For Blacks in Law School, Can Less Be More? (loaded article)

[UL_Approved]

This has appeared in the New York Times, and even the reporter has doubts:

NE would have thought, given the decades of ardent debate over affirmative action in higher education, that the main axes of the dispute had been established.

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But a recent study published in The Stanford Law Review by Richard H. Sander, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, has found a new way to inflame the debate.

~snip~

Professor Sander's study tests a simple, but startling, thesis: Affirmative action actually depresses the number of black lawyers, because many black students end up attending law schools that are too difficult for them, and perform badly.

~snip~

That assertion, which is based on a great deal of data, along with inference and speculation, has provoked an outpouring of written critiques from law professors, economists and social scientists. Several will be published in The Stanford Law Review's May issue.

~snip~

Timothy T. Clydesdale, who teaches sociology at the College of New Jersey, says the law school environment, and not affirmative action, suppresses the grades of some law students.

"Something intrinsic to the structure or process of legal education affects the grades of all minorities," he writes in the fall issue of Law and Social Inquiry. Professor Clydesdale agrees with Professor Sander, however, that bar passage rates are determined primarily by law school grades.

~snip~

Professor Sander's study may be most vulnerable in its assessment of the top law schools, where the vast majority of law students of all races graduate and pass the bar.

For instance, Richard O. Lempert, a law professor at the University of Michigan, said that the university's law school had found little difference between its black and white students in rates of graduation, in passing the bar or in income afterward. "We think the fact that Michigan is an elite law school has a lot to do with it," he wrote in an e-mail message. "Sander's data, though he barely mentions it, convey essentially the same story. Thus his analysis provides no case for the Harvards, Yales and Columbias of this world to abandon affirmative action."

So are we back to the "prosperity for some" approach these days?

Does this guy miss the point that the best students match the demographics models for affirmative action, but that the remaining students fall behind?

If blacks were inferior to whites in this area, how could the students at the top match demographic distributions? Wouldn't the blacks still have a higher dropout rate from universities if they were "being given an opportunity that denies a white student of higher potential"?

It seems that the argument of lowering expectations for minorities is becoming popular again, with new theories to boot.

This tells me that either there are less black students that get a proper education before college, and/or that the second-rate schools have a program bias against minority students.

[cap]

1. blacks dont get a proper education before college

because many school districts are funded by property taxes. Blacks make less than whites ergo their schools are not as well funded. We need to change funding of public schools.

[trumad]

2. LOL...You must not live in Florida...

Seems to me that Jeb and his cronies are starving public schools for their stupid ass vouchers and tax breaks to Disney World, etc.