graduate. The civil rights era shone a light on the yawning gaps in educational

attainment that existed between White students and students of color, and the mid- to late-1960s and

mid-1970s saw a strong focus on the importance of access to higher education, including opening the

segregated public universities in the South and creating tribal colleges for Indian nations to help narrow

those gaps. Almost all selective universities adopted affirmative action. Nonetheless, by 1975 only 15

percent of non-White young adults held college degrees compared with 24 percent for White students. It

would take time, though, before the challenge of college completion became a focal point in struggles for

equality.

Forty years ago the focus was on providing more equality of opportunity through affirmative action and other

strategies to increase access to college. And it worked. However, by the early 1980s it became clear that

access was not enough. Students of color entered college at all-time-high rates but they were too often not

completing degrees. This fact stimulated competing responses between conservatives and progressives.

On one hand, social conservatives argued that the students should not have been admitted because they

weren't prepared, which was the reason they weren't completing degrees. Efforts to limit access to more

selective colleges by redirecting "under-prepared" students to two-year colleges coupled with assaults on

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affirmative action policies were underway.

The 1980s became the era of "educational excellence," in which a conservative rhetoric focused on framing

the problem as incompatibility of excellence and diversity. Conservatives argued that American education

had become mediocre because standards were not high enough. Although this was most directly

communicated in the 1983 "A Nation at Risk" document that critiqued public schools, it was also a theme

that played out in higher education. The question was posed in mainstream media as well as in academic

publications: Could we have internationally competitive universities and still maintain a commitment to

diversity? Weren't these two goals fundamentally incompatible?

Dr. Alexander Astin countered the argument that excellence and equity were in conflict in the academy with

his 1985 book, Achieving Educational Excellence, in which he proffered that excellence in higher education

institutions in multicultural societies was only possible through diversity. The debate is like choosing

between giving a child food or health care -- both are necessary and strongly related. In addressing the

completion problem, social progressives argued that, if the country was to move forward socially and

economically, it required that marginalized populations be admitted to selective universities and be

supported to succeed there.

College success became a new focus, and programs to help ensure that students of color completed

degrees increased in number and importance on campuses. However, support programs served few

students, and the nagging gaps remained between White (and increasingly Asian) students and students of

color with respect to degree attainment. Research showed that being admitted to a competitive college was

a completion strategy because affirmative action students' completion rates in these colleges were higher

than in open-access colleges because there was a clear pathway and positive peer groups. Graduation was

the default outcome.

There was also a change in the political climate of the country in the 1980s, ushered in by the Reagan years

and the retreat from affirmative action and progressive policies to support low-income and students of color

in higher education. The Bakke affirmative action Supreme Court decision at the end of the 1970s sent out

alarms that the era of affirmative action was on life support. At the same time, fewer colleges were built,

admissions standards were raised and tuition constantly went up faster than family incomes as state

support declined. The impact was particularly pernicious for students of Color, including Latinos, who did not

have the HBCU-type institutions and were concentrated in states that relied too heavily on community

colleges. Thus, we saw a steady downturn in access through the 1980s and increasing gaps among

advantaged and disadvantaged groups in college admissions. The "success" part of the higher education

equation was lost in the new swing of the pendulum away from access and an increasing concern that

access to higher education was being lost for the nation's minorities.

The 1996 anti-affirmative action initiative (Proposition 209) in California and the Hopwood decision, which

likewise found affirmative action illegal in Texas the same year, resulted in huge drops in admission to

selective public colleges in those states. Proposition 209 was followed by similar initiatives and court

decisions in other states, with predictable downturns in minority access. During the 1990s, concerns of

progressives once again became fixated on the access problem.

Changing Course

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More recently, we have seen a return to the discussion about the "success problem," with colleges under

attack for providing too much remediation. Social conservatives have once again suggested the place for

students shortchanged by inferior high schools is community colleges, not the four-year institutions from

which they are more likely to graduate with a degree. The dramatic growth of the Latino population -- now

the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority -- has also raised new concerns about college success as

a recent report from the Pew Hispanic Center revealed that Latinos go to college at rates comparable to

other groups but they lag far behind others in degrees. The gaps in college attainment for this group are

alarming in states where they constitute the majority of the school-age population. Financial aid policies that

reward "merit" rather than need have proved debilitating for African-Americans, Latinos and other low-

income groups as working too many hours makes completing college much more difficult. And so once

again we shift our lens toward the challenges of success in college.

In a nation that will soon have a majority of non-White students in its public schools, the stakes are too high

to focus on only one issue at a time. Access of the right kind fosters success and completion. Focus on

support for students who fall behind makes access a better investment. We must do both all the time.

~~~~~~~~

By PATRICIA GÁDARA and GARY ORFIELD

Drs. Patricia Gándara and Gary Orfield are professors of education and co-direct The Civil Rights

Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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