Provocative perspective on Affirmative Action

[spooky3]

in higher education (and jobs requiring advanced ed.) From the WPost editorial columnists page last week:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60595-2004Jan6.html

"Affirmative action in college admissions is among the most controversial issues in education, but both sides in the debate overestimate its importance. The truth is that affirmative action is largely irrelevant to increasing minority representation in higher education. The primary obstacle to getting more minority students into college is that only one in five of such students graduate from high school with the bare minimum qualifications needed even to apply to four-year colleges.

snip

For students to be able to attend virtually any four-year college, they need to graduate from high school, have a set of required courses on their high school transcripts and demonstrate basic literacy. The shocking reality is that fewer than one in five minority students has passed these three hurdles and is thus "college ready."

snip

The only strategy that can meaningfully improve minority representation in higher education is to improve the quality of the K-12 education system so that it produces more college-ready minority students. We might disagree about how the K-12 system can best be improved, but we should stop wasting our energies on heated debates over affirmative action and focus them on the source of the problem. Unless we fix the leaks in the K-12 education pipeline, no higher education policy can possibly improve minority opportunities to attend college. "

Jay P. Greene is a senior fellow and Greg Forster is a senior research associate at the Manhattan Institute's Education Research Office. Dr. Greene will discuss this article in an online discussion at 1 p.m. today on www.washingtonpost.com.

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Although this article does not deal directly with primaries, since much of today's 2004 primaries discussion is focused on related topics, I thought this might be the best place for it but mods can of course move it.

[spooky3]

1. kick--this is an important article

for those who want some (allegedly) factual info.